Yes, Jack Black. Yes, you can have me.
Compare and contrast to the original video, by Extreme. It sets the bar high, with over 75 million YES MILLION views, but then ballads by metal bands are always best ballads. Beth. Angie. The list goes on. No-one knows why.
A Zen metal köan.
the flip side of this.
The flip side of the ability to wield physical beauty for political gain is…Occupy.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy, but this just isn’t his best look. It isn’t anybody’s. The only things that could make it worse are Crocs and perhaps an ostentatiously large murse.
And much as it kills me to admit it, the look hasn’t changed in twenty, count ’em, twenty years.
I was reading (and strenuously disagreeing with) Kurt Anderson’s article in Vanity Fair about how styles have not changed in the last twenty years. I was thinking “how could anyone get it so wrong?”
And then I saw this.
1992, people. 1992.
Spock is logical awesome. He runs a digital media marketing agency in Soho. The internet, on the other hand, is Illogical Awesome.
You can’t tell me kids can’t tell quality when they see it. They may not know why they’re reacting, but they can’t help themselves.
Same as you.
“I don’t think they’ve added the word to the dictionary to describe this.”
Actually, maybe they have, kid. Could be this one,
“Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness. ”
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)“The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of “style” to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it’s not just depressingly dull, it’s also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized homes. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It’s the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don’t know where to start because no one has ever told them there’s such a thing as Quality in this world and it’s real, not style. Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.”
— Robert M. Pirsig
or maybe this one,
The precise value of the Golden Ratio is expressed mathematically as the never-ending and never-repeating number 1.6180339887…., a number that can go on indefinitely. Because of its infinite capacity, the Golden Ratio cannot be expressed as a whole number or as a fraction; it is therefore considered an irrational number. Greek mathematician Hippasus of Metapontum has been credited with the distinction of discovering this irrational basis of the Divine Proportion.
According to tradition, his discovery shocked the Pythagoreans whose world view is based on the integrity of whole numbers and their ratios, an integrity that has been extended beyond numbers to the harmonic progression of notes in musical scales and the cosmic harmony of the spheres.
or maybe it’s something else. But it’s something.
Also: what is it with the boys in the red shirts? They sure don’t last long as ensigns on Star Trek, but they obviously have their heads screwed on right; they’re the smartest ones on the video. And someone needs to switch that little girl in the splashy dress to decaf, stat!
Care for a flashback, Interwebs? The Original Numa Numa, with an estimated 700,000, 000 hits and counting.
Also, the next time some agency drone says, “We can make you a viral video” think about this. Think about the randomness, thing about the abandonment, the Gonzo, think about the passion that existed just in that one moment, just in that one take, and to which nearly three-quarters of a billion people have responded. And then ask yourself why this agency drone thinks they can do that for you, and then realize that he is knowingly lying to you.
Virality happens, and it happens for certain reasons, but some of those reasons are not adequately explained in a course on digital marketing, are they?
bonsai pint kitten is a full 20 ounces
Are you old enough to remember back in the days of Pet Rocks, when the biggest act in the world was the Osmonds and everyone and his dad (literally) collected Bonsai Kittens? Ah, those were the days (of Naugahyde and ponchos).
Sadly, after a brief but ubiquitous burst of popularity, the flame of the Bonsai Kitten‘s fame flickered and died, having only a brief revival once the Web had been invented and they could suddenly do mail order. Since then, they’ve been relegated to the back rooms of curiosity shops and the less reputable kitten mills of remote Mongolia.
All that is about to change, my friends.
Announcing the Self-Bonsai Kitten!
Isn’t that fantastic? Instead of growing Bonsai Kittens the old way, by hand, you can now purchase one of the specially bred kittehs who will auto-bonsai when presented with the proper receptacle.
No more this:
Bonsai Kitteh does not want to bonsai
And we stumble gaily towards a world where everything, even our Bonsai Kittehs, are automatic.
The Seventh Seal Party Conga Line
Look, bitches, I don't wanna HEAR about Team Mike, okay?
Let’s hope this is the last time someone asks me why I like MST3K (translation for civilians: Mystery Science Theater 3000, a science fiction television series featuring {as you can read above} a janitor who was shot into space in the Satellite of Love by evil scientists who torture him with the worst B films they can possibly find, in retaliation for which he built a number of robots [not just Tom and Crow] who were far better company than simple mortals, come on, admit it, you’re not as funny as Crow; hell, you’re not even as funny as Gypsy unless you’ve got a couple of drinks in you).
And Joel was, like, so way better than Mike. Mike was a “special needs lacrosse player” in a janitor’s uniform.
Behold, perhaps the greatest episode of television ever committed to YouTube: the Mr B Natural Episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000:
raincoaster 