Albuquerque (song)
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| “Albuquerque” | ||
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| Song by "Weird Al" Yankovic | ||
| Album | Running With Scissors | |
| Released | June 29, 1999 | |
| Recorded | October 15, 1998 | |
| Genre | Comedy | |
| Length | 11:22 | |
| Label | Volcano | |
| Writer | "Weird Al" Yankovic | |
| Producer | "Weird Al" Yankovic | |
| Running with Scissors track listing | ||
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"Albuquerque" is the last song of "Weird Al" Yankovic's Running With Scissors album. At 11 minutes and 25 seconds, it is the longest song Yankovic has ever released on any of his official studio albums.
With the exception of the choruses and occasional bridges, the track is mostly a spoken word narration about Yankovic's made-up life in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after winning a first-class one-way airplane ticket to the city. Though not a direct parody, the entire song mimics "Dick's Automotive" by The Rugburns so closely, it almost can be considered a direct parody.
Throughout the lyrics, there are many clichés and strange happenings that mislead the listener, only for them to find that the path of the story has changed completely within seconds. The instruments are also used in a layered format, playing a repetitive rhythm while the subject is calm, and then dramatically increasing in volume when something serious is said or occurs. One may also note that the bridges often include rather strange guitar and drum playing which is often sporadic and/or off-beat.
There is also an obvious joke involving the song in the album jacket to Running With Scissors. In the beginning, it looks like a standard title header for any of the other songs on the album and the beginning of the song's lyrics are shown. However, the lyrics are cut off early, followed by this seemingly sarcastic message:
"You know what? The rest of these lyrics aren't gonna fit here. There's just no room left. What a drag, huh? I guess we didn't plan this out very well...probably should have used a smaller font or a bigger piece of paper or something. Sorry. We all just feel horrible about this. Well, I guess you'll just have to listen really carefully and try to figure out the words for yourself. Good luck."
Contents |
[edit] Summary
Al begins his story as a boy living in "a box under the stairs in the corner of the basement in the house half a block down the street from Jerry's Bait Shop...you know the place" where every morning his mother force-feeds him sauerkraut for breakfast until he's 26 1/2 years old and vows to change his life. The next day, he wins a radio contest by guessing the number of molecules in Leonard Nimoy's butt (he was off by three), and wins a first-class, one-way trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Al enjoys his first plane experience, though he recounts that he had to sit between two large Albanian women with body odor, the boy behind him repeatedly vomited, the in-flight movie was Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore, and the flight attendants ran out of Dr Pepper and salted peanuts. Three of the plane's engines burn out, causing the plane to crash. Al is left as the sole survivor because he followed the correct safety procedures, which have little to do with escaping that kind of a wreckage ("I had my tray table up, and my seat back in the full upright position!").
He crawls from the wreckage and journeys through the countryside for three days carrying all his belongings including his "lucky, lucky autographed, glow-in-the-dark snorkel." Finally, he arrives at the Albuquerque Holiday Inn where he is enjoying the comfort of his room until a fat, one-nostriled hermaphrodite with A Flock of Seagulls haircut bursts into his room and, after a fight with Al, steals the snorkel.
Before plotting revenge, Al decides to buy some doughnuts at the doughnut shop only to learn that they are all out and only have a box of starving, crazed weasels. He buys it, and the weasels immediately attack him. He runs out into the street and meets the love of his life, Zelda. They get married, purchase a house, and have children (Nathaniel and Superfly). They finally break up one night when Zelda asks him to join the Columbia Record Club, but Al tells her he is not ready for such a commitment.
Al achieves his life long dream by getting a part time job at the Sizzler and becomes the employee of the month after putting out a grease fire with his face. This inspires a lot of jealousy among the other workers and reminds him of the time he asked to help someone named Marty carry a sofa up the stairs. Marty replied, "No, I want you to cut off my arms and legs with a chainsaw." Not realizing Marty was being sarcastic, Al does exactly this. In telling this story, Al is reminded of a tramp he bit in the jugular vein because he said he hadn't had a "bite" in some time (actually stating that he was starving). Having gone on this tangent, Al loses his train of thought, leading him to simply state his main point——he hates sauerkraut. Al finishes by reminding the listener that if they are ever troubled in life that they should take comfort in knowing that there is "still a little place" called Albuquerque.
[edit] Trivia
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- At the end of the song (around 11:20, after the music ends), faint laughter can be heard in the background. As "Weird Al" says, "That’s Jim West laughing - I thought it would be a good way to end the album. He’s cracking up because of the stupid chord he played at the end of the song."[1]
- In the song, the narrator's mother feeds him sauerkraut until he's 26 1/2 years old. This is a reference to Yankovic's common hiding of the number 27 in many of his songs and videos, often thought by fans to be in teasing jest.
- Using sauerkraut for humor is shared with Al's friend Emo Philips (who appears in many "Weird Al" projects).
- The doughnut shop scene is an homage to Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch.
- The line "That snorkel was like a snorkel to me" is a parody of a similar line in Cheech and Chong's song Basketball Jones Featuring Tyrone Shoelaces
- In lieu of his normal DVD of the week review of the Internet radio talk show 2 Sense, Spazfox narrates this song word for word in a series of segments, starting at Sense episode 78. [2]
- In the computer game Doom 3, one part of the game is to collect PDAs, which contain audio logs and word files. One worker's journal recounts the tale of a worker nicknamed "Torsoboy" after having his arms and legs ripped off by the "Albuquerck" Capacitor.
- During the recorded song, there are many odd exclamations that have no meaning to the story.
- When performing this song live, Al will usually extend the song by listing off more types of doughnuts, including strawberry, boysenberry and Halle Berry doughnuts, as well as completely starting the song over after he "loses his train of thought."
- When performing this song live in Canada, Al is known to replace the dream job at Sizzler with one at Tim Hortons[3], a Canadian donut shop. While this would seem to go better with the narrative earlier in the song about the incident at the donut shop, according to the Tim Hortons website there are no Tim Hortons stores in New Mexico[4].
