Store! Eeee-mail.

I've gotten a couple e-mails from CafePress telling me I have 14 bucks in my account that I can use for products, or whatever. At first I didn't think much about it. But then I realized that I only marked stuff up by a dollar - meaning that I somehow sold 14 things to people who were not me. Two of these were my aunt and one was my dad, but that's still 11 sales to non-Flaxman family members. This girl from Connecticut whose last name is Flax bought a Big Flax Cafe t-shirt back in 2002, and some guy from New Jersey whose last name is also Flax bought a "Please Die" shirt and three Big Flax Cafe shirts in October 2003 and April 2004. The even weirder thing about the latter is that he bought one BFC shirt six months after the other two. Did a relative see him in the shirt and tell him to buy them one? Did he wear one so much that it wore out? These are the kinds of questions I need to know the answers to. Could Mr. Flax still be lurking around my page?

Then in December 2004, this guy from Iowa bought - get ready - a BFC shirt, a Please Die shirt, and an I'm Sorry, Do You Live in This Suite mug. What? Was he dressing up as me for Halloween? I think I recognize the name vaguely, like he was someone I encountered briefly at Northwestern or in some similar locale. But does that justify such purchases?

Finally, I sold two more Please Die shirts - one to an old NJ neighbor, and the final one in January 2006 to some woman from Colorado who I'm quite sure I don't have even the slightest connection to. Bizarre. Though I'm glad to have the money, thanks! (Oh, I almost forgot to mention the mug that Rich Goldberg bought a few years back. I knew about this one before, but I feel like he'd leave some faux-huffy comment if I didn't mention it. And now that I've mentioned him, perhaps he'll be all happy.)

Annoying discovery: CafePress finally clued into the fact that the Big Flax Cafe design is an unauthorized spoof of the Hard Rock Cafe logo, and subsequently suspended my ability to sell it. Since I doubt I have much legal recourse (and frankly, I don't have the desire to "fight the man" on this one), if you haven't already bought your Big Flax Cafe shirt like the five other people in the world who have one, I'm afraid you're SOL. The weeping may commence.

(Incidentally, what would you do if you saw someone on the street wearing the shirt and it wasn't me? Wouldn't that be totally bizarre? Well, except if it were my dad. But what if it were this Iowa guy, whose name isn't even Flax? I suspect I would do a lot of pointing and yelling.)

But now I want to try and think of a good shirt to replace the old Big Flax Cafe shirt. Clearly people will just wander in and buy these things if you choose the right line. The "Are You Man Enough for the Avian Flu?" shirt hasn't sold any yet - and probably won't, besides to me (and even I didn't buy right away, though with the 14-dollar discount I have on the table I may yet).

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Dividing the post up, Rudnik-style. Not mentioned on the also Rudnik-connected (and mentioned in an earlier post) album release list is the new album from Weird Al Yankovic, Straight Outta Lynwood, which comes out on September 26. Al came off my automatic-purchase list - and you may laugh that he was ever on there, but I like Weird Al - with Poodle Hat, his fairly disappointing 2003 effort, but I like "Don't Download This Song" a whole bunch. (It's an original, not a parody, though it's clearly something of a style parody of "We Are the World" and similar numbers.) Check out his myspace page - one of the few times you'll ever hear me say that - to hear the song, along with "You're Pitiful," Al's James Blunt parody that Blunt okayed but his record label shut down, leading to Al putting the song on the web as a form of protest.

The question is, what are the odds the whole album is worth buying? I can get one track off iTunes, after all. There's no track list yet, but the myspace page mentions parodies of "Chamillionaire, Green Day, Usher, R. Kelly, and Taylor Hicks!"

Well, let's see. The Green Day parody is almost certainly going to be "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." There was already a parody of that on ESPN.com's "Shitty Sports-Related Parodies" page that had to do with Steve Francis (and yes, that's not the real name of the segment, but I really don't feel like looking it up and, frankly, this is way more accurate), so I'm a little burned out on the idea for a parody of this track, but at least I like the music, which is always a start.

The Usher parody is almost certainly "Yeah!" I'm not sure where you go with that, but if Al can do it, more power to him.

I know very little about either Chamillionaire or Taylor Hicks, but Wikipedia confirms that the former's "Ridin'" will be parodied, which isn't surprising. I'm not sure how you parody Taylor Hicks - does he have songs of his own to begin with? - but I'm guessing it will lean at least in part on a vocal impression.

Here's the one I'm worried about: R. Kelly. Considering the timing, I'd have to offer good odds that this will be some sort of "Trapped in the Closet" parody. And, well... how on earth do you do that? It's like Scary Movie 5 including a scene that parodies Snakes on a Plane. Even if R. was being totally serious at first, he's well aware by this point that the "Closet" songs are among the most ridiculous things ever. What's left to parody? There's basically no way you could ever make it funnier, and the original's middling musical value means it would be difficult to make a good song out of it. Sure, it could be a parody of "I Believe I Can Fly" or "Ignition (Remix)" or something, but "Closet" is clearly more timely, and while Al's parodies are not always exclusively of contemporary songs (recent parodies have included send-ups of current movies set to older songs, like "The Saga Begins" for The Phantom Menace being set to "American Pie" and "Ode to a Superhero" for Spider-Man being set to "Piano Man"), they usually are. (And you really can't out-funny "Ignition (Remix)" either, while we're on the subject.)

I realize it's probably too late, but Al, as a fan, I would go with something other than a "Trapped in the Closet" parody if that is in fact the direction in which you went. While I can see why you'd want to parody it, since it was the darling of every Best Week Ever viewer for weeks, I just don't think there's enough to be gained.

Anyhoo. I will be interested to see which songs make the polka parody, which has in recent years become my favorite part of any Yankovic album.

I think that's it for now. I really will try and finish some movie reviews this weekend.