Nows the time to go for all the gusto you can grab. You'll have plenty of time to be low-key when you're laid out on the slab.

I don't watch a lot of other people's parodies because I don't want to be unduly influenced.

It was difficult to get into my friends' rock bands when I was a teenager. They somehow didn't see the need for an accordion player. That's when I realized that I had to find my own path in life.

My own personal tastes don't really have an effect on whether song is a parody target or not. But having said that, I try to pick songs that I actually like because I realize that I have to live with these songs for a long time, from when I'm working on them in the studio to possibly playing them onstage for the rest of my life. So I try not to pick songs that I know would drive me crazy.

I cut my teeth playing rock songs on the accordion when I was a teenager and my friends always thought that was extremely amusing. I think that was the genesis of my polka medleys, because every rock song I played on the accordion just sounded like a polka and my friends thought it was funny. So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day.

If something is good enough, it can be out there and people will see it.

I suppose I had my rock star fantasies while I was singing into my hairbrush in the bathroom mirror, but I never really consciously said, 'OK, this is what I'm going to do for a living and I'm going to be Weird Al.'