NEW YORK (CAP) - The ongoing feud between pop star Lady Gaga and "Weird Al" Yankovic escalated this week, when two women purported to be among Gaga's "Little Monsters" allegedly attempted to shoot the song parodist outside the lobby of Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan.
According to New York City Police Department reports, the unidentified women were wearing see-through plastic dresses and giant bows made of human hair when they attacked Yankovic, who escaped by retreating down the sidewalk on his Segway scooter. In a subsequent investigation, Police determined that rather than using firearms, the pair had actually shot at Yankovic from sparklers attached to their bosoms.
"Those sparks can cause some real damage if you get one in your eye," noted New York Police Detective John Marchamp.
Yankovic later accused Gaga associate Sean "P Diddy" Combs of setting him up for the ambush, noting, "He's never forgiven me for [1999 parody] It's All About The Pentiums." Yankovic has also publicly quarreled with Kanye West, who allegedly set the singer on fire after losing the Album of the Year Grammy to Herbie Hancock in 2008.
The long-simmering rivalry between Lady Gaga and Yankovic rose to a boil in recent weeks, when Gaga denied Yankovic permission to parody her hit single Born This Way. Gaga's camp later backed down and said she would allow the parody, but following the incident in New York, Yankovic has reportedly retreated to his 1,700-acre compound in Compton, Calif., with his 40-member entourage, also known as his "Al-tourage."
Notorious for their Hawaiian print shirts and accordion cases that may or may not contain accordions, the group has run afoul of the law many times during Yankovic's long career. In one January 1997 case, Yankovic was ordered to pay $41,000 in damages following an incident involving rapper Coolio, who claimed Yankovic and his entourage showered him with "noogies" following a dispute over whether the video for Yankovic's Amish Paradise had made the rapper's hairstyle "look silly."
"He didn't need my help to do that," Yankovic later told Sway of MTV News.
Yankovic is also widely suspected of being involved in the drive-by shooting death of Mark Jonathan Davis, who recorded the parody song Star Wars Cantina. Davis was shot in May 2003 - at the height of the East Coast-West Coast parody rivalry - by an unidentified man in a Hawaiian print shirt on a Segway scooter.
Lady Gaga, for her part, remains undeterred. "If I can handle the Pope coming after me for my Telephone video, I can certainly handle ol' white and nerdy," she told CAP News from the set of the video for her new single Judas, which debuted on Easter Sunday and features Gaga as a latex-wearing Mary Magdalene having sexual relations with the Easter Bunny.
Yankovic is reportedly writing a parody of Judas as well, tentatively titled Mucous. "I haven't worked out all the lyrics yet, but it will probably be about boogers," Yankovic said.
- CAP News Staff