It’s always great news when an uprising for freedom starts in some foreign land where tyranny and oppression has long been the norm. Remember Tienanmen Square in China in 1989. But it’s even better when an uprising actually gets somewhere. Like in the Ukraine. It looks as though the Orange Revolution has succeeded – opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has been declared the winner in the new Presidential election, which was called after the original vote was declared fraudulent and irregular. (Now why couldn’t we do that in the US back in 2000?). Viktor Yanukovich, The pro-Russian establishment guy, is still complaining but the election observers seem to be in agreement that Yushchenko won fair and square. Sorry, Mister Putin, but your next door neighbors ain’t gonna just snooze their way through your efforts to re-establish the Soviet Union, even if your own people will.

You know who is snoozing through this one, though? Weird Al Yankovic, that’s who. Yea, Weird Al, the pop singer and comedy stylist who got some attention back in the 80’s with his takeoff on Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust”. Of course, under Weird Al the refrain became “Another One Rides The Bus”, a tale of unwashed homeless people getting on a public bus and sitting next to clean-shaven working citizens. I guess it was funny at the time.

Weird Al is still out there, putting out albums and making appearances for some kind of cult following. But he missed his opportunity to get back into the mainstream by tagging on to the Orange Revolution. “Yankovic ” must be an Americanization of something awfully close to “Yanukovich”. It would have been pretty neat for Weird Al to have gone to Kiev to denounce “Weird Vik Yanukovich”, who might have been a 6th cousin or something. Al might have finally gotten a chance to have been taken seriously. Say he had given a concert and put out an album “Weird and Orange, Live in Kiev”, including a cover of “Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere” and “Comes A Time” from Neil Young’s Freedom album . . . it might have put Al on the map. It might have said that even the cheesiest elements of American culture care when an oppressed people longs for freedom. But no, Weird Al sat it out, hoping that his recent “Poodle Hat” album will keep him working. Well, Al, good luck. Fate stops at your doorstep once in lifetime, and you slept right thru it. Pleasant dreams.