Questions People Have
(Tumblr folks, please click through to the image — it’s worth it.)
If your first reaction to this is “Wow, people are racist,” I’d like to raise two points: first, that these are examples of ignorance, not racism; second, that each person who typed one of these phrases into Google was immediately presented with a screen full of information. When I was a kid, I remember wondering why my black friend had white palms, and why my Indian friend often smelled so strongly. If Google had been around at the time, I would have typed in these queries too, and would discovered the existence of melanin and curry. Nothing dispels ignorance like knowledge.
This is great news — after ceasing print publication in 2007, the Weekly World News has made its entire archives available on Google Books. (Check out the above — you can even embed entire issues!)
I loved the Weekly World News when I was a kid. Despite her eyerolls, I’d force my mom to buy it for me at the grocery store and devour it as soon as we got home. I was at a weird age — old enough to get the jokes, but young enough to sustain the belief that maybe, just maybe, some of it might be true. It was only years later, when I saw the headline “Osama and Saddam’s Gay Wedding!” that I realized what a hilarious and subversive publication I had been reading all those years. As far as straight-faced satires of news publications go, the Onion has nothing on the Weekly World News — it parodied the tabloids of its era so successfully that it was sold on the rack next to them. The fact that it wasn’t trying to attack or criticize the format, but simply capitalize on its silliest elements, just made it more fun to read. Long live and R.I.P.
oldeenglish:
Happy Father’s Day from Olde English! Of all the videos we produced for Super Deluxe, this one was one of my favorites. I love the idea of a dad driven to super-villainy by his asshole kids, yet whose plan is ultimately foiled by their continued lack of respect. More importantly, everything came together in the production of this sketch: Jesse, Raphael and Dave did an amazing job parodying the “Poor Unfortunate Souls” school of Disney-villain songwriting, and Dave nailed the performance; Julia’s costuming and production design are terrific (check out Raphael’s nerd outfit); Ben contributed some of his best work behind the camera; and Emma and Caleb’s hilarious performances just tie a bow on it. (I love the moment when Emma slowly looks up at Dave for the first time — the full force of her contempt is so withering, it almost hurts.)
Notice someone missing from the above list? While everyone else was having a blast filming this upstate, I was at home rendering Don’t Dance or some other ridiculous After Effects nightmare I had assigned myself. I don’t regret it, though — since I had absolutely nothing to do with the production of this sketch, it means I can blab on and on about how much I love it. Way to go, team OE!
Anyway — send this to your Dad. He’ll probably like it.
- adam
Reblogging my own post. To reiterate: I love this sketch.
charlietodd:
John Hodgman roasts Obama and his alleged nerdiness at the Radio & TV Correspondents dinner. So good. Watch now.
This starts getting really good at around 8:15, when Hodgman gives Obama a “nerd test” and quizzes him about details of Conan the Barbarian and Dune.
Things that have made me a Craig Ferguson fan:
1) Jimmy Fallon’s first few months as host of Late Night.
2) The above video.
There are actually a lot of things to love about Fallon’s show. The set is classy, the focus on audience participation and internet stunts is fresh and charming, and The Roots are an impossibly cool addition to the show. (Among other things, they actually manage to make the musical guests worth watching.)
Ferguson doesn’t have any of that. His set is tiny, little more than a desk in front of a skyline backdrop, and it often feels empty — most of the time he performs totally alone, without a band or even a sidekick to fill out the space. He also can’t pull nearly the same caliber of guests — on a recent night when Fallon had Steve Martin, Paul Simon and Vanessa Williams on, Ferguson did two segments with Denis Leary, his only guest.
Despite all this, I find myself turning to CBS every night at 12:30. Ferguson seems to prepare for each show by asking himself, “How can I, personally, have as much fun as I possibly can tonight?” This makes him a tremendous amount of fun to watch — and at the end of the day, that’s the only quality that really counts in a late night talk show host. Jimmy has a lot of potential, and maybe in a few months or years he’ll hit his stride. Until then, I’ll take Ferguson’s sloppy, infectious exuberance every night of the week.
Lisa and Cat Dancer at the Maine Comics Arts Festival. So far, this is my favorite picture of her. (Though in my own defense, we’ve only been dating a few months.)
(via Lisa’s flickr stream)
Olde English at the Rejection Show
We’re performing in the Sketchfest edition of The Rejection Show, tonight at the UCB @ 12AM. We’ll be telling the true story behind one of our lesser-known videos, including our experience working with the world’s biggest asshole-with-a-Blackberry. C’mon out!
- adam
I find it helpful to picture this little guy at least once a day.
This photo, in which an 82 year old man glares victoriously at the taxidermied corpse of the chimp that tormented him as a child, is probably the most unintentionally funny thing the New York Times has ever published. “Who’s laughing now?”, he seems to be saying. “Who’s fucking laughing now?”
