After the apology, the redemption commercial...

The Tiger Woods scandal is about as boring as gets, millionaire sportsman cheats on his model wife? She hits him with a golf club? Snoozefest. But there's comedy gold in the ham-fisted way various image makers are trying to spin it. After the trite and insincere apology to the public, now there's a creepy admonishment from beyond the grave, while a luxuriant black and white shot of a blank, expressionless face fails to react in any way.
Most amusing: these results from a survey about what people felt after seeing this commercial. Mostly confusion, skepticism, disturbance, sadness. All things we will now associate with Tiger Woods. The one thing I would focus on, is his crazy wife. Why hasn't she been on Larry King or something?

Superhero mystique...

Since I avoid MTV like the plague these days, I didn't see this video until recently, and I'm glad because it spoiled the song for me. The heroes font queues the generic superhero plot, and then an ugly explosion of purple cgi, followed by questionable outfits, hair and makeup. This video really proves what makes superheroes in media other than comics so hard to do, it really is quite ridiculous if you don't get the tone right. Spandex doesn't look good on anyone really, and neither does a loose tank top. The song expertly mines a lot of pathos out of layering electric organ tones that would sound ridiculous on their own, achieving exactly what the video doesn't.

Evolution as art...

They're already pretty cool, but the most interesting thing about these things is the design process they go through. The artist is trying to simulate genuine animals by selecting successful traits and passing them along to the next generation. If he manages to build some kind of replication function in, this means we might be looking at a genuine plague of pvc sculptures on Dutch beaches. What if he has to build a predator to thin the herd? The possibilities are legion.

Comedians/writers know more about economics than Bankers

Observe:




It's shocking that you hear so little about these two basic truths expressed in these videos, that there's nothing wrong with the economy an sich, it's only a speculation bubble that collapsed, as they will, and that consumption is not the most important or useful index in gauging the size of the economy. Isn't it weird that Bankers and other financial professionals are the only ones who keep believing in getting something for nothing? Every financial disaster can be traced back to idiots believing in easy money. And they're right to believe in it, governments will pick up the bill if you mess up, then hardly complain when you use the money to give yourself a raise. The often touted argument that you need to pay well to get the talent required is false, there is no need whatsoever for clever, new ideas in banking. The more boring and reliable the banker, the better.

Are your kids old enough to learn about Cthulhu?

This just about takes the cake. H.P. Lovecraft's fantastic stories, though usually racist and unwieldy, almost always feature people going mad with the knowledge of older, as he would say eldritch, horrible creatures, to whom human beings are food. There's an endless parade of these creatures, but Cthulu is the famous one, even popping up in stories by Robert Howard and Clark Ashton, contemporary pulp-writers. This video blends the nauseating trend of 'baby' versions of known characters with it in a fantastic way. Hitting all the high points of the Ctulhu mythos and referencing the rest of Lovecraft's diverse collection of supernatural beings. The only one missing I'd still like to see is my favourite Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. Anyway, this would make an awesomely subversive Saturday morning cartoon, kids need to know this stuff if they're ever going to summon a being from the beyond.