I hope that if I ever spend twenty five years creating something that it is at least in the ball park of this man’s business card. This almost seems too crazy to be real, but I believe it’s legit and for obvious reasons it should be viewed in concert with Patrick Bateman’s inner ruminations on the subtleties of the perfect business card.
Oll right!My friend Jessica clued me in to this awesome viral video in which “an Italian singer performs a rock piece whose lyrics are gibberish intended to sound like English”. And guess what? We sound freaking funky. Oll right!
My friend Luke just introduced me to Mark Gromley, the internet musical sensation that is more Tim and Eric than Tim and Eric over on Rotating Corpse. Gormley is described most accurately at his own site:
“Behold the awesome power and glory of Mark Gormley!
…Amen
His music and songs touch souls in a profound way, while his music videos expand minds to possibilities never before dreamed. Mark Gormley is a man that his captivated the hearts and minds of a generation, and will so for generations to come.”
Utter CutenessLadies and gentlemen, surprise kitty! Too adorable.
Airing weekly on SYFYLet me just start off by making it clear that Ghost Hunters is a show that, unless you’ve seen it, you really can’t believe it. If you’ve seen clips on the Soup where a traditionally good looking guy is, in the parlance of McHale’s writers, “taunting the air”, that show is not Ghost Hunters but the free-wheeling, tongue-in-cheek Zak Bagans of Ghost Adventures. Ghost Hunters, which airs on the newly branded SyFy, is a dour, sour, extremely self-serious program that follows the TAPS team (former RotoRooters – I kid you not, watch the animated intro) Jason and Grant as they travel the country proffering their special blend of dickish skepticism.
I’m not sure how to put this without sounding like a dick myself (I’d certainly like to suppose that I’m not without a base-level belief in the supernatural), but a television show about the (pseudo) science of ghost detection is, at its very core, problematic. I suppose what I have the biggest issue with is the way that a bunch of scowly douchebags have thoroughly stripped away the mystery and wonder of the spiritual realm and replaced it with a bunch of hard and fast rules they simply shat out over years and years of know-it-ally conversations. Ghost stories are always fundamentally people stories: once you’re dead, you can’t really do all that much – it’s the human element that makes tales of spookings and hauntings so compelling – and Ghost Hunters occasionally succeeds when it profiles individuals experiencing paranormal activity in their homes and places of business.
The interviews with the afflicted are always the most genuinely interesting parts of the show because, more often than not, the interview subjects cannot help but betray that the haunting is something that they’re kind of proud of, a fact that sparks a series of essential, and rather heavy, human experience questions: why do these people think they have ghosts in their lives, what’s going on psychologically? Why aren’t all of us affected by moving plates and dimming lights, bumps in the attic and visions of people not there? Ultimately: is there really an afterlife or are we doomed to haunt some tourist attraction for the rest of eternity?
After the interview and case history are established, a bunch of DV cams, EMF detectors and rigid, jerky attitudes take center stage as the team tries to ‘scientifically’ establish whether or not the place is actually haunted. This ‘evidence gathering’ phase of the show is always tedious, once it’s completed the team studies the A/V record they’ve made and looks for pieces of the tape where they can almost detect a voice straining to say something like, ‘Help me”.
But I filed this under Brittany’s Laughs category for a reason: this show is hilarious.
Click here for the rest of Ghost Hunters Academy
From Tempo and Quick, July 1955People have been waiting for “heli” transportation forever (myself, I began wishing for it when I saw Back to the Future 2), or so I’ve learned from this 1955 article that predicted that we would fly to work on helibuses by the year 1975. Another thing that sadly never came true? Thirty hour work weeks. Read more below/after the jump.
Click here for the rest of Your Life in 1975
At Your Local MallThe Queens Mall offered up this gem of a crazy thing. Little did I know that the latest trend in mall kiosk portraiture technology utilizes lasers to create creepy three dimensional freak shows. Surely what Einstein envisioned when he established the theoretic foundations of the laser.
Even better than the idea of these photos is the examples on display. Rapist brothers next to Michael Jackson, rotten kids trapped in gleeful fear, and (my favorite) an odd older man wishing someone “good luck in college”. I should have gotten more photos, but the guy working the booth was as creepy as the product he was selling and aggressive in that way that only mall kiosk salesmen can be, so I had to run away.
Click here for the rest of 3D Portraits at the Mall
Turkish E.T.Awhile back, I got a slew of wonky Turkish remakes of Hollywood blockbusters from the ever entertaining Five Minutes to Live website. None are truly watchable in the normal sense, mainly because they’re totally insane and not dubbed (or subtitled) in English. Of course, they’re completely fascinated nonetheless.
Badi, a ‘remake’ of ET, features a strange-breasted costumed character sure to give nightmares to those more sensitive to gross things. The Turkish analog of Elliot is pretty adorable and top notch when it comes to inadvertently looking directly at the camera. His best friend (who can wildly gesture with the best of them) wears a superb hat, and his blubbering little brother got the biggest laugh of all from me when, instead of giving a hug and getting a gentle finger poke (I’ll be right here) from the alien, he grabs the alien’s the rubber hand, kisses it as if Badi were the Godfather, then bangs it against his forehead in agony.
Click here for the rest of Badi
The songs themselves (musical themes self written by a self deluded reality TV semi-star for self conceived programs he would star in)? CONCEPTUAL GENIUS!
“When you want to learn the mysteries of how things work
Weather, the planets, the whole universe.
Tune into the show, that's really effective
Watch Richard Heene – Science Detective!”
The fact that this is somebody's real dad? Just depressing.
Here's what I wrote on July 20th:
For me, Brad Neely's alternative commentary track for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone calls to mind the expressive ramblings and raspy, wild, and often despairing voice of suicidal beat poet Steven Jesse Bernstein. Inspired by the idea of retelling the popular tale from a wildly misinformed (he refers to Hagrid as Hagar the Horrible and mistakes Snape for a woman) though enthusiastic point of view, Neely has created a sort of cult phenomenon that has made Warner Brothers bristle.
Though there are curse words, it's not a low brow piece of appropriation with mere fart jokes and f-words – it's far more interesting and bizarre than that.
RUNNERS UP:
Hoogie Boogie Land
911 Warthog Call
Cool as Ice
Kid in Red Shirt Dancing
Capucine
Imaginative Sex