The Stuff

Henry Rollins on Dating (YouTube):

I’ve never seen this movie staring Rosie O’Donnel and John Ritter, but it looks fantastic (YouTube):

Bill Hicks describes his worst gig ever (YouTube):

Jack Mehoffer calls Bill O’Reilly (YouTube):

Cult signer Jan Terri on the Daily Show (YouTube):

Update: sorry, it turned out to be a picture of Baby Sinclair.

Did you know that people still make music videos? In spite of MTV’s evolution into reality TV, music videos have lived on and found their home on the web in places like YouTube and MySpace, where adults can watch them without seeing commercials for soda and pimple cream. Here’s a list of the best videos I found in 2007, and by best I mean the most unique, unusual, sublime and creative.

Trentemøller: “Moan” (YouTube). The video tells the sad yet sublime story of Laika, the first Earthling in space.

Justice: “D.A.N.C.E” (YouTube). An excellent song, and an excellent video. The animation is simply incredible and unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

DJ Scotch Egg - Scotch Bach (YouTube) Bach played on GameBoys. Not kidding. The most unique video of the year.

MC Frontalot “It Is Pitch Dark” (YouTube). The undeniable apex of the nerdcore genre. Bonus points for not being about Star Wars. “You are likely to be eaten by a Grue”.

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip: “Thou Shalt Always Kill” (YouTube). Sort of like being run over by a train for 3.5 minutes — in a good way. The most unique lyrics of the year. The beard will scare Americans.

All Through The Night - “Escort Video” (YouTube). Post modern Muppet mashup. The video is made from edited clips of the Muppet show and synchronized with the music. Retro clever.

José González - “Down The Line” (YouTube). Mellow, somber music and a weird video featuring a pig man. The video is effective because you find yourself empathizing with the mysterious plight of the pig man. I’m not kidding.

Spoon: “Don’t You Evah” (YouTube). A catchy song for sure, but this video stands out because it’s chock full of robots, and real robots. Real robots programmed by the dude in the video. The whole thing was produced by Wired magazine.

New Young Pony Club: “Icecream” (YouTube). This is a quintessential new wave video: bold visuals, primary and secondary colors, cute women and nerds with guitars. Watch it and you’ll think: this could be 1985, and I wish the 90’s never happened (well 1994-1999 at least).

Prurient interests after the jump…

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12) The Krampus visits the Venture Brothers (YouTube). The Krampus is a demon like creature that once traveled with Santa Claus doling out punishments to naughty children. He needs to make a comeback.

From WikiPedia:

The word Krampus originates from the Old High German word for claw (Krampen). In the Alpine region the Krampus is represented by an incubus in company of St Nicholas. Traditionally, young men dress up as the Krampus in the first two weeks of December and particularly in the evening of December 5 and roam the streets frightening children (and adults) with rusty chains and bells. In some rural areas also slight birching especially of young females by the Krampus is part of tradition.

The present day Krampus costume consists of red wooden masks or Larve, black sheep’s skin and horns. Considerable effort goes into the manufacture of the hand-crafted masks, as many younger adults in rural communities engage competitively in the Krampus events.

11) A Krampus parade in Austria (YouTube):

10) A Krampus celebration (YouTube). Freaking awesome.

9) Yo yo yo - 1-900-909-RAPS - Santa is Gangster (YouTube). “Back in the day”, in a time before the interweb, 1-900 numbers offered children and adults alike a chance to run up $1000 phone bills by exploiting their primordial urges. Nothing says Christmas to small children like rapping, criminal Santas; what child wouldn’t be enticed by this commercial:

8) Santa’s 1-900 Number (YouTube). Here’s another one without the urban flava:

7) 1-976-SANTA?? (YouTube)

6) Home Alone in 5 Seconds (YouTube). Home Alone is one of the better Christmas-themed movies. Who doesn’t love a little slap-shtick violence in context of celebrating the birth of the “Prince of Peace”? We’ve all seen this film enough times that is isn’t as funny as it once was, but leave it to the 5 Seconds guy to make this quick and hilarious edit:

5) Raging Rudolph (YouTube). Mad TV’s parody of The Year Without a Santa Claus… and the Godfather.

4) Christmas In Hollis - Run-D.M.C. (YouTube). The first rap Christmas song? The most famous one for sure.

3) Aquateen Hunger Force Christmas (Adult Swim). The make the most of what little they have.

2) Musashi’s Xmas song (YouTube). Cats singing Christmas songs. This is to neutralize the impact of the next video.

1) Mr Hankey the Cristmas Poo! (YouTube).

If these Huskies and a Polar Bear can play and get along, why can’t we?

Updated!

The Batman Dark Knight trailer, the high quality version. It looks nice and dark (I don’t mean the quality of the bootleg trailer — I mean the tone of the film).

BTW, isn’t the “a freak, like me” a line from an Adina Howard song? Indeed it is:

Tiki: Tiki nostalgia is alive and well on blogs like Swank Blather. Viva Polynesia!

Cryptozoology: Mental Floss (publisher of fun fact books and a magazine) has a list of 9 things that might kill you (if they actually exist). Do mind the Mongolian Death Worms.

Music: my friend Pat is crazy for the band Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. You can download 3 of their songs for free on the Alternative Tentacles web site.

Art: 3 Types of Unusually Legal Urban Street Art: colored manhole covers in Japan, murals on traffic signal switch boxes and light post sculptures.

Science: Quirks and Quarks is a CBC Radio podcast about all things scientific in nature.

Autos: There’s an air freshener in every junk car. Have you have seen Repo Man?

Comic books: The Justice League: New Frontier movie looks promising.

Science Fiction: Watch the the Turkish version of Star Wars on Google video. It can’t be be much worse then the Star Wars Holiday Special.

WOW: The Mr. T and William Shatner World of Warcraft commercials are awesome! (Disclaimer: I’ve never played the game.)

Vans from Japan: Tiny versions of classic American vans made in Japan.

Space: Gorgeous space photos from the Hubble telescope.

Comedy, Caucasians: Conan O’Brien and Jim Gaffigan are the Pale Force! Conan and Jim visit Little Canada.

Gaming: The fugliest video game boxes of the year.

What isn’t on YouTube? I present to you the commercial for Hobbymasters, a hobby shop in Red Bank, New Jersey.

Wow, right?

This advert airs about 90 times a day on Comcast — they must sell a lot of trains to pay for those commercials. This is the extended version. In the 30 second version, Arline’s hair color doesn’t change.

Musician and DJ Miss Kittin has gone Goth for her new album, BatBox.
Her new track, Kittin is High, reminds me of early 1990s “Goth/Industrial” music, like Wax Trax! stuff. You can listen to it by visiting her site.

And…

Thumbs Up Season 2 is up and running on VBS.tv. This time David Choe and his uncle are hitchhiking from Mexico to the North Pole. David Choe is obsessed with encountering “DayWalkers”, a.k.a. vampires or half-vampires (like Wesley Snipes) who aren’t harmed by sunlight. I can’t tell you why, but it’s funny.

I typically stay out of politics (on the blog) but this here is funny (and a little bit courageous and insane): it’s a advertisement with Chuck Norris endorsing Mike Huckabee, using Chuck Norris “Facts” as part of the bit.

When I was a youngster, the two things I loved most about Monty Python were the cartoons and a chance to see some nudity. As a middle aged adult (presuming that I’ll live to be 76, then I am in the middle) I can easily find nudity, but wacky animation is harder to find.

B3ta has been an oasis of Monty Python style animation for some time. Classic examples include Jada and the Moon Song.

One of the stars of this type of animation is a cat named Cyriak. I came across this compilation of his animation today — it’s crazy and quite amusing.