The Incomparable, number 640, November 22.

Welcome back to The Incomparable. I'm Lex Friedman sitting in for Jason Snell, who we finally gave a week off, but he shouldn't get used to it.

Today, we are talking about Weird, the Al-Yankovic story, the brand new 2022 movie that premiered on the Roku channel in November.

And I'm joined by what I would consider an all-star panel who I will introduce in the order they joined the very Zoom we're using to record.

So we'll start with Brian Hamilton. Hi, Brian.

Lex, we agreed it would be best if you didn't be who you are and stop doing the things you love.

We're also joined by Quinn Rose.

Hi, Quinn.

I famously also dated Madonna, so I'm thrilled to be here.

Very impressive roster, actually.

And then, last but certainly not least, is Kelly Come on.

Hi, Kelly.

I have brought the same hair and the same Hawaiian shirt.

And I have played an accordion.

I did not take lessons like my husband did.

Well, I'm very excited, obviously, to talk about this movie.

But I think it would be helpful if we could go around the room and talk about your introductions to slash fandoms of Al as they exist. So maybe Brian,

you can start. Like, how did you first get into Al? Like, was this a movie you were definitely

going to watch? Or was it only because I asked you if you would be on this podcast episode.

This was a movie I knew I would definitely watch because I have loved Al since, I guess, the late 90s when, oh, God, what was it? The saga begins was my first introduction to Al. I thought, wow, someone wrote a song about Star Wars. And my family had to sit me down and tell me about Don McLean. And then from there on in, I would, you know, watch all the videos and listen to all the singles. And I am definitely dating myself in terms of how young I am. Thanks, y'all. But when it comes to this movie, I was like,

yay, great. I'm really excited to learn about the production process of white and nerdy or any of these

other things that he's going to be talking about. Nope. It goes from 1970 to 1805 and that is it. And I'm like, wow, that's incredible. I'm very glad that this movie stuck to

...