[UPDATE: Turns out it's Lady Gaga's manager who lacks a sense of humor. Lady Gaga herself has approved the song in the wake of the insta-controversy.]

Of course, Weird Al Yankovic was going to parody Lady Gaga, and turning "Born This Way" into "Perform This Way", an extended joke about her wacky costumes seemed perfect. But sadly, Lady Gaga wouldn't allow Al to put the song on his forthcoming album. Madonna was ok with "Like a Surgeon", so you'd think Gaga would follow her idol and go along with the joke, but no such luck.

From Al's blog:

After the Australian tour, I was supposed to go on a long-awaited family vacation over my daughter’s spring break — but because I now had to record what ostensibly was going to be my “hit single” as quickly as humanly possible, I cut our vacation short and came back to L.A. to spend long days and nights in the studio. The band and I worked around the clock. On April 11, I put the finishing touches on the mix and mastered the track. Done.

Or so I thought.

A couple days later we got the final word: Lady Gaga says “no.”

*silent scream*

And that’s it. As of this posting, I still don’t know specifically what kind of problem she has with the song (obviously I take a few jabs at her, but y’know, it’s satire — that’s how it’s supposed to work). And I’m especially confused as to why she waited until I actually recorded the song (at her insistence!) before saying no. It’s not like there were any surprises in the finished song that she couldn’t have foreseen by, you know, READING THE LYRICS.

A conventional release for the song and video would have also raised a nice chunk of change for the HRC — an organization which I have to assume Gaga supports. Hopefully, if fans enjoy hearing the song online, they’ll make a donation anyway.

My parodies have always fallen under what the courts call “fair use,” and this one was no different, legally allowing me to record and release it without permission. But it has always been my personal policy to get the consent of the original artist before including my parodies on any album, so of course I will respect Gaga’s wishes. However, given the circumstances, I have no problem with allowing people to hear it online, because I also have a personal policy not to completely waste my stinking time.

So I uploaded the song to YouTube, and will be making free mp3 downloads available on weirdal.com shortly. Hope you enjoy it.

Man, I wish you all could have had a chance to see the video we were going to do for this thing. It was going to be BEYOND AWESOME, and disturbing on many levels. Oh well.

Anyway, I realize that this may be way more information than many people would care to know about the whole situation, but I just wanted to set the record straight before any crazy rumors started. There’s really nothing more that I have to say about it now, so hopefully I won’t have to be answering questions about Lady Gaga in interviews for the next 20 years.

I know this news is disappointing to many of you. Believe me… nobody is more disappointed than I am.

Thanks for listening. I’ll keep you posted.

Your pal,
Al

Tonight wraps up the Arizona International Film Festival and it seems somewhat poetic that a documentary about Fourth Avenue closes the festivities. The Avenue shows at the Screening Room tonight at 8 pm, and the filmmaker will be in attendance.

If nothing else, it'll be worth seeing the movie for a moment teased on the website where Bob Walkup says that "downtown and Rio Nuevo was worth the money".

Terrible news from the AV Club:

According to a notice posted on the band’s official site, TV On The Radio bassist Gerard Smith died this morning, only weeks after it was revealed he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He was 34. Smith had been a part of the band since 2005, beginning with third album Return To Cookie Mountain (on which he also played piano, organ, and sitar), and becoming an official member around the time of Dear Science. He was credited as the group’s primary bassist on the new Nine Types Of Light, but was forced to sit out its recent tour at his doctors’ urging—though at the time of the announcement, the band seemed confident he would soon return. The group’s statement on Smith’s passing reads, “We are very sad to announce the death of our beloved friend and bandmate, Gerard Smith, following a courageous fight against lung cancer. Gerard passed away the morning of April 20th, 2011. We will miss him terribly.” In addition, all upcoming TV On The Radio shows through April 26 have been canceled.

If you don't have the band's new album, Nine Types of Light, you're really missing out. It's a peculiar, wildly creative and occasionally funky work of art.

Somewhat surprisingly (to me, at least), the Arizona Court of Appeals has reversed a trial court ruling against the City of Tucson's current system of partisan, at-large elections. The Arizona Legislature passed laws requiring city elections to be ward-based and non-partisan, arguing that city elections were a concern of the state, but apparently, the Court of Appeals disagrees. The opinion can be found online, if you're interested in such things, although it would appear this will be heading up the appeals tree to the Arizona Supreme Court quickly.

We've had two world records set in Tucson in recent times. First, Tucson's own Shlomo and Vito's New York Delicatessan broke the world record for the biggest matzo ball. And about two weeks ago, Albert Hall of Acacia and Frankie Santos from Frankie's South Philly Cheesesteaks set the record for the world's longest cheesesteak. Check out the pictures.

The initial buzz was that this thing would stretch more than 1,000 feet, but it ended up clocking in at 426 feet after an entire day of constructing it in the hot sun on the UA Mall.

I was going to post about this when it happened a few weeks back, but one look at this vat of cheese sauce left me with such a bout of nausea that I tried to block the entire thing from memory.

The New York Times Magazine has a long excerpt from an upcoming biography of Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, including an the above adorable photo, which might be proof that Obama is stealing money from the rich and burying it on an island somewhere.

The president’s mother has served as any of a number of useful oversimplifications. In the capsule version of Obama’s life story, she is the white mother from Kansas coupled alliteratively to the black father from Kenya. She is corn-fed, white-bread, whatever Kenya is not. In “Dreams From My Father,” the memoir that helped power Obama’s political ascent, she is the shy, small-town girl who falls head over heels for the brilliant, charismatic African who steals the show. In the next chapter, she is the naïve idealist, the innocent abroad. In Obama’s presidential campaign, she was the struggling single mother, the food-stamp recipient, the victim of a health care system gone awry, pleading with her insurance company for cover­age as her life slipped away. And in the fevered imaginings of supermarket tabloids and the Internet, she is the atheist, the Marx­ist, the flower child, the mother who abandoned her son or duped the newspapers of Hawaii into printing a birth announcement for her Kenyan-born baby, on the off chance that he might want to be president someday.

A whole bunch of local restaurants, including Feast, Kingfisher and Vero Amore, are donating up to 20 percent of their profits tonight to the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault as part of Dine Out For Safety night. Get the full list, and more details, here.

The Arizona Legislature has wrapped up for the year. Here are the statements from leaders of both parties in the Arizona House of Representatives.

House Speaker Kirk Adams:

It’s fitting that the centennial Legislature rose to the great challenges before us in a way that the legendary Arizona leaders who came before us would be proud of. Rather than kick the can down the road, this Legislature proved that it is possible to balance the budget, create jobs and reform government and entitlements. These are tough decisions that required bold action — and we rose to the challenge.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell:

This session should be remembered for controversial bills like the birther bill, the guns on campus bill and the bill to give the Tea Party its own Arizona plate. This legislation, all sponsored by Republicans, who have total control of state government, is a waste of time for the state, and that’s exactly what this session was. Arizona is still at a 9.5 percent unemployment rate, we’re still second in the nation in foreclosures and nearly last in the nation in education funding. None of that has been fixed and most of it has been made worse.

House Majority Leader Andy Tobin:

Our work to fix our economy, create jobs and reign-in spending does end today — but by making bold decisions over the last 100 days we are a giant step closer to brighter days for Arizona. The voters sent us here to make tough decisions, and together, we’ve worked hard to do just that.

Assistant House Minority Leader Steve Farley:

The sad part is that Republicans continue to tout their corporate bailout package, what they call a ‘jobs’ bill, although it doesn’t create single job in Arizona. Instead it gives away tax breaks to big, out-of-state corporations when they should be paying their fair share. It increases taxes on homeowners and continues to make Arizona fall behind the rest of the nation in economic recovery.

House Minority Whip Anna Tovar:

What Republicans and Gov. Jan Brewer have done this session negatively affects the quality of life of Arizona families. Due to their massive cuts to higher education, our kids won’t have access to good-paying jobs or be able to compete in the worldwide economy. It’s time that we get our money’s worth from government, elect responsible leaders and apply strict accountability measures to keep politicians in line at the capitol.

This week, Tucson Weekly has a feature on winners and losers in the budget; look for it online later today.

We'll be unpacking the rest of the session here on The Range and in print edition as the dust settles.

An amusing shot at Captain of Industry Al Melvin today by Blog For Arizona's David Safier, from information gathered by a few other blogs:

This same Al Melvin is Vice Chair of the Senate Committee on Economic Development and Jobs Creation. The committee had 11 meetings scheduled. Seven meetings were called off. The four actual meetings totaled 3 hours and 53 minutes, with the final meeting, all the way back in February, lasting a whopping two minutes.

Here is the committee schedule:

1/12/11: Not Meeting
1/19/11: Cancelled
1/26/11: Met, 8 minutes
2/2/11: Met, 1 hour, 14 minutes
2/9/11: Met, 2 hours, 29 minutes
2/16/11: Met, 2 minutes
2/23/11: Not Meeting
3/2/11: Not Meeting
3/9/11: Cancelled
3/16/11: Not Meeting
3/23/11: Cancelled

Senator Melvin had a Job to do — help create jobs — and he didn't do it. He didn't even put forth the effort to hold meetings to discuss the issue.

The Sierra Club's Sandy Bahr rounds up the last of the environmental legislation that moved through the statehouse this year:

Hello all! Well, at least it is finally over and even though it was a relatively short session, it seemed extremely long. It is tempting to say, “It could have been worse,” but then that lets the legislature off the hook for a variety of god-awful actions, many of which will be resurrected for next year. We have this magnificent state filled with amazing natural wonders and they would mortgage our natural capital to advantage one business or one industry or to serve some personal perceived slight. It is our health, the state’s biological diversity, and the future of Arizona’s children that are most at risk.

This is the last update for the year (unless they do a special session), but in the coming weeks, we will issue our report card on the Arizona Legislature and the Governor, so watch for that. Thank you all for hanging in there and making the calls, sending the emails, and for caring enough to take action. While it can be discouraging and frustrating, your actions can and did make a difference. Here is the first case in point.

SB1517 S/E transmission lines; environmental compatibility certificates, the bill to limit public involvement in transmission line siting in Arizona, failed in the House Committee of the Whole 14-40-6. It is unusual for bills to die in Committee of the Whole, especially by such a large margin. Kudos go to the Cascabel Working Group and the many people who worked to defeat this bill. Towards the end, agricultural interests weighed in to oppose it as well. All of this resulted in rejection of a truly bad public policy. Please take the time to call and thank House members who voted against the bill. Just click on SB1517 Vote Detail to see who voted no and