We writers here at The A.V. Club truly do try our humble best to downplay our immeasurable wealth, staggering fame, and stoic ability to endure the deafening cheers of the billions of wild-eyed zealots whose lives hang on every syllable we type. Occasionally, though, the lone voice of a single disciple struggles to make itself heard through the din of adoration. Such a voice belongs to a man known only as The Passionate & Objective Jokerfan. As proof of his undying A.V. Club fanaticism, Jokerfan’s recent album Songs, Singers, Goats, Writers, Critics… All Sorts Of Stuff!—one of dozens he’s intrepidly self-released in spite of the fact that he’s surely fielded numerous offers from major labels—features no less than two songs about The A.V. Club. The first, “Onion a/V [sic] Undercover, You Guys Are Great!”, sings the praises of our popular A.V. Undercover live-music video series.
The second one, though, gets a little personal. On “Jason Heller, I Enjoyed Your Gateways To Geekery Piece On Van Morrison,” yours truly is serenaded in a totally not creepy or obsessive way. In his trademark, piano-based, Randy Newman-meets-Wesley Willis style, Jokerfan professes his love for my 2010 article about Morrison, singing, “Jason Heller, you are a wonderful music critic / I really like you because you write nice, good articles.” He goes on to remark, “I read a good article by you about Van Morrison in the Gateways Geekery section,” which he calls “a very nice and thorough article” that helped him realize the excellence of Morrison’s overlooked 1974 masterpiece Veedon Fleece. He even rhymes “masterpiece” and “Veedon Fleece.” (Some non-A.V. critics are also paid tribute to on Songs, Singers, Goats, Writers, Critics, including The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber and Pitchfork’s Joshua Klein, but not with the same passion and objectivity.)
With that in mind, we at The A.V. Club sincerely hope that such fawning, stalkerish sycophancy from our followers—while appreciated in a godly manner you cannot fathom—will in no way be rewarded. We mean, it’s not like we’re going to write an article about you just because you wrote a song about us. That said, Jokerfan, let it be known that your music has earned The A.V. Club’s upcoming “Gateways To Geekery: The Passionate & Objective Jokerfan” on its own merits.