Respect Authority

Captain Planet was fucking stupid. Here’s a cartoon that’s supposed to be teaching kids to be environmentally conscious, simultaneously coercing them to stay perched in front of the television, wasting electricity and not doing shit about the wonderful outdoors the great green mullet was always working so hard to protect.

Would have loved to see how Ma-Ti handled his “heart” ring in college though.

A couple of notes:

1. Classic cartoons synced up with Three Six Mafia singles are pretty much always entertaining.

2. Pop-up YouTube speech bubbles are the worst invention on the Internet since, uh, whatever the last worst invention was.

This seems like a pretty reputable offer. I mean… why not give it a try? You win either way.

Apologies are in order for my YouTube blog feeding tube of late. However, I’m about to be completely hypocritical and share yet another YouTube video. I’m sorry, I’m sorry — it’s really not my fault this was so awesome. I’m only trying to give you something to kill a few minutes with, because as any of us 9-to-5ers know, every little time waster counts.

I’ve posted about near-death experiences on the Mega Ramp before. And just like those that have nearly fallen prey to the ramp’s demands before, Bob Burnquist’s survival is nothing short of jaw-dropping. The difference here is that Bob doesn’t bail — despite fumbling his board mid-air, he still manages to wrangle it back under control, using some powers he picked up at Hogwarts last semester or something, and rides away! Seriously though, I’m pretty sure magic was involved here at some point. Black magic.

The video is not just entertaining, but also a mood lifter, as I feel much better about having a sprained knee after watching it. At least now I have an excuse for why I suck, otherwise this would just be fucking embarrassing.

So Spike Jonze’s short film / kinda music video featuring Kanye West, titled “We Were Once a Fairytale”, has been spreading like H1N1 across the blogs today, officially certifying Jonze as the currently most hyped director of wild children or child-like men in Hollywood.

Nonetheless, the hype is pretty much deserved. Interestingly enough, this was filmed before the whole VMA Hennesseygate incident, so that only adds to its strangely enrapturing surrealism. All in all, I thought it was pretty awesome, but…

Beyonce had one of the best videos of the year.

Alright, there’s been a lot of food / fatness related content lately. So what better way to put that to rest than suggest a really fantastic diet program? It even worked for Santa… I mean come on, that guy was fat!

Seriously though… this is insane.

You can say “the more things change, the more they stay the same” all you want, but the reality is… some things just change.

Then:

Now:

Every once and a while something comes along that’s so creative, so out-of-the-box, yet so incredibly obvious that it makes you feel like a real worthless piece of shit for not thinking of it first. Sorry kids, but I’m afraid that’s just what it feels like to appreciate art.

I’d like to introduce you to Liu Bolin — an insane man and visionary who is currently freaking me out. By now, we’ve all seen plenty of photographers goofing around with long shutters to produce what looks like shots of “ghosts.” And at a first glance, that’s almost what the photographs of Liu Bolin’s art look like. But like his art, it’ll take more than a quick glance to truly appreciate the effort and thought that went into each piece. I mean, my god, Liu Bolin could sneak up on a real fucking ghost.

The man is as much a master of disguise and camouflage as he is an artist. There’s no trick photography or digital editing going on here; in fact, his craft is both simpler and infinitely more complicated than that. Bolin literally paints himself to look exactly like the scene he is in. That’s “all” there is to it. Painstaking, remarkable, vaguely creepy.

If you were a sucker for Magic Eyes back in the day, more retinal delights await beyond the jump. Read More ›

So here’s a weird idea I had last night while surfing YouTube’s high seas. I decided to listen to music by starting on a video of my choice and from then on only selecting subsequent tracks from the previous one’s related videos. I’d pick a song I liked, and failing that, one I found at least reasonably tolerable. The playlist ends when I get bored of putting together all these fucking YouTube embeds.

Pearl Jam - The Fixer

Read More ›

Famed street artists/masochists Blu and David Ellis recently completed another one of their exercises in redefining the word “painstaking” for the Fame Festival. It’s been making the rounds in the Blogodome the past few days, but I can tell you this much if you haven’t seen it yet… it’s a pretty good replacement for mushrooms.

It’s a truly stunning work of art combining painting, video, installation, and even some demolition to create a sort of moving, growing painting that is truly more of a mixed media creation than simple animation. The environment is critical to the entire piece and certainly adds to its ability to consistently surprise the viewer.

In a word, awesome. In another, thanks a lot Mom for yelling at me for drawing on the walls as a child and crushing any chance of me actually enjoying adult life.

Check out this totally extreme video I found linked on Adam Riff. It’s got all the ingredients for the makings of a fartsy phenomenon with just enough edge to convince the cool kids.

• A rad to the max action sport is featured - check
• Neon is involved somehow - check
• There is a blatant grab for the nostalgic - check
• Sweet techno music that would be pretty decent to listen to in some lower Manhattan vomit hole - check

Just so you know, that was the winning recipe on Food Network’s The Next Viral Video Star.

I was just about ready to sign this off as the coolest thing I’ve seen all week, but… 1) I see a whole lot of cool shit these days, 2) I apparently have some kind of fetish for lists today, and 3) THESE LOSERS ARE ON FREEBORDS.

Admittedly, I don’t even know exactly what a “freebord” is, but I do know that it’s yet another lame appropriation of skateboarding. Leaving the “a” out of “board” does not increase your street cred, sorry to say. Also, those helmets aren’t doing much for your cause either considering helmets are for babies. Aggressive Downhill Tetris is a most dangerous game, my friends. If you’re worried about that soft spot on your skull, maybe you should have stuck to playing normal Tetris with all the inside kids.

This is like talking about the Stone Age as far as the Internet is concerned, but last year Color Magazine and Red Bull put together a contest where 10 different Canadian skateboard teams filmed video parts in 10 different Canadian cities to produce, obviously, the closest thing to pornography skateboarders can get aside from actual pornography: incredible, original skateboarding footage.

Unfortunately for my knuckle-dragging ass (important to note: my ass does not actually have any knuckles) I only just discovered this footage. And because it’s Canadian and strange, I imagine there is a chance you have yet to see it as well. After all, a year in Canada isn’t really any time at all since they haven’t actually invented this “time” thing up there yet.

This is my favorite entry from the contest — it features Rick McCrank alongside a couple of other lumberjack spawn, and is filmed entirely through reflections. It’s definitely one of the most unique approaches to a video part I’ve seen, to say nothing of how simply beautiful it is. Skateboarding’s relentless progression is due in large part to the massive amounts of creativity within its culture, and it’s really inspiring to see it played out in other facets of the industry aside from just trick selection. Inspiring in a “Wow, that was sweet, I sure feel like an unproductive loser with a sprained knee” kind of way, which is even better than normal inspiring.

Every time I start to take YouTube for granted, something comes along that reminds me what an awesome technology we have at our fingertips. Every shitty television show that shouldn’t have even existed in the first place, let alone be saved for all time… every asinine infomercial you’ve gotten lost in at 3:30 in the morning with a drool covered joint hanging loosely from your lips… everything mildly funny or embarrassing to come out of a screen in the past couple decades and then some… all of this immortalized under one tidy domain name.

It is for this, but mostly for this specifically, that I am eternally grateful for YouTube’s very existence:

I mean, I don’t know about you, but until I had stumbled upon this artifact of HBO’s Lifestories: Families in Crisis, many sleepless nights had been spent wondering what exactly Ben Affleck would look like in a full blown ‘roid rage. And the answer is this, but mostly this specifically:

Seriously, though… shit, dude, everybody knows you don’t hide your performance enhancing drugs in the top drawer. Fucking amateurs.