Dark skies, muddy hands

Only five days to the Chinese New Years. Meanwhile, my horoscope tells me (I'm a Wood Tiger):

Certain natives of the sign will have to fear for the security of their jobs or can be compelled to forgo their professional responsibilities for health reasons. Your psychic state will probably leave much to be desired. You'll feel that your head is empty, or on the contrary full of ideas which will jostle one another so much that they'll blur your judgment. If you entrust other people with certain works, don't be totally confident in them; take care to verify what's been achieved; in this way you'll prevent many problems.

I must be vigilant. I don't want to be fired before I've even started the job. Well, I've started it, actually. I'm up now, drinking Chai and grading papers.

Here are some of my penitent Youtube videos:

Can't go wrong with Gonzo serenading a Chicken:


Now that we're warmed up, let's add a little Beaker to our youtube traipse.


We're really cooking now. (Incidentally, I wondered if this planted the seed for my only published story.) Peter Sellers:


Here's the best, a short film that Henson made in 1965.

Videos I watch with my nephew

I've been meaning to post a lot of videos; but I suppose we should keep it in digestible doses. Here are some videos that I show my nephew when he comes over.

First is my favorite, the famous Pinball Count; you've probably seen it, but it is just so freaking funky I can never get over it. I don't know who the musicians are, but dig the effortless dovetailing of jazz and funk and my god! that steel drum solo!

I don't know the origin of this particular incarnation--it appears to be a mix of all of the 12 original Pinball Number Counts.

Next I present to you mine and Laogzed's favorite Sesame Street Character, Oscar the Grouch. He's with Johnny Cash here, and I love Oscar's commentary.


Here's the aliens encountering Earth Life in the form of a Telephone.


Here's one that jogged something deep within me:


Here's another great song. A funky garage band style with a fantastically charismatic singer/keyboardist. (Might be the reason I turned to piano when I was a kid.)


And the last, Sesame Post-punk/new wave done very well:

Bye Bye, Poo Poo

Victory!

Angry and Sloppy's 1st Annual Youtube Contest: UPDATED!!

In light of Zentrout's recent contributions to A&S, I have decided to start a new contest. The contest is as follows: Find the worst Youtube video you can find. That's fairly subjective, I realize. I'm not looking for something so awful that it's funny, like an Ed Wood movie. But just something like this:



You and me, friends, let's plumb the depths of awfulness. Indeed, with so much information in this world it seems impossible to find the baseline of aesthetics. But I argue that no true art can be made until we can pinpoint the most awful of the awful. And I don't mean awful because it's mean, violent or stupid. At least those qualities are interesting. I'm looking for something far worse.


email me or post a link if you find something. But it must be as awful as these preceding examples, or Star Wars on the banjo.

UPDATE I.

Please email your submissions to solardriftwood at gmail.com

UPDATE II.







Maybe I should ban youtube videos that have video game footage--that's pure destiny for boring awfulness.

UPDATE III.

Kman aka Hiro-Sub Sandwich submits these two doozies:





in his email to me, subhiro adds: the spider one is the best.....take care....I've been busy trying to get reassociated with the Alien Black Market. I have a meeting in a few days. I have been attempting to get an intergalactic menu for trans-galactial travelling translated. It's been very difficult.,,

Actually, I'm sorry to say, that these two clips are automatically disqualified because they are both very amusing. I'm looking for boring awfulness, not amusement. Come on! Work harder! Get a clickin'! Let's get to the bottom of this culture!

UPDATE IV.--March 12

Okay. I might be the only one with heart in this whole thing. I've made this post my first official blog within a blog. Here are some links to some of the famous youtube wars between the big shots. Please note that most of these are not awful. They are quite fabulous because they are awful. They are amusing enough to be watchable. The best ones are gems. Here are the atrios posts. Here is a Sadly, No, salvo. To bad Atrios hasn't posted a video of his cats. (That would be spectacularly awful. Remind me to look up cats on youtube. That might where's to be found the shittiest of the shitty.) But stuff like this that he posted makes up for that:

This is almost as awful as we can get. Especially since there are people who like this. But somebody posts all this stuff. Isn't somebody categorizing and keeping record of the awfulness? Or do people only put things up on youtube that they like? It's confounding (but wonderful!). Sadly, of course, when a major blogger posts a terrible video, there's a likelihood that it'll get pulled by the youtubanistas; happily, that means, that the obvious awful things (that aren't actually awful) will get pulled, but the obscure, truly awful things will still remain rotting and waiting to be unearthed by me.

Anyway, note that many of these videos are of a political nature, and, except for this one, really aren't awful in the vein that I see as awful:

The clincher in this one is the end. It makes it so awful that it isn't really awful. So I guess it's disqualified.

Sigh. A boy can dream.

UPDATE V.

Now we're cooking with grease.


UDATE VI. -March 23rd, 2007

As one of the commentors mentions on the page:

As much of a RUSH fan as I am, and how much the lyrics are coy; a keyboard and synthesizer are the LAST things I think of when I watch medieval stuff. They totally kill the mood. This called for Celtic flutes and LOTR soundtracks, not Canadian techno. The sound of the music is far more important than the words of the music.

In other words, if you use things that intrinsically self-parodic, such as music by Rush, a live action D&D game that is video taped, and then you try to make a parody out of it, then it is pretty awful. The song or the original footage would have been much more interesting. I would prefer something that wasn't sarcastic in tone, but maybe awful sarcasm is the most awful thing in the world. What's more awful than something that doesn't even have it's heart in it's awfulness? Witness:



And yes, this is a cheap shot. But it's worse than the cat videos I've found.

UPDATE VII: March 29th

This dude has a feature of worst youtube videos of the week. Both the movies and the reviews are pretty awful. Double-whammy!

UPDATE VIII: April 22nd, 2007

This is a response to a very annoying video about Christ being the only way to reconcile our inability to solve the philosophical conundrum of induction. It is illustrating, and the guy, "Atheist Paladin" seems really smart, but his video is painfully unwatchable. It is really one of the most awful videos I have ever seen. Granted, it was inspired by something more essentially awful; and only exemplifies the typical youtube "response" aesthetic. Still, it's an argument for the increased awfulness of our world. I'm both proud and ashamed of myself for discovering this.

Pretty soon I'll be uploading my own awful videos.

UDATE IX: October 10, 2007

Here's a youtube player that I've filled with awful videos I found. I haven't made awful videos. Well, I have. But there not on a computer that is connected to the internet. But maybe they will see the digital light of day--someday. In the meantime, let's see if this works: