httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNUfDYGUueE
The Onion News Network parodies cable news so that you don’t have to watch it. This is so note perfect that you won’t ever wonder again if you should tune in, even for just a minute.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv3tadz5Q3o
An inspired, fully choreographed American sign language interpretation of Cee-Lo’s bouncy Motown-inflected hit, “Fuck You.” The delighted laughter of the audience says it all. The young woman in the video posted this comment on YouTube: “My name is Anna and this is my final for a college level sign language class. I am not deaf and still learning sign language and encourage others to learn sign language as well! Thank you so much for all the love.”
If you haven’t seen it already, you can watch Cee-Lo’s video here.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQQWuq-JsHU
SNL has become a girls’ club the last few years (Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler), and the latest top of the heap phenom is Kristen Wiig.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnZOCrxzWyU
One of the first things to look forward to in the new year: the Onion News Network.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2PM0om2El8
I’ve posted it before, but it was Jane Austen’s birthday yesterday, and the clip is very funny.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE
This doesn’t really fill our Friday comedy spot: it’s not funny but it is joyful — a flash mob delivering an early Christmas miracle.
Because food courts look the same everywhere, it seems like this could happen anywhere. This one happened in Welland, Ontario.
(Thanks to Bob Denham for the tip.)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y4crGU7dkg
“Miranda” and “Ariel”
Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen (brother of former Deputy Prime Minister Erik Nielsen) died this week. He was most famous later in his career for his deadpan comic style, beginning in 1980 with Airplane. But he started out as an aspiring leading man in 1956’s Forbidden Planet.
Frye on at least a couple of occasions refers to the movie as a science fiction adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
A compilation of Nielson comedy clips after the jump.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aEk864YrKw
The BBC’s Charlie Brooker draws and quarters the more familiar demagogues of cable news.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSE_saVX_2A
Now that George Bush is out shilling for his “memoir,” it’s a good time to look again at Stephen Colbert’s keynote speech with Bush in attendance at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
Colbert was said by the rightward portion of the punditocracy to have “bombed” — and the increasingly stunned silence of the audience seems to confirm that. But it’s pretty clear in retrospect that he got it right. (For example, this is where he introduced the phrase “Reality has a well-known liberal bias” into common parlance.) The speech is scathingly funny and is a gutsy instance of speaking truth to power in the presence of a press corps that is supposed to do so, but doesn’t.
In any event, Colbert’s appearance so shook things up that the next year the keynote speaker was Rich Little. Rich Little. The comedic equivalent of white bread and tap water.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qltB4CenNBs
This little gem is from the Hamilton 24 Hour Film Festival: once the idea for the film is pitched, the filmmakers have 24 hours to get it done. The result in this instance is a delightful three and half minutes.