Category Archives: Videocracy

YouTubery Friday: Fantastic Oldness

It’s Friday! Procrastinate and countdown to happy hour with these lovely bits!

It’s sad when NASA has to get promotional ideas from Mr. Show. Too bad they couldn’t have gotten Toby Keith (the real life C.S. Lewis Jr.) to write a song for this interstellar, pyrotechnic event.

And yes, I’m positive I’m the eight millionth person today to post this video blast from the comedy past. But there’s no excuse too flimsy or timeworn to enjoy some Mr. Show, I says.

Speaking of which, also enjoy this sketch from an unaired Bob Odenkirk pilot circa 2002 (Next!), featuring Odenkirk and Mr. Show alum Jay Johnston.

YouTubery Friday: Danzig Meets Shakira and Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace

It’s Friday! Procrastinate and countdown to happy hour with these lovely bits!

Call this edition “Late to the Party”, since it focuses on two things I should have watched/discovered much sooner. No matter! The important thing is, I know about them now, and soon, so shall you (if you didn’t already).

The first reinforces a comedic principle that I believe in sincerely: Danzig is funny. On rare occasions, he is funny on purpose, as in his guest appearance on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. But he’s even more funny when being mocked, as in the video where someone compiled a Danzig grocery list. Or in the video where he gets knocked the eff out on one punch.

But I think my favorite Danzig video has to be this one, wherein he and Shakira duet on a Misfits-esque version of “Hips Don’t Lie”. This video has been around for quite a while–like, two years, apparently, but I only recently stumbled on it. Better late than never, I says.

Speaking of better late then never, earlier this week I finally saw a show whose entire conceit is “better late than never”, called Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. I’d heard of it, and heard it was good, but hadn’t seen it until The Onion AV Club featured it in a story on TV shows about TV shows. After watching the clip the featured, I spent a good hour watching all the Darkplace stuff I could find (because, of course, I have nothing better to do).

The premise of the show: famous author Garth Marenghi wrote, produced, and starred in the titular show in the 1980s, a supernatural-y hospital drama that was “so radical, so risky, so dangerous, so god damn crazy that the so-called powers that be became to scared to show it!”

So it languished in his basement, until “the worst artistic drought in British television history” brought Darkplace back to the airwaves. The show-within-a-show is a pitch-perfect send-up of every 80s drama you’ve ever seen, with production values and acting talent that make the average SyFy channel movie look like Citizen Kane. Plus a creator/star with a massive ego and no sense of his many limitations.

And like most 80s shows, the Darkplace characters would occasionally bust out a Miami Vice-type musical montage, like this one.

YouTubery Friday: Legion of Rock Stars and Autotune George Brett

It’s Friday! Procrastinate and countdown to happy hour with these lovely bits!

The Friends of Tom forum continues to be a fount of awesome. It was there that FOT icepants posted the video below, which was produced by The Legion of Rock Stars. From their website:

LEGION OF ROCK STARS has freed themselves from the shackles of practicing, instead perfecting a performance technique known as the Pure Pleasure Process.

While listening to songs on headphones equipped with 30dB sound blockers to blot out the outside world, the band plays and sing their hearts out, all while unable to hear themselves.

What this means: They record horrible versions of famous songs, and occasionally sync their versions up with the real videos and post them. YouTube has many LRS reworkings to feast on, but this rendition of Danzig’s “Mother” is probably my favorite (though I also recommend their take on Van Halen’s “Jump”, as it has some “amazing” keyboard and guitar solos in it; their rendition of Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” is also quite hilarious).

Last year, the world cheered as a video surfaced of Baseball Hall of Famer George Brett torturing young Royals players with tales of shitting his pants. It was not really a gotcha video. If anything, it enhanced Mr. Brett’s reputation as a masterful raconteur and a purveyor of awesomeness.

How could this video possibly be improved upon? The way that everything is improved: with autotune. CuzzinLoutie pointed me to the video below, wherein someone has not only autotuned Brett’s poop story, but enhanced his monologue with hilarious visual cues.

This is probably the only good use of autotune ever (other than Autotune the News, of course).