I'm a pretty big fan of Weird Al Yankovic. Always have been, and over the years I've become more so. Not because of his music (which I love) but because of who he is as a person.

See, I grew up listening to Weird Al. In fact, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say I might owe my very existence to Weird Al. The guy kept me laughing through a lot of times when laughing was, well, hard. He always came up with creative, innovative tunes, and he always managed to keep current with his parodies.

Well, I didn't get to see him live until a few years ago. A friend of mine was at the same show, and shortly before the show began, he brought Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz back and introduced me. John handed me a pass to go backstage after the show (I forget what they call it, but it's not a true backstage pass--Al and the band meet several of their fans, sign autographs and chat after every show, and they hand these out to various fans). It was one of those moments.

Well, the other day, I was messing around on MySpace (I keep an account mainly to keep in touch with friends...I haven't even really set up a page there yet), and I happened to come across Al's blog. Now, I know what you're thinking...anyone can CLAIM to be Al. But I went back to his webpage, checked out his blog, and yup, it linked back to the page. So it wasn't a bogus fan site posing as Weird Al's blog...it was actually his blog!

Now, naturally, I HAD to ask to be added as a friend. But I expected to be grilled and to sign a form in triplicate saying I wasn't a representative of Coolio's posse or of the Accordion Defamation League. But no such request came in, and the next time I logged in, POOF! There he was on my friends list.

And that brings me to my point. See, in this day and age when artists only give lip service to being close to their fans, when they pose for pictures but are really jerks underneath, Weird Al has genuinely worked to be close to his fans. Ok, so I'm one of about a billion on his friends list, but the fact that he even takes time to maintain a blog with everything he has to do says something; the fact that he's always found ways to be accessible to his fans says even more.