Welcome to My Morning Routine, where we take a look at how people (i.e., celebrities) kickstart their days.
It's the summer of Weird Al Yankovic—the puckish parodist who's been subverting America's favorite pop songs since the late 1970s. He's out with a new album, Mandatory Fun (likely his last), which has reached the top of the charts and has enjoyed a wave of popularity so strong that there's an official petition to have him perform the halftime show at the next Super Bowl. But the Los Angeles County native hasn't let it change his usual morning routine of Americanos and healthy cereal—though he admits he has spent more time recently thinking about potential sports-themed parodies. Here's how he starts his days: **
Well, there's no such thing as a typical morning in my house, but the alarm goes off, I hit snooze once, and the second time it goes off, I roll out of bed and go to the shower. I shave, comb my hair, brush, floss, put on my clothes, and go into the kitchen.
I turn on the espresso machine, and while it's heating up, I start up my laptop and check my Twitter feed. Then I grind some espresso beans and make a double espresso, then add two more cups of hot water to make an Americano. We [ed.: presumably Yankovic and his wife, Suzanne Krajewski] generally get the espresso beans from a place we go to called Kings Road Cafe. The coffee is really just strong and dark and good.
And then I get some organic cereal, let's say wheat and blueberries, pour soy milk over it, maybe some fresh fruit, and sip my Americano and eat my bowl of cereal. Then I put the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher, kiss my wife goodbye, and walk out the door.
[When I buy cereal], I mix it up. I'm currently doing the flakes thing. I'm also doing Wheet-Bix and various other kinds of things. My wife has a mild corn and oats allergy; sometimes I buy for myself, but I generally try to buy something she can eat as well. Most often I get a vanilla soy milk.
I don't eat meat. Sometimes I stray from the vegan thing and do dairy products, so I'm somewhere between a vegan and a vegetarian right now. I try to eat vegan, but I've slipped too many times to be a card-carrying vegan.
I might have referred to breakfast food in one of my songs, but I can't say that breakfast food has ever inspired me artistically.
I wrote a lot of songs about food in the '80s. I've tried to get away from food parodies in the last few decades. I think people thought they were funny because there just weren't a lot of pop songs about food then. It was a novelty to hear it on the radio. Food is always funny. It's almost too obvious a thing to do for a parody. Now that I'm competing with thousands of people on YouTube, I've been trying not to take the easy, obvious route anymore, because a lot of other people are taking it.
[If the Super Bowl halftime show were offered to me,] I wouldn't turn it down. That's not something I think about a lot, because I'm a realist, and I know it's not going to happen. But that's one of the reasons I wrote a sports song on the new album ["Sports Song"]. Again, I don't actually think I'll get the offer, but it got me thinking, "Well, what do I do if they do offer me the Super Bowl?" And I realized didn't have any sports-related songs, so I wrote that.