Tag Archives: youtubery

Tuneage, Videocracy

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).

Cinematics, The Funny

Thus Squeaked Zarathustra

The tweeting of bigplastichead alerted me to this awesome video. Someone took the immortal opening sequence to 2001: A Space Odyssey and substituted the soundtrack with a school band’s attempts at Strauss. Result: hilarity.

Cinematics

Harrison Ford, Man of Two or Three Faces

Harrison Ford is a movie star in the classic mold. He is not a method actor in the vein of Brando or Deniro. He’s more like the old-timey matinee idols of yesteryear, like John Wayne, or Cary Grant, or Clark Gable. None of those guys ever acted. Their job was to appear in a movie, recite their lines, and just be whoever they were. They’d play extremely slight variations on the same character over and over again, because that was all the studio–and the public–demanded of them.

The same goes for Harrison Ford. The movie-going public does not want to see Harrison Ford in a gritty indie drama, or a quirky comedy, or a costume piece. They want to see Harrison Ford, successful man whose family is threatened somehow. Again. And again and again and again.

Thanks to philvsthemayor, whose tweeting alerted me to this gem.