I hold dear a memory from my childhood of early fall and apples.

My extended family on my fathers side lived and worked the orchards of central Washington back in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. Twice each year my small family would drive down to Yakima, stay with our family in houses in the center of vast orchards around Naches, and work for a week picking cherries in the summer and apples in the fall. We felt so grown up; stepping up tippy ladders with buckets attached to our chest or canvas bags with wood bottoms at our sides reaching out slightly further than was safe to pick bushels of apples and pails of cherries for the family farm. We could eat whatever we could pick, and at the end of the week, my parents recieved 4 or five giant boxes of red delicious and golden delicious apples or bags and bags of fresh bings and rainier cherries as payment for the week of help. We’d hug our relatives and drive home thinking about all the cherry and apple pie my father was bound to make and put in the freezer for the cold winter months to come.

I woke my son up early Saturday morning so we could get on the road and arrive at Yakima for the Central Washington State Fair early enough to spend the day on the midway, riding all the freakishly nausea-inducing rides to his hearts content before the main event: “Weird Al” Yankovic - Live In Concert.

If you don’t have a 9 year old you might not have heard, so I’ll be the first to tell you that “Weird Al” is having a renaissance in his career. 25 years ago “Weird Al” broke on the scene with his parodies that every pop music listening child loved, and, I’m sure, every parent detested. They were fairly obvious, Michael Jackson’s “Bad” turned into “Weird Al“‘s Fat, Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” metamorphosed into Like A Surgeon under “Weird Al“‘s watch. Never one to understate the obvious “Weird Al” beat his humor home with a sledge-hammer by creating videos for each parody that made perfect sense. There was nothing there an adult could remotely like. They were dumb.

And I loved every one of them.

As we drove down into the Yakima valley around Selah, and the orchard country came into view I flashed back on those times when children and parents worked together for the simple things, like apple pie, and fought over the stupid things, like radio stations in the car, and “No! I’m not listening to that dumb “Weird” Al tape again!”

These things don’t happen anymore. For one, families don’t go to pick the fruit of the orchard limbs anymore. Why would you give anybody fruit for free, when you can bus up and hire Mexican immigrants for so much less. The era of pulling ripe fruit from the tree for fun and pie is over. No middle class white folks do this any more (or if we do it’s at a “pay to pick” place, where we bring our children for “fun” to spend an afternoon having them bitch about how they’re missing their favorite Nickalodeon show).

Second, and more astonishing, “Weird Al” has matured. He’s become more pointed and focused. His style no longer just plays on word puns, or spooner-isms, “Weird Al” is now able to turn rap songs about riding in pimped out cars into full on thesis of the culture of tech-geeks in southern California. He’s now able to turn anthemic pop songs like Don McLean’s “American Pie”, into retellings of the complete unabridged Star Wars saga. Gone are the days of tedious hamming. “Weird Al” has arrived, and everyone is better for it.

From the outset, I wasn’t sold. My son had begged me to see “Weird Al” in Pyuallup this year, but due to travel we couldn’t make it. God! The tears! What was I gonna do, he’d never wanted to see a concert so much in his life! I’ve tried to take him to all sorts: David Bowie, Iron Maiden, Arcade Fire. He never really seemed that interested in seeing a band live. But here he was in front of me; tears welling up in his eyes. I looked on line and found out “Weird Al” would be playing a month later, 2 hours away, in Yakima. So I bit. I bought. I made him happy.

After a day of standing around watching my son go on rides with his buddy (I can’t go on fair rides, because an inner ear thing gives me instant extreme nausea), dodging piles of child “sick”, and eating some pretty bad food (all sold incidentally as fundraisers for all the local christian school, ugh!), the time came for us to find the seating area and watch the spectacle unfold.

Well, I’ll be goddamned if this wasn’t one of the best, tightest, funniest (and longest)shows I’ve ever seen.

The backup band came on stage and started into the famed Chicken Dance. After the first couple of beak-beak-beak, flap-flap-flap, wag-wag-wag’s “Weird Al” came on stage. The crowd, made up of every age group, roared as they started into his first number Polkarama, a medley of some of todays top hits, including songs by Coldplay, Modest Mouse, Beyonce, Franz Ferdinand, done polka style. As the song ended the band laid into the guitar line of Canadian Idiot (a parody of Green Day’s “American Idiot”). Red and White maple leafs floated around on the giant video screens behind “Weird Al” and streamers blew out over the audience. Next was his paen to modern love, Close, But No Cigar, then his tribute to the master-bard of American songwriting, Bob Dylan, in the song Bob (completely made up of palindromes).

During a short interlude for a costume change the screens lit up with a hilarious fake interview from AL TV with Madonna. It’s amazing how with just a little cut and paste you can make someone who’s already stupid look even dumber. Ms. Simpson is a pretty easy target (as were Paul McCartney, K-Fed, Eminem, Celine Dion and Michael Stipe, who all had special interview segment dedicated to them) but the interview was never mean and left the audience laughing their asses off.

Next up was the hard-core rap of It’s All About The Pentiums (a parody of Puff Daddy’s “All About The Benjamins”) and a song dedicated to James Blunt: You’re Pitiful. The “Weird Al” original Wanna B Your Lover was a crowd pleaser, as was Couch Potato (a parody of “Lose Yourself” by Eminem). Do I Creep You Out (a parody of “Do I Make You Proud” by Taylor Hicks) was a sensation, totally transformed into something more visceral live, as were Confessions Pt. 3 (a parody of “Confessions Pt. 2” by Usher) and Complicated Song (a parody of “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne).

The audience went ballistic for Ebay (a parody of Backstreet Boys’ “That Way”), singing every line of the odd and tongue-twister-ly song by heart.

Then the apex of the show. The music started on what was to me, and the rest of the audience, a seminal moment. “Weird Al” began to perform all 11 minutes of Trapped In The Drive-thru (a parody of “Trapped In The Closet” by R. Kelly). The crowd was silent, breathless as “Weird Al” regaled us with the tale of how one young man took his wife out to dinner at the drivthrough. Honestly, I was amazed at how funny and spot on the humor in this piece was. The man nailed every fucking nuance of R. Kelly’s original, making it sound extremely inane, and insanely otherworldly. Now he had the crowd, grandmothers and teen girls, fathers and sons, wrapped up in the palm of his hand. We were his puppets, he could do anything to us.

The hits started to fly out. Yoda (a parody of “Lola” by The Kinks), Smells Like Nirvana (a parody of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana), Amish Paradise (a parody of “Gangstas Paradise” by Coolio), The Saga Begins (the parody of “American Pie”). The fans, I say fans, because we were all, young and old “Weird Al” fans at this moment, danced and sang along to every song.

Then the end. He rolled out on stage on a Segway scooter and the crowd went wild knowing that a new anthem, an anthem for “the oughts” was about to begin. White And Nerdy (a parody of “Ridin’” by Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone) brought the concert to a close 3 hours later.

The stars twinkled in the cold October sky as I loaded my son onto the Sundola (a chairlift over the fairgrounds) that took my kid and I from the stage area back to the midway. As we rode above the heads of people buying cotton candy, and watched from above a hypnotism show at a small stage, my son turned to me and said, “Dad, I think that was the best concert I’ll ever see in my life. Can I go to the next concert you go to?”

Before I could answer he was asleep at my shoulder. As I carried him back to the car with his friends’ hand in mine, walking slowly through the dusty parking lot, I knew a new family tradition had been started. Rock and roll would never die. Long live “Weird Al”.