Weird Al Does ‘Bad’ to Michael

His hair is a veritable oil slick of little ringlets. His black jacket has more buckles and zippers than the entire Bullocks men’s department. And when it comes to eye-liner. . . .

It’s Michael Jackson, right?

Wrong.

It’s Weird Al Yankovic, the conceptual wizard of pop parodists, who’s back again with a spoof of Jackson’s “Bad” album called “Even Worse.”

The new Yankovic album features “Fat” (a parody of “Bad”), “Lasagna” (a take-off on “La Bamba”), “This Song’s Just Six Words Long” (a spoof of George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set on You”) and a rap version of the old “Twister” board-game TV commercial. Yankovic also performs several warped originals, including “Velvet Elvis” and “I’m Stuck in a Closet With Vanna White.”

The centerpiece of Yankovic’s “Fat” parody is his new video, which debuts Wednesday sometime after 5 p.m. on MTV during the fifth installment of the pop satirist’s mock-video show, “Al-TV.” If you thought Jackson’s “Bad” video (where he cavorts in a subway terminal with a gang of street toughs) was beyond parody, wait till you see “Fat.”

The street toughs are back, except this time they all look like they’d need a liposuction to get through a subway turnstile. When Al first meets them, one tubby tough says menacingly: “Yo, homeboy--haven’t seen you ‘round Burger World lately.”

We won’t give away any of the spiffy visual jokes. Let’s just say Al becomes such a round mound of rock reknown that you find it completely believable when he sings: “The pavement cracks when I fall down, I’ve got more chins than Chinatown. . . .”

“It was pretty grueling,” Yankovic said. “Every morning, it would take three hours for them to put me in my fat makeup. Kevin Yeager, who’s a great special-effects guy, designed this face mask that’s a lot like what dentists use--it’s rubbery and it hardens and we used it to make all my extra chins and cheeks.

“I had to wear it all day, so it was pretty weird for me to sit in my trailer and eat lunch, watching myself in the mirror. Actually, it really gave me an appetite, because I knew how skinny I actually was underneath all the fat. So I’d say, ‘Hey, I’ll have five or six brownies. What’s the difference!’ ”

This is Yankovic’s second Jackson parody (he did “Eat It” several years ago), but if he’s worried about overdoing the Gloved One routine, it doesn’t show. “I don’t want to get the rep of being the guy who does Michael all the time,” he admitted. “But when I heard ‘Bad,’ it was pretty hard to resist. I mean, it kinda leaps out at ya, doesn’t it?”

Actually, Yankovic spoke fondly of Jackson, as did Jay Levey, who manages Yankovic and directed the clip. “Michael’s been more than cooperative--he’s been a mensch, “ Levey said. “He approved both our lyrics and our album cover concept. And when we asked to use a replica of his ‘Bad’ video subway set that he’d been using for another project, he said, ‘Great. Have a party.’ He has a great sense of humor about himself.”

Let’s hope so. Otherwise Jackson is bound to be mighty peeved when he discovers that Yankovic, who sells about 1/7000 as many records as Jackson, is getting his shot at movie stardom before him.

Levey confirmed that Yankovic will star in “UHF,” which begins shooting July 18 in Tulsa, Okla. Noting how Hollywood types love to position their new projects by comparing them to successful films, Yankovic describes it as “a cross between ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.’ ”

In fact, the comedy--produced by Gene (“Rocky”) Kirkwood and John Hyde--features Weird Al as a day dreamer with an overactive imagination who, through a bizarre set of circumstances, ends up running a small-town UHF TV station that suddenly becomes a huge success.

“I hope it won’t be too hard for me to play, since the character is pretty much an extention of my own personality,” he said. “I love doing parodies, but it’ll be fun to be doing me instead of someone else.”