What It's All About

I'm pretty sure the Internet was created solely to produce this image:


If anybody has any ideas on what is going on here, feel free to contact me. Cuz I'm dumbfounded.

*******

PS: I 'shopped out the dude's plumber's crack, that's what that black box is for. Just FYI.

Surreal American Heroes

I like weird stuff. Whether it's the mind-bending comics of Grant Morrison, the multi-layered time-trippery of Lost, the borderline insane novels of Philip K. Dick or the trippy-dippy sci-fi of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And while stuff like Star Wars, Transformers and He-Man fueled a lot of weird childhood daydreams, I would have to say that it was G.I. Joe that took up a bulk of my headspace for very many years.

I remember my first G.I. joe figure. It was Rock N Roll, the blond-bearded machine gunner. My dad was pretty furious my mom bought them for us, thinking the whole toy line was some mind-control plot hatched by the Reagan administration to make kids want to go fight commies (and who knows, it may have been). But the truth is that G.I. Joe was pretty apolitical and, as I will illustrate, pretty weird. I mean, unless the Commies sided with, I dunno, an underground race of mutant snake people, I wasn't gonna enlist.

Then there was the cartoon, which informed the line in a lot of ways. And while it was at times a shameless half-hour (crappily-)animated advertisement for the figures, playsets and vehicles, there were some pretty awesome stories being dropped on my pliable young brain at the time. As I said, the Joes fought much more bizarre foes than Commies, they fought Cobra, who was just as likely to be found creating a device to block out the sun as something political like, I dunno, destabilizing developing nations to create panic or whatever. Cobra's plans were always half-baked and pretty gonzo. It was the weird fringe, the feeling that there was a weird world of stuff that the Joes were keeping us safe from that really attracted me to the toys. (From what I understand, the comics were a bit more grounded, but what's the fun in that?) Looking back, I can see how this little toy line of crappy Chinese-made figures has informed a lot of my popular culture decisions.

And there was one (well, a two-parter, but whatever) episode of the TV series that I remember as being reeeeally seminal, really epicentric to my eventual nerdiness. It's entitled "There's No Place Like Springfield" and it's pretty much the Rosetta Stone of my love for weird stuff. Written by Steve Gerber who is famous for his bizarre and cultured 70's Marvel comics like The Defenders, Omega the Unknown and Howard the Duck, it pretty much blew my mind to pieces. I realize now that it's pretty much a rip-off of The Prisoner, but still, to rip that off and feed it to kids is really awesome and pretty messed-up, so yeah, thanks Steve. You won another weirdo.

You can watch the episodes below. It's four parts, each about 10 minutes long. I rewatched it the other day and was still floored by the straight-faced bizarreness. Keep in mind this is a show for kids primarily designed to make them want to buy toys. How a two-part existential thriller fulfills that edict is beyond me, but I'm really glad it exists. Whoever greenlit this should either be locked up or given the Nobel Prize for Face-Melting Radness.

Enjoy:

KITTENZZ!!!1!

Somehow I came across this site, which is either brilliant or bizarre. See for yourself. If pictures of cats with internetspeak captions on them is your idea of a good time (and really, if it isn't, then you are a sad, sad person) then this is the site for you. I don't even like cats and I've been surfing it all morning.

Sitting On the Fence Is Making My Butt Fall Asleep

I'm still trying to figure out if Yo Gabba Gabba! is awesome or not, but if I were judging based solely on the clips I've seem via YouTube, I'd be leaning towards "Awesome." Just watch this clip where Biz Markie (aka: An American Genius and A National Treasure) teaches kids one of life's more important lessons:

How to beatbox:

See where my confusion lies? I mean, ABC's, 123's, all that crap - kids will learn that stuff somewhere, eventually. But where, oh where will they learn beatboxing if not from television? It's not like the white man will let that get taught in his precious schools, so, where will we teach these kids the skills necessary to survive in today's fast-paced economy?

Is this not why Leonardo DaVinci invented the television in his secret diaries which also included instructions on how to make a robot gorilla army and how to hack an iPhone so you can use it on a wireless provider other than AT&T? (He also invented Tetris and had all the ideas for the television show, Dallas. Don't feel bad, I didn't know any of that either. Thank goodness for Wikipedia, right?)

This is my problem. It is of immense proportions.

Bizarre Or Brilliant?

Welcome, contestants to another round of Bizarre Or Brilliant? where we look at a video clip and then determine if it's just freaking weird of mind-blowingly awesome.

Today's clip comes from the Nick Jr. show Yo! Gabba Gabba. Bizarre or Brilliant?!

Answer below. Show your work.