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Most young comedians would be lying to say that they weren't huge Weird Al fans when they were kids. Weird Al is probably the first person I ever realized had a career that was just making jokes.

I'd like to say that parody is a celebration of a person's specific characteristics, as opposed to mockery.

Whenever I do a parody it's not meant to make you hate anybody's music really.

So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.

I think to simply make fun of something isn't particularly interesting. I try to not just do a parody of something or belittle something or disparage something.

All great reality shows have a very, very similar format. That's why it was so easy to parody.

By the very nature of satire or parody, you have to love and respect your target and respect it enough to understand every aspect of it, so you can more effectively make fun of it.

I see parody as another form of comedy.