All-Time Best of Ace, #1: The Only Important One on That Stage, Mr. Paul Anka

There's no one big Paul Anka post, of course. Pretty much it's just been a long-running gag, tossed into maybe a hundred or more posts, since I first discovered (and did my part to publicize) this utterly hilarious six-minute candid recording of Paul Anka absolutely reaming out his band.

Some people say they don't understand the references made here. 90% of them come from this tape-- from Vinny Falcone to "loose shit" to "we're not going to be as strong as our weakest link" to the Zen question with no answer, "Where's Joe?"

One of the funniest parts of the Paul Anka Integrity Kick had nothing to do with me; it came from AllahPundit, who dug into his record collection to discover some very funny old Paul Anka singles and albums.

The Integrity SAT's -- the entrance exam for getting into Mr. Paul Anka's band-- still makes me laugh when I read it.

And of course for one weekend this site became "AnkaPundit," as The Only Important One on That Stage, Mr. Paul Anka, took over for a weekend to evaluate some hysterical Paul Anka-themed haikus submitted by readers and also to opine on such topics as gay marriage.

AnkaPundit starts here and continues here.

Hands down, this must have been the funnest period of the blog's run. Man, when everyone was dropping Vinny Falcone references and demanding that others exhibit "substance" and "conscious" [sic], it really was just a laugh to read the comments every day.

I always though that one day I'd get sick of the Paul Anka stuff, and on the very next day, it would be publicized big throughout the blogosphere/Internet as a whole, becoming even bigger than the Tourist Guy or All Your Base Are Belong to Us. I was wrong on both counts-- it never really took off like that, but then, I never really got bored of it, either.

Well, that took me a lot longer than I thought it would, but there you go: that's the #1 All Time on the Best of Ace countdown. Who else could it have been?

Where's Joe?

Update: Allah's hilarious Paul Anka record collection is now being hosted on this site, with his kind permission. The link now points to the AoS post containing the records.

posted by Ace at 11:23 PM

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