So Anne Laurie, channeling her inner SPT, and professionally looting* the invaluable TBogg, gives us the immortal music video below.
Well. It may seem hard to match that — but I have a secret weapon.
I share the house with an eleven year old.
And that fine young cannibal (for do not one’s children always dine on their elders, one way or another?) has led me to the delights of Yogcast. (Don’t ask. If you know, I know quite a bit about you; if you don’t, you don’t need to. It’s a life-cycle thing.) And with that, I have listened now more times than humans should be asked to tolerate (“He’s dead, Jim!”…or alternatively, “Jim–he’s dead!”) to this:
<div align=”center”><iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/fC7ltMJj13k” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
You may thank me later.
*Per the noted wordsmith and somewhat inconsistent¹ antisemite T.S. Eliot’s dictum: “Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal.” (Usually glosssed as “amateurs borrow; professionals steal.” I am a professional. ;)
¹There’s a marvelous incident in which the buttoned up Eliot finds himself enmeshed in a conversation too surreal to be invented that casts a delightful sidelight on that ugly story. I’ll probably feel compelled to blog it soon.
Hugh
Chap Hop. British upper class hip hop. Here’s a wonderfufl taste. Mr. B.
Elizabelle
Good morning.
Hearing Candy Crowley interview some very serious people about the deficit commission.
I kinda hope the commission fails, and they take this up anew after the 2012 elections.
Further, the US is not Greece, and we’re not Italy.
Someone needs to tell our Republican congresscritters that.
Samara Morgan
no need.
sapentia poetica
Gin & Tonic
Your different footnote numbering within one post is confusing. I think BJ needs a style guide.
JPL
@Elizabelle: Someone needs to tell our Republican congresscritters that.
hahahahahahaha…The critters don’t even know that subprime mortgages aren’t regulated. hahahahahahha
Reporting is hard work.
JGabriel
While we’re discussing milkmen, we may as well hear from The Dead Milkmen.
.
JPL
After listening to the song, I have one word
WOW
Joey Maloney
BadgerBadgerBadger
Elizabelle
Now Candy’s moved on to Reince Pribus. The Republicans are the party of the rich? Perish the notion.
Comrade Mary
You know, there’s a one hour loop of this available. Somewhere, Steve Reich is weeping.
Comrade Mary
Whoops! Found a three hour version.
So while we’re at it: Nyan Cat.
JGabriel
@Gin & Tonic:
No need. It’s a footnote to a footnote — it gets a different style in the same way that a subheading in an outline gets a different style.
I’m guessing that’s the reasoning for it, anyway.
.
Maude
@JPL:
#5 Reporting? What’s that?
Samara Morgan
@JGabriel: Or Coldcave.
Tender Missionaries of the Underworld USA
Warren Terra
A couple of silly songs:
Tom McDonnell’s Doctor Jones
Pig With The Face Of A Boy’s Complete History Of The Soviet Union (through Tetris
Both from the podcast of British musical humorist Mitch Benn (I believe he’s also featured the artist linked by Hugh in comment 1) – I’d hyperlink, but a third one would get me moderated.
WereBear
It all started when he called me Dude
Tom Levenson
@JGabriel: @Gin & Tonic:
I take my footnoting guide from the now superceded Journal of Irreproducible Results. You can work it out from there.
(I’m thinking in particular of an article from the ’70s (I believe) that discussed footnoting at such meticulously documented length that it ran our of its word-count allotment within a half sentence of beginning the main body of the text.)
cathyx
Too bad real milkmen don’t exist anymore. I hate it when I don’t have half and half for my coffee. Powdered cream is a poor substitute.
PurpleGirl
It’s a cute video.
(I am awake, I’ve had two cups of tea and breakfast.)
MikeJ
@cathyx: Milkmen don’t exist anymore? Are those elves that drive the truck through my neighborhood leaving milk on doorsteps?
PurpleGirl
@Tom Levenson: Journal of Irreproducible Results
A great journal. Haven’t read it in years but it was fantastic. (I started college as a science nerd.)
cathyx
@MikeJ: Where do you live? I haven’t seen a milkman since I was a kid.
Tom Levenson
@MikeJ: Yes.
SATSQ.
Shlemizel
I miss the CBS Sunday Morning open threads – anybody still watch that show?
Tom Levenson
@Gin & Tonic:
?
??
????????
Bwaaahaaahaa!
(An aside: not enough coffee yet, I think.)
Comrade Mary
Moving on from videos beloved by 11 year olds to videos created by 13 year olds and beloved by millions: Hyakugojyuuichi!!! by Neil Cicierega, one of the original mega-viral videos from April 2001.
(Know Your Meme claims it was released in May, but I can still find discussions about it as early as April of that year.)
MikeJ
@cathyx: Seattle. Smith Brothers’ Farms delivers.
Although I believe Herr Levenson may be correct. I’ve seen the trucks driving around, seen the milk on the doorstep, but never actually seen anybody walking from truck to stoop. Perhaps they do use elves.
Samara Morgan
hahaha
moar timeout.
PurpleGirl
Shlemizel: Very occasionally. This morning I didn’t because I saw that Ben Stein was going to be on. FSM, please, tell me they aren’t going to replace Andy Rooney with Ben Stein…
Shlemizel
@Tom Levenson:
Damn I enjoyed that publication! Used to have a reprint of their scientific examination of the Bible proving that heaven was hotter than hell.
Warren Terra
Oh, and for funny songs you pretty much can’t go wrong with with One Song To The Tune Of Another, from I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue. A fair number of examples are on Youtube, such as this one – though there’s no video.
Shlemizel
@PurpleGirl:
I used to send a complain email to them every week he was on. I gave up. Ben Stain has somehow developed a reputation that allows him to be consistently wrong, ignorant and condescending but still have a slot on on decent TV. He gets the mute button from me – its funny to watch his faux seriousness without words.
kdaug
@PurpleGirl: Companion piece to Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying?
genghisjon
Speaking of fine young cannibals.http://youtu.be/XSCJJkFgt_w
Bill E Pilgrim
It’s always been such a wonderful expression either way. I heard it attributed to Picasso as “Mediocre artists borrow, great artists steal” which may be entirely invented, but I understood the meaning immediately (whoever turned it into that expression stole it well, in other words).
No one creates anything in a pure vacuum; every word is a word learned somewhere, invented earlier, or even if you invent new words you’re using syllables and sounds you learned. If that weren’t true, you’d still be breathing in the same air and walking on the same planet as everyone else, not to mention that the human mind is really, as J Krishnamurti used to point out, all one and the same anyway.
It’s that spark of creativity coming right from the source that makes truly memorable art, and when people imitate they often miss that completely, relying on the form, and not the flame, as Henry Miller used to call it.
Taking bits and pieces of what you’ve gotten elsewhere and turning it into art is in fact pretty much what anyone does all the time, in other words, but the more honest you are about that, that it’s all just borrowed to begin with, the more striking it will be. In a way what the best artists are saying is that no one owns anything.
Oddly, this suddenly strikes me as having a lot to do with what’s going on in the parks and cities around the country, partly after having read this. And this.
Samara Morgan
since im being sensor’d again……
Cold Cave Tender Missionaries from the Underworld USA.
i’ll carry your cross, baby.
:)
Joey Maloney
Kikko-Man: SHOW ME, SHOW YOU!!
Mark S.
Shorter Chunky Bobo:
Or how about just verbatim:
Gee, how naive I’ve been. All this time, I thought they were covering up because they were cowards. It turns out all these virtuous men just lost sight of the
child rapingbig picture. Paterno and the Vatican are actually tragic heroes.This has been very cathartic for me.
Bill E Pilgrim
This was good too. I must admit my first reaction definitely included thinking that this was likely going overboard and being ridiculously optimistic, but the next thought was: you know what, we could use some going overboard right now.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Who took Ween’s cheese?
Also, AWSAO.
[Saunters around the corner, breaks into a run.]
JPL
I’m watching “The Tree of Life” and am at the point where the dinosaurs are roaming the earth. At this point I’m not sure is it is a comedy or tragedy.
cathyx
@Mark S.: It’s a tough decision to make. Protect children from being sodomized, or keep the money flowing into Penn State and it’s football program strong.
burnspbesq
Dr. Levenson, your credentials as a proper Cantabridgian are in question. A silly songs thread with no Tom Lehrer? For shame!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR3VpvkAd0E
JPL
@cathyx: Call me naive but I think both can be accomplished. What Doughboy didn’t mention was Joe was trying to protect his own legacy at the expense of children. That is not heroic except to the whackos of the world.
Bill E Pilgrim
This is a good take on the song also. All the way to the end for the part directly related to the song, but it’s all good.
burnspbesq
@Mark S.:
Feel free to be horrified, but that is a completely accurate description of the mindset of far too many Catholics, and it’s a mindset that will be adopted by some unquantifiable but surely sizable group of Penn State alums.
cathyx
@Bill E Pilgrim: All I would say to that is it’s too bad we don’t have the fourth estate on the 99%er’s side. Change could happen a little easier if it were.
Bill E Pilgrim
@cathyx: No kidding. I’ve been saying for years, take that back somehow or we’ll never get anywhere. The fact that we leave information sources in general to the mercies of whoever can make the most money at it was really sort of doomed to end up like this, if you think about it.
Lawrence Lessig was doing a chat a while back and basically agreed yes, it’s a huge problem, but constitutionally, just couldn’t imagine what anyone could do about it, even in theory. Got to be something though.
cathyx
@JPL: If this mess were handled properly from the beginning when it was first discovered all those years ago, then I think that the school’s and Paterno’s reputations would have not only remained intact but improved.
JGabriel
@MikeJ:
Worse. They are aliens from another planet, running the milk delivery operation at a loss (cheap for the dairy distribution company plutarchs!) so they can infiltrate rural & suburban Americans with their precious bodily fluids.
.
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson: Moi aussi on the caffeine. But thanks for reminding me of The Journal of Irreproducible Results.
Now you’ll have me spending the rest of the morning coming up with non-obvious patterns in your exponentially-increasing question-mark series. (which reminds me of one of my favorite number sequences, that I read in Martin Gardner, I think: 4,14,23,34 … )
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
I think Tom Levenson has mentioned that he holds no doctorate.
Jay in Oregon
@Joey Maloney:
I was always a fan of Magical Trevor myself.
scav
@burnspbesq: Toh Lehrer was probably left as an exercise for the reader / class. You’ve saved the honor of the thread (I’ll throw in his Santa Monica on the principle I couldn’t stop myself after watching yours).
Michael
At some point time in the distant past, Wendy’s made a training video for its employees for handling hot drinks. The resulting song is gold.
HOT DRINKS
Villago Delenda Est
@Mark S.:
What other horrific crimes would these “people” look the other way at in order to protect this institution being used as cover for monsters?
Roger Moore
@Comrade Mary: All your meme are belong to us!
jayackroyd
@Gin & Tonic:
Had to look that up. Now if you’d chosen 4,14,23,28…I woulda gotten it in a snap.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Mark S.:
So … Douchehat believes less virtuous group of people would have collared the baby rapists and handed them over to the cops toute de suite (accidental repeated trip and falls down a long flight of stairs optional).
Virtue does not mean what he think it means.
scav
Mixed Metaphors by Mitch Benn because he burned his bridges at both ends.
Gin & Tonic
@jayackroyd: And you would have been wrong. There’s no way yours works.
Amir Khalid
The most depressing TV theme music ever — The Lonely Man, the theme from The Incredible Hulk TV show which starred Bill Bixby as “David” Banner (The TV people didn’t like the first name Bruce, for some reason) and Lou Ferrigno as The Hulk. The show always ended with Banner all alone, looking to thumb a ride on some deserted road. It was as depressing as heck to watch, and I loved it.
Mark S.
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen:
Ross, like most conservatives, prefers moral browbeating on sluts, recreational drug users, and poor people. It pains him to admit that rich and powerful people (well, unless they’re rich and powerful liberal people) sometimes fuck up royally. So Ross needs to show that these powerful people are still better than us degenerates who would’ve actually called the police.
BTW, I predict the next shoe that’s going to drop is that Paterno and Penn St. had a lot to do with Sandusky not getting charged in 1998, when the police and DA first learned Sandusky was fondling boys in the shower. That would explain why St. Joe just lawyered up.
cathyx
Where’s JeffreyW with breakfast. I’m getting hungry.
Mark S.
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, The Incredible Hulk was a depressing show. Of course, it was my favorite show when I was four.
Bruuuuce
The immortal Cows With Guns
And another immortal, on whom I was raised (I had to find Tom Lehrer later, as an adult): Allen Sherman, You Went The Wrong Way Old King Louis
suzanne
@Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen: That Ween song has been one of my favorites for YEARS. LMMFAO.
This, however, is my personal favorite. And so apropos for the season.
jon
Everyone needs to calm down. Don’t provoke.
Bruuuuce
@Amir Khalid:
I strongly suspect that they didn’t like “Bruce” because it still had a strong connotation of “gay” (or even “swishy”), and that would have detracted from the Hulk’s macho. Fortunately, the name’s been redeemed since then :-)
kdaug
@Amir Khalid: Agreed Amir. The emphasis on his being a homeless, penniless, and wandering vagrant who, by necessity, did his good works anonymously was AFAIK a departure from the comics, and certainly from the movies. It was the melancholy that made the series worthwhile.
cathyx
@Amir Khalid: I always felt that way about Kung Fu. It was always sad that David Caradine moved from town to town and the show always ended with him walking to the next one barefoot.
WereBear
Indeed. And then Bruce Jenner won the decathlon.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
I remember that Mad magazine’s parody of the show mentioned this very fact about Bruce Jenner. Isn’t he, like, the stepfather of the Kardashian sisters now?
jeffreyw
@cathyx:
Ma’am
Bill E Pilgrim
@Bruuuuce: Funny, I always think Australian.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: Yes! and Yes.
And he’s a poster boy for Plastic Surgery – DO NOT WANT, sadly. He didn’t used to have a face that looks carved from a very old apple.
Bruuuuce
Heh. I like to think the name was redeemed by Mr.
GuthrieDylanSpringsteen, but yes, Bruce Jenner did have something to do with it.@Bill E Pilgrim: Love that bit. Also, too, it’s what I’m called (when they don’t call me “Wayne” or “Lee” in jest).
Not sure Mr. Cockburn had anything to do with the name’s redemption, though :-D
Ronzoni Rigatoni
T.S.Elliot’s dictum? I think he stole it from Oscar Wilde: “Good writers borrow; great writers steal.” IIRC
Bill E Pilgrim
@Bruuuuce:
“Michael Baldwin, this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin, this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin, this is Bruce.
Is your name not Bruce, then?
No, it’s Michael.
That’s going to cause a little confusion! Mind if we call you Bruce to keep it clear?
“Now Gentleman, at six o’clock I want every man Bruce of you in the Sydney Harbor Bridge Room to take a glass of sherry with the flying philosopher”
jon
The secret footage from last night’s GOP convention. The parts you didn’t see when the servers were getting all conky.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Ronzoni Rigatoni: I’ve decided that there are a whole category of aphorisms that just take turns being attributed to 1) Oscar Wilde, 2) Bernard Shaw, 3) whoever else anyone thinks of, and then back to Oscar Wilde again. And no one really knows who actually said it.
For what it’s worth, here’s the actual quote from Eliot where supposedly everyone got this one (I first heard it attributed to Picasso, for years)
eemom
Since this is an open thread, I have a question for the Pennsylvania Juicers: what’s with this Governor Corbett?
The NYT had a piece on him the other day, how he launched the Sandusky investigation as AG and what he’s doing now to try to get the school moving in the right direction…..and some other stuff about his background……and damned if he doesn’t sound like a relic of that ancient species I thought was extinct: an actual Decent Republican.
Izzit true?
Amir Khalid
That right there is the mother lode of bullshit in Ross Douthat’s column. A misplaced loyalty to one’s institution — be it a university or a church — is not unique to the most virtuous servants of the most virtuous institutions. It happens in groups that foster a sense of their own exceptionalism among their members, as many do: a sense that can lead to overlooking atrocities for the sake of the greater good done by the group.
Douthat would have us believe that Joe Paterno was afflicted by a particular blindness that only happens to a helluva good guy. Wrong. This is not about Paterno’s goodness. It’s about his loyalties, to Penn State football and to Jerry Sandusky, warping his moral sense. Paterno looked the other way for years, while his friend Jerry raped little boys on their employer’s premises; that makes the claim of Paterno’s goodness a hollow one.
Hill Dweller
This is off the top of my head, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember Corbett gutting education funding and giving PA to the energy companies for fracking.
elmertfudd
@JPL: I thought it was piffle. Too long, no real plot…
suzanne
@Amir Khalid: I’d go even further than that. It’s not just loyalty to a particular institution. Sports culture as a whole contributed to this. It’s not just about Penn State. It’s about the idea that winning a game that ultimately has no bearing on anyone’s life was so important that it was worth the suffering of children.
I read an article yesterday in which a Penn State student was quoted thanking Joe Paterno for his “sixty years of service”. SERVICE? When in God’s name did performing a totally irrelevant job for oodles of money merit the same sort of grateful language we use for, you know, veterans of *real wars* and those who sacrifice their *real lives*?
Sports is recreation, for those who watch and those who play. BUT THAT’S IT. These whole bullshit win-at-any-cost, take-one-for-the-team, tribalistic histrionics created an atmosphere in which shit like this could happen, and I wasn’t surprised in the least.
Bill E Pilgrim
Okay after avoiding that Ross Douthat article since early this morning long before this thread existed, I finally got curious enough to read it.
Ross Douthat must be a very good and heroic thinker and writer to have written such a ridiculous and criminally atrocious column.
sloan
@Amir Khalid: That brings back memories! And it got the Family Guy treatment. Stewie.
Oh, and this: Gonads and Strife
Amir Khalid
@suzanne:
Joe Paterno’s football teams did bring great prestige and millions of dollars to Penn State over the years, which (as noted in previous threads here) helped it to become a research institution of some note and a pretty decent undergrad school. I understand he has also donated some $4 million to the university. So in his sixty years there, he did serve Penn State University well in matters beyond football. Not, of course, that it lessens to any degree his share of culpability over Jerry Sandusky.
Joel
No discussion of ridiculous music videos can pass without Yatta! being viewed first.
Gin & Tonic
@Bill E Pilgrim: That’s the Newt Gingrich theory. I was cheating on my wife because I love the country so much.
Yutsano
How can you possibly do a silly song thread and not mention The Master of Silliness himself?
Amir Khalid
@Joel:
Now I’m wondering where I can get hold of some underpants with a big green fig-leaf on the front. Them underpants look cool…
Joel
@Michael: Hot Drinks is one of the top five Wendy’s training videos of all time. I’m hoping the Marvin Hawkins Experience tours ’round my neck of the woods someday.
Some other great silly songs include the one that launched Jon Lajoie to internet stardom. Also, who could forget Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video?
srv
Charlie the Unicorn song, repeated endlessly.
Like those Art of Noise tunes that randomly come back into your head for no reason whatsover, but for kids.
burnspbesq
@Bruuuuce:
“Not sure Mr. Cockburn had anything to do with the name’s redemption, though :-D”
Boo and/or hiss. Listening to “Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaw” right now.
scav
Tangential but weird: I was randomly inspired to go listen to some old Mark Russell stuff (some dating to way before I even knew enough to pay attention). O!, in some instances we’ve not progressed very far and with the same stupid set of states and loonies. 1987. I laugh harder at our jokes though.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
Possibly the best original song by Weird Al — the classic breakup song One More Minute. Genius lyrics, I tell you:
‘Cause I’m stranded all alone in the Gas Station of Love
And I have to use the self-service pumps!
Bruuuuce
@burnspbesq: Don’t get me wrong; I like his music. He even played in the Grateful Dead for a while. But as far as moving the name “Bruce” from swishy to mainstream, not so much.
Tim in SF
This one is more catchy than herpes at Burning Man.
Tim in SF
Oh, shoot, how did I forget about this one? It will stick in your head. Like a tumor.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Amir Khalid: Oh but the Safety Bunch.
jon
Rangers end up pissed in tar?!
jon
The Dokken reference (yes, there was a Dokken reference) reminded me of this joyful holiday classic.
Jinxtigr
Oh now come on.
War with cute songs?
So you wanted cute songs and animation? heh, heh, heh…
Forgive me, for I know just what I do…
Lil’ thing we ponies like to call Winter Wrap-Up.
There’s a lot more where that came from…
wobo
funniest commercial ever made.
israeli cable company adds HD.
you have to listen carefully, but half of it is in english
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1zJxyPPK8c
Joel
Jesus is a friend of mine.
jon
@Joel: I could never figure out when it was the Mounties were issued Zap guns, but that part of the song always gets me.
Norman Sperling
The Journal of Irreproducible Results lives! Not superceded, not dead! You don’t have to cling to decades-old gems, if you read the new ones in every issue. Welcome back at http://www.jir.com . Also try the 2 latest anthologies: “This Book Warps Space and Time” (Andrews McMeel 2008) and “Don’t Try This in High School” (Everything in the Universe 2011).