1907: Yabba Dabba Do! Character actor Alan Reed is born in New York as Edward Bergman. Alan would be the original (and most memorable) voice of lovable husband and father Fred on The Flintstones, and Al would receive permission from Alan's family to use his legendary voice for segments in "Bedrock Anthem."

1942: Chef is born! Actually, it's ultra-smooth composer and musician Issac Hayes who is born in Covington, Tennessee. Perhaps best known nowadays as one of the voices for a cast of obscene colorforms (well, up until 2006 when he realized how stupid the show really was, that is), it may surprise some to learn that Issac would win an Oscar in 1972 for his groovy theme to the movie Shaft. When Al wrote the "Gandhi II" music for that segment in UHF, it would sound so close to Issac's ominous beat that Orion was in fear of getting sued! It wasn't the first Isaac song to be associated with an Al project, as earlier in his career Isaac had co-written the classic blues song "Soul Man," which supreme guitarist Steve Cropper (who played on the original, famous Sam & Dave recording and on the Blues Brothers' equally known cover) would play during his audition in The Compleat Al. Rest in peace, Isaac.

1948: Led Zeppelin singer and co-frontman Robert Plant is born in England's West Bromwich, West Midlands. Al would later parody the legendary group's song "Whole Lotta Love" as the concert-only "Whole Lotta Lunch," and over the summer of 2004 the original song would frequently turn up in concert when Al would ask Jim for a song request. In 2006 Al would be allowed to officially dip into the Zeppelin well by including a snippet of their hit "Black Dog" in the middle of his R. Kelly parody "Trapped In The Drive-Thru," one of the very few times the group has ever authorized a cover of their work. And during MuchMusic's third AlMusic special in 1996, Al would "interview" Bobby Plant and even sing to him his own personalized ballad!

1948: The classic Bogart movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which would be parodied in UHF, is released in Finland. Okay, say it with me...WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' BADGERS!!!!!!

1952: Al's very first mainstream pop buddy, Doug Fieger, is born in Detroit. The frontman and rhythm guitarist of the Knack would not only write the song "My Sharona," on which Al of course based his parody "My Bologna," but he would also be the one who urged Capitol Records to sign Al to the label in 1979. It seems the man has a good sense of humor after hearing someone turn his ode to his real-life girlfriend into a tribute to processed luncheon meat! Doug would go on to praise Al's work in the VH1 Behind the Music and Driven specials, would be one of Al's guests on The List, and would even sign our petition to get Al into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bless you, sir.

1956: Onetime Berlin guitarist Ric Olsen is born. It was during Ric's four-year tenure with the group that Al would include their hit "Sex (I'm A...)" in his first released polka medley, "Polkas On 45."

1971: Self-declared freak Fred Durst is born in Jacksonville, Florida (with the real first name of William). In 1994 this son of a policeman would form the rockin' group Limp Bizkit. The group's collaborative effort "My Way" would find its way into Al's 2003 medley "Angry White Boy Polka."

1982: The multi-award winning, and no doubt Cannes opener, Friday the 13th 3D premieres in Canada. It is in this film that serial camp-counselor killer Jason Voorhees dons his famous hockey mask for the first time. The behockeymasked Jason would later show up briefly in UHF during the "Town Talk" commercial (and Al would even sport a Jason mask in a deleted scene briefly featured on the UHF DVD!). This Friday the 13th installment was produced and released during a very brief reemergence of motion picture 3-D technology (a fad that included another horror sequel, Jaws 3D). This little trend in '80s cinema may have inspired the title to Al's second album...and if so, then this particular movie may have also been the inspiration for Al's classic "Nature Trail To Hell."

1982: I dunno, he doesn't really look anything like Tarja Halonen. Anyway, Conan the Barbarian opens in Finland. One of the movie's sequels would be the lesser known Conan the Librarian, which George Newman was able to show on U62 in UHF! Much later, in October 2005, Al would appear on VH1's mini-series I Love the '80s 3D to suggest that the original film should have been made in 3-D. "When the future governor of California goes bowling with decapitated human heads, hey, come on, who wouldn't want to see that in 3-D?"

1984: Recording begins on a very special Al original, "This Is The Life." Commissioned by Twentieth Century Fox to write and perform an opening theme song for their Michael Keaton gangster spoof Johnny Dangerously, Al styled this original song after popular 1930s swing music, even going so far as researching through Dr. Demento's archives of old records! Oddly enough, Fox would delete the song from the movie's initial home video release (it was finally restored for the 2002 DVD of the film), while the song would find a bigger audience as part of the Dare To Be Stupid album.

1985 - Concert Date: Now in Toronto for The Stupid Tour, the Stupid Band plays The Concert Hall...which must be one of those cognates or something.

1986: The lovable robot movie Short Circuit opens in France, presumably as Le film avec Steve Guttenberg et G.W. Bailey mais il n'est pas "L'academie des Agents." The movie's theme song "Who's Johnny?" would be parodied by Al as "Here's Johnny" for his Polka Party! album. In October 2005 Al would comment on various aspects of the movie for VH1's mini-series I Love the '80s 3D.

1987 - Concert Date: Still with a bunch of Monkees, Al and the Polkaholics go back to New York to play at The Pier.

1989: The lame Saturday morning staple Saved by the Bell premieres on NBC. Previously known as the Hayley Mills vehicle Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which squeaked by with a lone thirteen-episode season on the Disney Channel two years before, the revamped show focused instead on the actual students and their "hip," quasi-metrosexual lives in a Southern Californian high school. The new series would last for four seasons and lead to the demise of animated cartoons on NBC's Saturday morning schedule (bastards). On the Weird Al Show episode "Time Machine," the high-school series would inexplicably appear on the miniature crystal ball that Madame Judy gave Harvey for his birthday. Al would later refer to the series's central character and its overall early '90s cheesiness in the February 2008 Rifftrax MP3 for Jurassic Park, specifically when Dr. Sattler (Laura Dern) grabs a couple of oversized walkie-talkies before heading off to the maintenance shed. Speaking as Sattler, Al comments, "I'll just take a couple of Zack Morris's cell phones."

1993: Fourteen months after its domestic release, Japan finally sees Al's literally cheesy compilation The Food Album released. However, a few major changes were made to the album for its Japanese unveiling. A brand new cover was created, featuring Al (a drawn version of his 1992 press photo, which would be most prominently used on the Al In The Box cover) surrounded by colorful fruit and covers of his Japanese albums. The cover also plays with the album's title: since there is no "F" sound in the Japanese language, the top of the cover reads "The Hood," with the letter H crossed out. The bottom of the cover then sports the correct title. The drawing of Al is also seen wearing a white, zebra-striped hood. The other new addition is an eleventh track, "Eat It (Without Vocals)." This oddity was first seen on the 1984 Japanese compilation The Official Music of Weird Al. The karaoke-styled track has yet to appear on a U.S. release.

1993: Steven Spielberg's dinosaur blockbuster Jurassic Park opens in New Zealand. Al would not only recount the plot for his late-1993 "MacArthur Park" parody "Jurassic Park" (complete with an animated music video spoofing the film), but he would also theme his entire Alapalooza album around the movie, even parodying its poster art for the album cover. In February 2008 Al would also appear as a guest star on one of Mike Nelson's Rifftrax MP3s, offering a Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary track for the movie.

1994 - Concert Date: Still on The Alapalooza Tour, the Alapaloozers perform at Rocky Point Amusement Park in Warwick, Rhode Island.

1996 - Concert Date: Now in Omaha for The Bad Hair Tour, the Bad Hair Band plays at the Orpheum Theater.

1997 - Concert Date: Back in the States for the second leg of The Bad Hair Tour, the Bad Hair Band visits Boise, Idaho and performs at the Western Idaho Fair (Let's kick Eastern Idaho's behind!!!!).

1999: The most anticipated movie of all time, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, opens in Austria, Denmark, Kenya, Norway, Seychelles, Spain, Sweden, and Tanzania (geez...sounds like an Animaniacs song!). George Lucas's sci-fi prequel inspired Al to write the Running With Scissors lead-off single "The Saga Begins," summarizing the entire plot of the film!

1999: The sci-fi blockbuster The Matrix opens in Greece. The movie, and particularly its mentor character of Morpheus, would be parodied in the May 2007 Virus Alert video game. Instead of swallowing either the red pill or the blue pill, Al announces, "I've got me-toids!"

1999: The unfunny, unappealing, unlikable Adam Sandler "comedy" The Waterboy opens in Italy, the final country the movie would premiere in theatrically (thank god). In January 2005 Al would appear on the "1998" episode of VH1's mini-series I Love the '90s Part Deux to talk about his favorite moment from the movie, that of Rob Schneider saying (in a heavy phony Cajun accent) "You can do eet"..."what an inspirational thing to say."

1999 - Non-Concert Date: The most anticipated concert of all time...is cancelled. Whilst Touring With Scissors, Al and the band were supposed to play in Columbus, Ohio at a dive called Mekka (supposedly at the club's "Metrostage"). However, a shifty, misleading local promoter (who made the venue sound more equipped to handle an Al show than it actually was) and the dance club's refusal to pay forced the guys to make a last-minute cancellation, only the second time they have done so in eighteen years of live performances! Fans who arrived in the parking lot were handed a note penned by Al and Bermuda explaining with sorrow the situation. Now the question remains, how many other people out there have their cancellation fliers autographed by the guys?

2000 - Concert Date: Now onto a real Touring With Scissors show...in North Charleston, South Carolina (huh? That sounds like a medical drama) at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center.

2004: The Oscar-winning biopic Patton premieres in Norway as a part of the country's 70mm Film Festival. It's no surprise the film would be included, as it was the second and final movie produced in the short-lived Dimension 150 process, which was envisioned as a sort of "super widescreen" format but was quickly deemed as a little pointless since directors had difficulty using the extremely wide lenses that were required. In July 2006 Al would appear on the "1970" episode of VH1's mini-series I Love the '70s Volume 2 to discuss the classic flick, specifically star George C. Scott's refusal to participate in the Academy Awards because he felt the ceremonies forced actors to compete with and campaign against each other, creating a veritable "meat parade."

2004 - Concert Date: And it's onto another favorite Midwest venue as The Poodle Hat Tour takes Al and the band to the Star Plaza Theatre in the Chicago suburb of Merrillville, Indiana.

2008 - Concert Date: While wrapping up the 2008 leg of the Straight Outta Lynwood Tour, Al and the band begin the tour's final excursion into Canada, first by playing the Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre in Vernon, British Columbia.

Is there an event I forgot? By all means let me know!!!!

Recording dates and tour dates available at Weirdal.com, compiled by Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz. Most release dates and chart positions according to the Library of Congress and the All Music Guide.