Viddles 2019 (HM): Karen O & Danger Mouse "Woman"

We wrote a thing about Spike Jonze's single-shot one-camera video of Karen O and Danger Mouse performing on Colbert. It took a little while to write and then got deleted. We don't really want to continue doing this anymore because there's more important things happening in our lives.

It basically said that Spike Jonze hasn't done as many music videos since 2005, but the ones that he has done are always noteworthy. Like Arcade Fire "The Suburbs" was our #3 video of 2010. That Beastie Boys video from 2011 was our #1 of that year. "I Love It" by Kanye placed #7 last year.

And then we said something about how we would have placed this higher than "Honorable Mention" except that it's #1 a late night show performance, and #2 we don't like elaborate choreography -- and we especially don't like it now after witnessing oversaturation of musical theater over the past decade since the success of Glee and High School Musical. And we used the word "douche-chills" so perhaps this was better off getting erased.

And we closed by saying something about how it's noteworthy that Spike Jonze is capable of taking elements from areas of pop culture and media that are normally base-level dummyhead, and add just enough ambition and edginess that you almost forget you're watching something that you might otherwise hate.

And then we also said that we didn't realize Karen O made any music this year, and something about how Spike and Karen O first collab'd on "Y Control" which is one of the greatest videos of all time. And that's probably everything we said.

Christmas Specials & The Muppets

This was the most Christmas-y December we've experienced in a while. We enjoy Christmas specials. We like old ones that we haven't seen in a while, and also more recent ones if they're weird enough. This is a more recent tradition that developed over the past 4 years. Last year, a few good ones included He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special and an old X-Files episode called "How The Ghosts Stole Christmas" where these old ghosts try to convince Mulder and Scully that they should bone.

We enjoy the nostalgia, so we might consider indulging more specials throughout future Decembers.

Here's what we saw this year:

1. Eyes Wide Shut
"Die Hard is the best Christmas movie." Okay, we get it. No one who tweets this is being original. Maybe we'll watch it next year. Eyes Wide Shut is not as heavy as we remembered, but it's a good one for sure.

2. A Muppet Family Christmas
This might be our favorite Christmas special. We've watched it on Youtube for the past 3 Decembers, and it just had its 30 year anniversary. We read into it a bit just now in the Jim Henson biography; shot very quickly in Toronto three months before it aired, this show was the first time The Muppet Show gang had been on TV or in movies in nearly 4 years. Frank Oz returned to puppeteering after a long absence, and the characters from Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and The Muppet Show all partied in one house during a Christmas snowstorm. The Fraggles' song "Pass It On" is one of our new favorite Christmas songs. Show lit.

3. A Garfield Christmas
Also celebrating its 30 year anniversary. Haven't seen this since we were about 10, and it was one of those moments when we realized we must have had some of the dialogue memorized at one point, which is an eerily bizarre experience.

4. Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration
1987 must have been the dopest year in the history of Christmas special premieres since this one also just turned 30.

5. "Mary, Joseph and Larry"
2002 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry gets caught checking out one of the ladies in the nativity scene or something.

6. Christmas Eve On Sesame Street
Curiously structured 1978 special. The main story with Big Bird waiting on the roof for Santa during a snowstorm was kinda sad. Cookie eats the Christmas tree and Oscar sings "I Hate Christmas."

7. "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"
We have watched this for the past 3 years on Hulu, and it gets better every year. We are not fans of Community (at all) but this is essentially a stand-alone holiday special that doesn't require context from the rest of the series.

8. "Anatomy Park"
Earlier this year, we heard mild speculation about a possible Rick & Morty long-form Christmas special or a contained holiday serial comprising 2-4 original episodes. It was not meant to be, but "Anatomy Park" is still the shit. "Pearl Harbor."

9. "Sabrina's Christmas Wish"
We're guessing many fans of Bojack Horseman don't realize this episode exists since it was a Netflix bonus between seasons 1 & 2. It's essentially an old episode of Horsin' Around that gives some context into how bad the show actually got. There's a really good off-camera audience member who repeatedly shouts his reactions instead of laughing.

10. "Twas The Night Before Christening"
Everyone in the Fresh Prince house buys extravagant presents for the baby's Christening except for Will who buys him a "king" hand puppet, and he does this really cool pantomime record scratching beat boxing thing with the puppet. And we felt kinda bad for him since we thought that was a really good present. Will somehow figures out where Boyz II Men are recording and they kick his ass twice because he stole one of their girlfriends when they all lived in West Philly. Fun times.

11. Friday After Next
This is a terrible movie.

12. Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas
We haven't seen this since the late '80s on HBO, and there were no free streams on Youtube or anywhere else. And even if we did cough up the cash for an Amazon rental stream, HBO and ABC had different edits so we wouldn't have seen the entire show. (Apparently, the ABC version removes all of Kermit The Frog's narration.) However, someone on a torrent website was kind enough to throw together a fan version that combined everything from the two separate edits.

The juxtaposition of the River Bottom Gang might have felt more extreme had we been seeing this for the first time. It's such a jarringly surreal element taking a dump all over this sweet heartwarming Christmas story. Again, we felt compelled to read into this in the Jim Henson biography earlier tonight; sure enough, Jim's favorite song in this was the River Bottom Nightmare Band's proto-metal jam. The Jug Bang's version of "Barbecue" is also pretty lit.

13. "Christmas Caroling" and "Searching For Santa"
It wouldn't be Christmas without a couple Stella shorts.

----------------------------------------------------------------

After reading into A Muppet Family Christmas and Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas, we started to dig deeper and found a holy grail type of project that began as early as 1985. It seems like the project would have gone into production sooner had Disney not interfered with Jim Henson's affairs. Jim wanted to wait until the Disney deal was completed before starting the film, which gave his creative team nearly three years to brainstorm, throw around jokes and discuss the extent of this project's potential absurdity.

The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made actually had multiple completed screenplay drafts. Gonzo is granted permission to direct his own film, and he blows almost the entire budget on an elaborate opening sequence. The rest of his film progressively gets lower in quality until finally the last few scenes are comprised of drawings, slides and storyboards.

More info here: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Cheapest_Muppet_Movie_Ever_Made!

Bod Goals 2018

TV Is The Only Solid Medium of 2017

EDITOR'S NOTE: This post is fucking awful and was only written because we're having trouble coming up with content.

iHeartRadio killed radio.

SiriusXM was never supposed to be good to begin with, so we can't really blame them for hurting the state of radio.

Spotify and streaming services don't help either. But we sorely miss the days when Top 40 stations were at least 40% listenable. It's incredible thinking back to how angry people got over pop's dominance during the TRL era ('98-'01). It's possible that Top 40 stations never sounded better than during this 3-year span.

Top 40 in 2017 is unlistenable. We don't get how anyone listens to this. And here's the thing: You can say this in 2017 without making it sound like you're old and unhip, because the mid-2010s mark an unprecedented era of promotional oversaturation that enables fans of any genre to quickly and easily access whatever new music they find most interesting. It's not that tough.

iHeartRadio has Ryan Seacrest on every day. They insist on avoiding crossover hits whenever possible, even though they allow Imagine Dragons because post-civil-war-wave is still considered ok. When Kendrick or Lil Uzi Vert were charting top 5, they were nowhere to be found on Top 40, even though their presence would have given the format an exciting boost of variety that listeners desperately crave. Instead, it's 20 songs that all sound like Meghan Trainor: American Idol-style vibrato-crooning over depressingly bland un-memorable faux-empowerment anthems with no discernible hooks. The exceptions are rare and equally unexciting: "Despacito" is apparently ubiquitous, even though we would not be able to hum a single bar from this song. Bruno Mars' "That's What I Like" is not his hottest song, but at least it's vaguely memorable. For a song as painfully boring as Harry Styles' "Sign Of The Times," at least it stood out as something different. Taylor Swift's equally bland new singles should snugly fit throughout the next 12-15 months (the typical chart-life of her hits).

MTV has the ability to change all of this, but they're incapable of understanding their audience. There's no way in hell that the re-launch of TRL won't be cancelled by mid-November because they've completely lost all sense of how to properly engage actual music fans.

Even worse is the Modern Rock Radio format, which sounds exactly the same as Top 40 in 2017.

The only way this will ever change is with a competing alternative radio platform who insists on ignoring existing chart success. Radio playlists should always be chosen by music nerds.

Same goes for MTV. Without any real competition, the channel has no way to understand what its viewers really want.

Yeah anyway, Hollywood really sucks now also. Comic book movies suck. Disney sucks. Star Wars sucks. Franchises suck. Re-makes all suck. Legos suck. Emojis suck.

And despite all of this, the world of television has somehow grown to be more amazing than it has ever been. It's the only major big-money medium that's down to take risks.

This is all we really wanted to talk about. Here is every show we currently watch and every show we're currently excited to see:

Twin Peaks
The season just ended, and we forgot to watch all of it. No spoilers please.

Rick & Morty
Best show on television. They're not even halfway through season 3 yet. We hope it never ends.

Wet Hot American Summer
This went up on Netflix about a month ago. Need to review this.

Norm MacDonald Live
"The full hour." Norm loves Larry King.

WWE Monday Night Raw
WWE Tuesday Night SmackDown
This is a surprise. We did not expect to get into professional wrestling in late-summer 2017, and yet here we are...

Bojack Horseman
Season 4 went up today.

Adventure Time
The last episode of this season so far (apparently their last) aired on July 21, and it could return without warning at any time. There is typically no fanfare or large announcements regarding the beginning or end of their seasons, so it wouldn't surprise us if the show's final episode arrived without warning within the next six months.

South Park
Broad City
Was it NBC who used to designate Thursday night as "Must See TV?" We like that Comedy Central has been making an effort to bring this back. It's been a while since the world was offered a solid block of multi-show dopeness. Our hopes are up that South Park avoids political commentary for the remainder of their entire existence. Based on "The End of Serialization as We Know It," this seems to be the case. It was just barely a year ago when Bill Hader went to bat for Trey & Matt, ensuring fans that they still view every episode as if their entire reputation rests on its success or failure. Similarly, we're hoping Broad City understands why the Hillary episode bummed out so many people and consider shitting on Trump instead.

Nathan For You
Returning around late-September.

Curb Your Enthusiasm
Returning early October.

Stranger Things
How many music blogs will post about this when it returns in late October (not coincidentally just-in-time for Halloween)?

Cash Cab
Game Show Network has been airing re-runs every night at 11PM and 11:30PM. And apparently the show is returning later this year.

Some Thoughts on [adult swim] and Million Dollar Extreme

On December 30th, 1993 in Inglewood, California, Kurt Cobain was approached backstage by a drunken Eddie Van Halen who reportedly begged on his knees to join Nirvana on stage at some point during their set to solo over one of their songs. A disgusted Cobain - then leader of possibly the world's 2nd-most-famous active new rock band (after Pearl Jam) - famously declined the offer citing an extreme distaste of Van Halen's association with the flashy, misogynist, un-punk, big business era of '80s hair metal.

For better or worse, the state of rock in 2016 has grown far removed from the time when a band resembling anything like Nirvana or Van Halen could approach mainstream ubiquity, creating a scenario when rock musicians have grown substantially more desperate to be heard.

But let's discuss the '90s for a minute.

Throughout 1993 and its accompanying decade, MTV developed a niche that catered to young people who were interested in strangeness and art. While it only made up a small fraction of its programming schedule, the '90s were the decade when subversive and bizarre programming became oddly commonplace - shows like Liquid Television, Cartoon Sushi, Beavis & Butthead, Tom Green, Sifl & Olly, Oddville and The State, alongside video blocks like AMP that focused on arty EDM videos from the likes of Aphex Twin.

It's not like flashy Aerosmith and Guns N' Roses videos disappeared - quite the opposite, as they remained as overplayed as ever throughout the era of In Utero's (sadly shortened) promotion cycle. But in retrospect, MTV's politically neutral efforts to present mainstream alongside alternative - a hub for all areas of youth culture - seem very far removed from anything on television today. There is no "all things music" or "all things youth culture" hub on cable, and it will probably never exist again in quite the same way throughout the eternity of broadcasting.

Around Y2K-era, MTV programming slowly steered far away from strangeness. In the mid-2000s, MTV2 gave us a handful of awesomely absurd shows like Wonder Showzen and The Human Giant, but this only made up a small fraction of their programming. Viacom effectively peeled off its layer of subversiveness and hid it late at night in the middle of Cartoon Network's [adult swim] block. In due time, the weirdo contingent of youth culture discovered [adult swim] and its audience broadened through word-of-mouth, allowing the programming block to eventually blossom into a fully-formed channel of its own.

Since the early 2000s, [adult swim] has opted for the weirdo shows that MTV would have played 20 years ago. And while their earlier evening programming currently still sticks to mindless Seth MacFarlane re-runs, [as]'s after-midnight shows have remained the most refreshingly bizarre programming block of the past decade.

Generally speaking, their shows maintain a streak of political neutrality. Here's an incomplete list of perhaps their most popular exceptions:

- King Of The Hill's social commentary is mostly neutral, but from the perspective of a not-so-outspoken libertarian. (That would be Mike Judge, filtered through the lens of Hank Hill.)
- The Eric Andre Show, a talk show hosted by a self-proclaimed feminist, has remained proudly left-leaning since its inception.
- Tim & Eric's show started out as neutral, but little by little allowed hints of left-leaning gags to seep into their jokes. This eventually led to the production of Decker, Tim Heidecker's summer 2016 miniseries where he plays a government-agent hybrid of Donald Trump and MacGyver. Contained within a universe adjacent to Tim and Neil Hamburger's online-only movie review series, Decker would have been the most politically-charged satire in [adult swim]'s history.

Had it not been for Decker, it's possible that [adult swim] wouldn't have made any effort to ground themselves politically by actively searching for a right-leaning comedy series. But that's what ended up happening.

It was only natural that their choices for a right-wing comedy series produced by millennials might have been rooted within the often irreverent and deceptively hateful humor of 4chan. Consequently, a sketch show from the alt-right comedy group Million Dollar Extreme was green-lit. At the time this decision was approved, we were still in Obama's America, and while hateful anonymous online trolling was as rampant and obnoxious as it's ever been, the alt-right weren't yet widely known for associating with white supremacy and white nationalism.

Without any real knowledge of MDE's political or social agenda, [adult swim] and their average millennial viewer - now completely accustomed to the mindfucks within [as]'s occasional rotation (not to mention within the world of meme-culture) - had a very good shot of perceiving their sketch series with an open mind, naively assuming their bizarre sense of humor was rooted more within the provocative nihilism of Rick & Morty, or apolitically uncovering areas of hypocrisy, like South Park or Howard Stern.

Earlier, we neglected to mention one glaring aspect that [adult swim] carried over from '90s MTV: They both loved helping indie musicians get on late-night cable. Once upon a time, Space Ghost boasted band appearances ranging from Pavement to Bjork. These days, Eric Andre's show can claim perhaps the first cable performances of Trash Talk, HEALTH and Mac Demarco. The channel's "Summer Singles" series - showcasing unreleased music from (mostly) indie musicians - was recently expanded beyond summer, leaking weekly new songs throughout the calendar.

Aligning within this spirit, MDE are also huge indie-music fans and chose a few bands to appear on their show. Some of their music choices were obscure enough that we're only able to recognize the two bands who we've personally met: Ovlov and Chastity Belt.

We don't want to speak on behalf of either band. We haven't spoken to either of them since MDE's cancellation, so we only know that they were recently prompted to post about this situation on Facebook, and that both bands (along with 2 or 3 others) wrote several paragraphs detailing their opinions and expressing a desire to distance themselves from MDE's sneakily inherent hatefulness.

And it's entirely probable that either band would get upset or downright angry with us if they read that we unearthed this discussion 2 or 3 weeks after the fact. (Most of this was written weeks ago, and we're just finishing it now.) And so we won't be spreading this editorial on our own. It's not here for the sake of spreading knowledge or for self-righteousness. We just felt compelled to write about it. It's one perspective from a source that had way more to say about this particular topic than the words that would fit in the space Twitter and Facebook alloted for us. We know this is tl;dr. There's plenty of good reasons for that.

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On a Friday evening in July 2016, we unexpectedly caught ourselves watching the midnight premiere of Eric Andre Season 4 live on [adult swim]. Who watches [as] live anymore? I guess we did, because we had no car all summer and our friends had no interest in driving to our house on this night.

Once the episode ended around 12:11AM, our jaws dropped upon unexpectedly seeing our good friends Ovlov rocking super hard in a commercial for the show they had told us about months prior. We were totally caught off guard but were so proud in that moment.

The commercial reminded us of their recent adventure: In Spring 2016, they unexpectedly broke from an extended band hiatus and drove from Connecticut to Georgia after being asked to play the song "Really Bees" in a sketch. Not long after the show taping, Ovlov considered themselves reunited throughout the remainder of 2016, citing the [adult swim] opportunity as the sole reason for their reformation.

I don't think I'm even sort of exaggerating when I say that any band who is at the level of Chastity Belt or Ovlov should rightfully get excited at the idea of appearing on a new Friday night [adult swim] series - essentially the modern cable TV equivalent of having your band's video debut on 120 Minutes in 1996. For an indie band, it represents the hope of future opportunity and one step closer towards possibly making your band into a long-term career. And considering that nothing else on [adult swim] had ever reached nearly as far into neo-con territory, the requests all seemed relatively innocent.

When the bands were asked for track-syncs or a performance, MDE sent a vague, confusing show description. To the show staff, this may have been a way to describe their humor without having to directly address their social and political agenda.

From Chastity Belt's Facebook post:

"Before signing on to perform for the episode, all we knew about the show was how the Deadline announcement described it, as “satirizing the current political climate…. [it] will “unlock your closeted bigoted imagination, toss your inherent racism into the burning trash and cleanse your intolerant spirit with pure unapologetic American funny_com.”

And in a way, this is actually the perfect description for what we saw. It's a vague and confusing type of show with profuse indirect hatefulness. Instead of coming right out and blatantly vomiting hate speech, they sucker people into not realizing what they're watching.

Since it conveniently appeared after Eric Andre, and thanks to our excitement for our friends' eventual appearance on the show, we wound up viewing almost the entire series.

We'll give credit where it's due: The pilot episode was actually thoroughly hilarious. We don't remember which sketches appeared, but it included a lot of warped, shock-based humor. We expected Ovlov to appear at the end of the pilot (since the preceding commercial included their likeness), but instead the episode concluded with the goth-influenced and staunchly feminist 4-piece Chastity Belt playing their droney, catchy song with the repeated refrain "he was just another man / try'na teach me somethin'." (We had to look this one up. The song is actually called "Drone!")

Chastity Belt's inclusion within the pilot's final 20 seconds initially seemed like a PC Liberal exclamation point. From our viewpoint, it made the show seem confusing, but confusing in a politically balanced way.

However, thinking about it now, it wouldn't surprise us to learn that Chastity Belt's song was chosen ironically. The lyrics challenge patriarchal bullshit in a way that angers the show creators. We could be wrong though. It's also entirely possible that MDE genuinely love that song and support its message but are unable to fully disclose these thoughts out of fear of losing their core audience of 4chan users. So MDE prefers to remain warped and cryptic. Granted, the manliness quotient makes more sense to us.

This is all in hindsight though. As far as we knew, MDE maintained the nihilistic approach. Any obvious red flags didn't register on our radar. We knew our friends were involved, and we wanted the show to succeed for that reason. Plus, we are suckers who often assume that funny, creative people are inherently good.

The show continued over the next few weeks, but no other episodes were as funny as the pilot. A decent amount of the sketches weren't ideologically terrible, and a few of them were pretty funny. But one out of every 3 or 4 skits would include something horribly misogynist or racist. A few sketches included black face with no context suggesting anything other than racist intentions. Others depicted the physical assault of women.

Within the following months, another good friend of ours ended up becoming a fan of MDE's online videos, unbeknownst to their alt-right agenda. In one video, they walked around York Square nearby the campus of Yale University holding "All Lives Matter" picket signs that were allegedly found in a nearby dumpster. They walked around the block provoking anyone who took them seriously, and later carried the signs into retail stores that resembled American Apparel or Urban Outfitters uncomfortably confronting black store employees.

It can sometimes be hard to judge when comedy crosses the line past an attempt at humor into the "horribly offensive" zone. We would be hypocrites calling out MDE while remaining fans of other comedians or comedy groups whose topics or tropes aligned. But there's a discernible difference. We all know trolling when we see it. The difference lies in the intentions.

The line itself was probably best demonstrated by Andy Kaufman. His nightclub act as Tony Clifton may have provided the world with its first notorious troll. By the time Tony became one of his most famous characters, fans already recognized Andy as decent human whose comedic cred was not earned by appealing to the baser instincts of hate groups. It was just one out of dozens of wide-ranging personas.

Within a specific context, uncomfortable situations can be effectively used as the topic of a joke. That's the whole point of offensive humor. The laughs we receive after an initial shock can help people understand more about a particular subject and about ourselves. Understandably, not everyone with an easily-offended PC-liberal bias will agree, especially those who aren't fans of a broad range of comedy.

But if a joke is purely rooted in hatred, then its writer is contributing to a problem. It's as simple as that. Discomfort for the sake of discomfort isn't a joke. Triggering for the sake of triggering is not a fucking joke. That's not comedy; that's bullying bullshit.

We aren't saying MDE should give up on their craft. They're obviously funny guys with very misguided intentions, and it was a bad idea for [adult swim] to give them a show. Many artists and performers would kill for that type of opportunity, and they used it for something disgusting and evil. But we think they should keep going. They should keep learning and creating. It's possible that in due time, they might grow up a little and figure out how to use their gift for something other than trolly bullshit.

Bear in mind that even after we saw these uncomfortable moments on MDE's show, they confused us more than anything else. Because of our friends' association, we didn't want the show to be hateful. We tried to convince ourselves otherwise. This continued until about October, when we saw an online article which included the first time we had ever seen the phrase "alt-right." And within that article, Million Dollar Extreme Presents World Peace was officially outed as [adult swim]'s alt-right sketch series. It took until a week or two later to understand that "alt-right" was far scarier than simply a millennial reaction to the neo-con movement.

-----------------------------------------------

Earlier in December, not long after the show's cancellation, a few headlines on music blogs decided to use the circumstances to their advantage. Unsurprisingly, Stereogum used some pretty irresponsible language in their headline: [Bands] Explain How Their Music Ended Up In White Supremacist's Adult Swim Show. It just goes to show how low music blogs are willing to go for post-election clickbait and ad revenue, trying to use these bands and the unfortunate circumstances to their advantage, not to mention that the show creators were never once labelled as white supremacists - only that their show's humor might appeal to those types of people. Hugely irresponsible. Seriously, FUCK Stereogum.

Pitchfork's sub-headline reads: "[Bands] explain their involvement with the sketch comedy accused of racism, sexism, and bigotry. See how much nicer that reads? Not a huge Pitchfork fan, but at least a handful of their writers can construct headlines properly.

A handful of the bands' Facebook messages said something to the affect of "We should have done our homework a little better." The reaction from the bands who appeared on the show all seem aligned as far as expressing a desire to distance themselves from hate. And of course, that's a responsible thing to say for any band who performs in DIY safe spaces (a.k.a. everyone involved). But if that's the case, really [adult swim] should be blamed for funding the show's creation and promotion.

Of course, it would have only taken a few seconds for any of these bands to Google "Are Million Dollar Extreme associated with the alt-right?" prior to making a show appearance. Except who the fuck would actually think to do that? And how many of these people had actually heard the phrase "alt-right" during Spring 2016? We're gonna guess not many.

It seems very weird that the risk of an extreme affiliation would have ever existed. If you're in a band, it could have been you. It could have been any of us. I doubt anyone could blame them for jumping at what seemed like a potentially awesome opportunity.

It shouldn't have to be any band's or artist's responsibility to research the political affiliation of a show when its channel is typically apolitical, neutral or left-leaning. It's not like they were being asked to perform on a show hosted by Trevor Noah or Tomi Lahren. The show was completely uncharacteristic of anything that had been on [adult swim] in the past. Don't make the bands feel guilty. The mess is in no way their fault. Blame Million Dollar Extreme and [adult swim].

We made a channel called MTVZ

We made a channel called MTVZ. Dunno what that means but I guess it's like a lot of music videos so MTV-something made sense and Z hadn't been used yet. We have been chromecasting it since yesterday and it is sweet.

It's sort of like a magazine? Like we'll post another issue next month or something. If you work at Journeys or some sneaker store you should chromecast this at your store.

More Good 2015 TV

We regret the error, but we forgot that the Bob's Burgers water balloon fight episode was amazing and totally should've been in our TV Moments of the year. That's what happens when the list gets hastily thrown together in under 20 minutes. FUCK.

[We've already fucked up "Hot Mix" and forgot to tie in Radiohead's previous Bond-theme cover of "Nobody Does It Better," so we're really on a role here.]

Also Neon Joe and Making A Murderer have been cool, although entire seasons of TV shows arriving all at once during mid-December shouldn't really count as 2015. That's just not playing fair (whereas random tracks arriving on Xmas Day are ok because they take far less time to consume).

we're a couple months late on this

TOP 5 VIDS OF THE DAY NOV 18 2014

BEST VIDS

#5 VID: Stern Vs. Skrillix
Skrillix gets real.


#4 VID: Billy Smith
Ye, this dude.


#3 VID: "Fly Away"
Lenny does a cool new version of the worst song of all time


#2 VID: Eric Andre New Years Special

Eric Andre Show-New Years Eve Spooktacular MASTER from Naked Faces on Vimeo.

#1 VID: Couldn't think of anything better so...

south park marathon

Comedy Central has (possibly) been airing a marathon consisting of every episode (that they're legally allowed to show) of South Park, which has lead to some upsetting daytime censorship, but it's the thought that counts.

Spring 2013 was just a bit more of a bummer than usual, since there's been no new South Park so far this year. This is the longest we've gone without our dear friends. Tomorrow marks the start of their only 10-episode run (unless one of these happened at some point between season 1 and 4) which is possibly leading to the release of The Stick of Truth on November 19th.


Get excited!

"Rusty"

dying

amazing mr rogers video

Can't believe it's been almost 10 years since he left us in February 2003... This is one of the best things on Youtube we've ever seen.

my wife

life is precious, without it you'd be dead

For some reason this is what we're watching right now...

squirt tv on youtube

theres seems to be a LOT of squirt TV on youtube... lots of hip mtv-friendly famous people were featured who were promoting stuff in 1996... we still have our doubts as to whether the show was actually shot in bedroom or if a set on mtv was built to resemble the bedroom of a 17-year-old...

beck, mike d, mike watt, les claypool, every 1996-era mtv vj...

kids in the hall...

fugees....

wesley willis fiasco...

making the band

When we did our "Best TV Clips 2000-2009" a few years ago, we hoped to include "Making The Band" but instead we ended up settling for "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories" which is Chappelle's Show's most famous clip... But now that "Making The Band" is on Vimeo we can all understand and feel its true power:

Nickelodeon's "Fifteen"

(If you don't judge, skip the literature and simply scroll down to the amazing videos posted below. Also, don't read it.)

NOTE: The following preface is an attempt to justify our placement outside of the hipster-friendly 90's-Nickelodeon-nostalgia universe of which we are not interested in joining.

We'd like to hereby state a perspective of understanding the true distinction between "nostalgia" and "viewing from a fresh viewpoint."

Let's quickly describe the difference...

You probably know what nostalgia is... But for the sake of simple explanation, it's the evocation of reliving a sentimental feeling which is sparked after experiencing a sensation. Sometimes it happens after viewing a youtube clip, or hearing a song, or maybe even after eating some weird candy or something that you haven't eaten since you were a kid, or something... (Lots of people say that smells evoke nostalgia, but this only happens for us occasionally.) And often times, even if you initially experienced these sensations under troubled or even miserable circumstances, one may be reminded of these specific feelings with a "rose-colored-glasses" perspective, leading many to (incorrectly) wish they could relive those periods of life.

"Viewing from a fresh viewpoint" entails knowing the difference, and mostly takes place once you don't care about nostalgia anymore, which is pretty much where we're at.

So yeah, nostalgia is bullshit and boring. We're not really into the whole "80's/90's nostalgia" thing... We were at one point, but we're kinda done with it now, as you all should be as well. If you're not over it yet, enjoy nostalgia for a little while longer, and get it the fuck out of your system as quickly as you can. (An important point to note: Nostalgia has very little, if anything, to do with our decisions to post relatively enormous features regarding our favorite 80's songs and our favorite 90's songs.)

Once upon a time, we were 19, and the internet was fresh.. One of the first things we enjoyed locating were old themesongs from Nickelodeon that we hadn't heard in 8 or 9 years.. Danger Mouse and all that fun stuff.. But that was like 12 years ago. It was fun, and now we're over it.

At the time, it wasn't as common to witness such vast nostalgia.

In the 90's, Generation X'ers who grew up in the 70's may have enjoyed an album called Schoolhouse Rock Rocks which was comprised of bands like Blind Melon, Better Than Ezra and Deluxx Folk Implosion covering those ultra-annoying songs that were shown on ABC Saturday mornings in the 70's and early-80's.

In the early 2000's, the internet was younger, but it wasn't uncommon to see message board subjects such as "what are the greatest TV episodes of all time" and witness answers such as "The 'Capture the Flag' Episode of Salute Your Shorts". (P.S. While it's amusingly silly, the 2012-perspective of Salute Your Shorts can pretty much only be enjoyed for nostalgic qualities. Outside of that, it's pretty awful.)

Around 2009/2010, a shit-ton of chillwave bands and reverb-heavy indie-rock bands emerged with names like Ducktales, Golden Girls and Reading Rainbow, seemingly trying their hardest to cash-in on a newly marketable hipster-version of nostalgia.

And it's only gotten worse since then. It's 2012 and so now everyone's opinion matters, and the loudest generation is clearly the ones whose nostalgia is the loudest, that being the kids who used to watch All That, Alex Mack and Legends of the Hidden Temple... Yeah, that's real great.. we get it, you miss being a kid in the 90's. It was so fucking cool, right guys?

The 90's are over, and you're not a child anymore. Grow the fuck up.

With that said, we never really got to watch Pete & Pete during the 90's... For some reason, we missed out on it, and just caught up on its first season throughout the past year. And we're happy to confidently state, without any nostalgic context, that this was a very well written and really fucking funny show. No, really.

All nostalgic context aside, believe it or not, a LOT of these shows were actually really good. Take Ren & Stimpy for instance, a one-of-a-kind landmark in the history of animation with nothing else truly like it before or since... We just took it for granted at the time, but it makes sense to view some of the more inspired current series on Nick and Cartoon Network (such as Flapjack, Adventure Time and Regular Show) and note a lineage that built to this point.

IN THE EXTREME OPPOSITE DIRECTION, our collective cultural viewpoint has grown far more self-aware. Irony and meta-irony are more extreme than ever, which is probably a good thing, because it probably means we're collectively getting smarter. There was a time (not too far from the present) when people seemed more afraid to laugh at themselves, and we are currently FAR removed from that...

AND THAT BRINGS US TO THE WHOLE POINT OF TODAY'S ENTRY.

Unaware naivety is something that can rarely be faked convincingly. When it's obviously fake, nothing could be lamer. But when it's real, its potential for being immensely compelling is unparalleled, with some of the best recent cases being memes such as "Chocolate Rain" and "Friday."

This wasn't uncommon in the 90's either. It made sense for college students to understand what made shows like the syndicated series Saved By The Bell a required daily viewing ritual.

This is partially why we're surprised that no one has made a bigger deal out of FIFTEEN, a show that we viewed in the early 90's which we've recently re-discovered on Youtube in time to review without any special nostalgic context to cloud our viewpoint.

No fucking around here, people... It's pretty outstanding. We're not entirely sure how it hasn't sourced dozens of internet memes. Honestly, it's not even that funny as much as it's amazing it ever got made.

Whatever, it's actually not that great... But we just wrote that intro for 20 minutes and don't feel like erasing it.... These are the first 2 episodes of Fifteen. They're fucking awful and amazing:

David Lynch commercials

Still searching for more excuses to use the "David Lynch" tag... http://www.openculture.com/2012/02/david_lynchs_surreal_commercials.html

Here's a good Playstation commercial he did a few years back...

new years

We were kidding earlier. This is our last post of 2011. For real this time.



Edit: Oh cool... Our last post of the year was a fail because we thought we could fix the embed to start at 21:32 which is the best part if you're drunk.

TV Stuff: We want more Jimmy / Beavis&Bieber premiering soon / Wonder Showzen news

This is one of those rare times when TV is briefly getting interesting again. It's been years since the last one of these happened...

We're two episodes deep into the current half-season of South Park, and this appears to be the most feelings-based and depressing bunch of episodes they've thrown together so far. But we're remaining hopeful... and while we LOVE the expansion of Clyde and Craig's characters over the past 3 years, we def want/NEED more Jimmy:

Wow. What a great audience.

As of tonight, we have eight days until B&B, re-titled this time around as Mike Judge's Beavis & Butthead. As we've stated earlier, 50% music videos doesn't sound as bad as it could have been, although there's no way they're going to comment on any music from over a year ago, and the first few episodes will probably include easy targets like Gaga and Bieber just to appease meatheads. Also, Judge reportedly has over 20 episodes ready to go, even though MTV is insisting on airing it once-a-week this time around, as opposed to how they presented new episodes in the 90's five-days-a-week, Monday through Friday. This means the premiere episode airing on October 27th will likely be re-ran at least 14 times (probably around twice a day) leading up to the premiere of the 2nd new episode on November 3rd. It might be in MTV's best interest to air a few classic B&B episodes alongside the new ones, so people don't get tired of the same jokes too quickly.

This will never happen though... Instead, they made an equally wise programming decision to launch their first new animated show since possibly as far back as 2003 when they were airing Clone High and 3 South. Without at least one other cartoon show, the new B&B would seem incredibly awkward drowning in a sea of Teen Mom's and I Used To Be Fat's. The new show is called Good Vibes, and here's a huge shocker: It's about Jersey Shore surfers who chase around cartoon chicks for 30 minutes. Imagine that... On the positive side, there's some talented people doing the voice work, and David Gordon Green is executive producer or something... So it might be funny. Who knows...

And finally, remember remember the 6th of November...
Wonder Showzen temporarily pulls Patton Oswalt out of his path of family-oriented Pixar flicks for some more darkness and insanity for The Heart, She Holler. (this was the only youtube clip we could find)...