What do Usher, Green Day, R. Kelly, Michael Jackson and Britney Spears all have in common? Their biggest hits have been spoofed by Grammy-winner “Weird Al” Yankovic, the be-curled, accordion-wielding song satirist who brings his “Straight Outta Lynwood” tour to the Center for Performing Arts at Governors State University in University Park on Sept. 29.
Lynwood, Calif., is where Yankovic grew up, and it actually isn’t that far from Compton — which his “Straight Outta” album title riffs. The original is N.W.A.’s gansta rap album, “Straight Outta Compton” — Yankovic, on the other hand, is about as white and nerdy as it gets. It is no wonder the album includes a song titled “White & Nerdy.” (The stage show also includes several of Yankovic’s music videos.)
But his home is no joke. When not on tour, Yankovic resides “in the hills above the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood” in a modern four-bedroom, five-bathroom home that boasts an “unbelievable view of the city.”
The 47-year-old shares the house with wife Suzanne and their 4-year-old daughter, Nina. There also is a poodle, named Bela, and a cockatiel, named Bo. The couple likes “clean, simple lines,” although Yankovic is an admitted pack rat.
1. Most luxurious feature in your home: Pretty much everything in our house is oversized — I’m told the rapper Heavy D lived in my house at one point, and it seems like a lot of things might have been built to scale for him. In the master bathroom, there’s a huge Japanese soaking tub. When we first bought the house, I was a little disappointed because I’ve always been a fan of Jacuzzi jets, but I’ll tell you, when my wife and I actually have the time for a nice long soak, there’s nothing quite like it.
2. One thing on a wall in your living room: We have a beautifully framed giclee [digital] print of “Princess Sputnick,” which is a piece by Mark Ryden, one of our favorite artists.
3. One thing you have in your house from your childhood: I still have the accordion that I had when I was 7 years old. It’s too beat up to play anymore — it’s more of a museum piece.
4. What’s the oldest thing in your fridge or freezer? It’s a phone book. For some reason, my wife has this long-standing tradition of keeping the phone book in the refrigerator so she’ll always know where it is.
5. One thing on your nightstand: Usually I have nothing on my nightstand, but when I’m in the process of writing an album, I keep a flashlight pen and notebook there, just in case I get an idea in the middle of the night.
6. If we came unexpectedly, would we find your bed made? It depends. If you showed up at 4 in the morning, it would definitely not be made because my wife and I would be in it. If you showed up at 4 in the afternoon … well, come to think of it, it probably wouldn’t be made then either.
7. Favorite household chore? Oh, it’s so hard to pick a favorite. I guess taking the garbage down three flights of stairs from the kitchen to the garbage cans outside.
8. Most high-tech gadget or appliance in your home? I’ve got a 16-track digital portastudio, which I used to use for making demos but I’ve found that it’s easier to just use sequencing software on my Mac desktop. So the portastudio has found a home in the portion of our house that we like to call the “technology graveyard.”
9. Best furniture bargain you ever got: I can’t say we got an incredible deal on any of the furniture we currently own, but back when I was in college, I was able to make a bookcase out of some empty crates and a couple boards. I remember the lumber yard cut me a pretty sweet deal.
10. Fill in the blank: I can’t live without my … Food and oxygen. I guess I could feasibly live without TiVo, but would that really be living?
11. If you had to save one “thing” from your home, what would it be? My photo albums. I can always win more Grammys.
12. What is the biggest collection in your home? It used to be my Hawaiian shirts, but at the request of my wife, most of them have been relocated to a storage facility in a nearby city. She has a pretty impressive collection of lunch pails. Personally, I suppose my biggest collection in the house would be my CDs, which I have displayed on the wall in metal racks — which also drives my wife crazy. I guess it’s a guy thing.
13. What reading material would we find in your bathroom? My wife thinks it’s tacky to have reading material in the bathroom, but I like to multitask, so I try to keep copies of Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and The Onion handy.
14. Biggest surprise we’d find in your closet: Gee, I don’t know … sombreros, a giant Spam costume, a Darth Vader phone, plaster casts of my in-laws … I mean, there’s a ton of weird stuff in my closet, but that wouldn’t really be a surprise to anybody, would it?
15. What currently does not function in your house, but you haven’t had a chance to get it fixed yet? In the living room we have our home entertainment system in this cabinet that’s got these big metal remote-controlled doors. It’s called a Curtain Call — it’s very James Bond. Only it stopped working a couple years ago and the doors are just permanently open — it’s never been a huge priority to get it fixed.
16. Do you do any friendly snooping when visiting the homes of others? I don’t go through anybody’s underwear drawer or medicine cabinet, but if they have any CDs, DVDs or books on display, I generally check out their collection to see what they’re into.
17. What would we find in your garage? We have two cars in the garage, as well as shelves full of promotional singles, swag, fan mail, business receipts, Christmas decorations. We’re really trying to streamline and not have so many boxes and piles everywhere, but it’s difficult because I’ve always been a bit of a pack rat. I love that modern, clean look — but it’s kind of hard to pull off when you’ve got so much stuff!
18. What is your decorating nightmare? Our upstairs powder room was a nightmare to remodel. I like symmetry, and when the house was built, they made everything maddeningly off-center — so we had a plumber come in and rearrange everything so that the plumbing and the sink and the faucets all lined up correctly. Then we tried to wallpaper the room with this grass-textured wallpaper that we liked, but there was so much variation in color in the material that the seams were extremely apparent on the wall — it was just ugly. We wound up having to paint the wallpaper just so it would all be one uniform color.
19. What aspect of your home is the epitome of your personality? I don’t know if you’d say it’s the epitome of my personality, but I had a bed designed with a big puffy curvilinear headboard covered in blue felt — very odd and whimsical. It looks like something out of “Beetlejuice” or “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” Unfortunately, it didn’t get my wife’s seal of approval, so it got banished to the guest bedroom downstairs.
20. What music are you listening to at home these days? Well, I’ve been on the road for several months now, so I haven’t been able to listen to anything at home. When I am home, I listen to new music in my car, and in the house I listen to whatever my daughter Nina is into. Currently that would be the theme song from [the Disneyland attraction] the Enchanted Tiki Room. Over and over and over and over.
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