Yes, I, too, have been lured in by the siren song of The Trololololo Guy. But for me it’s not the weird cadaver-like visage of the creepy Russian lip-sync singer, or his astonishing helmet-hair, or the late-1970s video production values…it’s that damned song! It’s an unstoppable earworm that keeps playing in my head over and over and over, and every time I run into another mashup of it I have to stop and listen to the whole thing.
Well, at least NOW I can sing along thanks to this captioned version on YouTube. I’d hate to think I was singing “trolololololo” when I was supposed to be singing “ya ya ya ya yeh aaaaaaaaaaaaaaiieeeeeeeeee!”
We’ve got Jack Benny on the brain, mostly thanks to Mark Evanier, who has had a spate of posts about the great comedian.
Evanier has had several posts lately about trying to discern whether or not Benny made a small cameo in the classic movie “Casablanca”. This latest one looks like he might have been successful. If you look at the large version of the image, which shows the full length of the man walking behind Sam the piano player, his gait is very much like Benny’s. So much so that Jack Benny’s daughter has said that she believes it is him.
Now, this morning, Cory Doctorow has a post at Boing Boing about how CBS is blocking the release of some long-lost episodes of the Jack Benny Show from the 1950s and early 1960s. The copyright has long expired on these episodes, so they actually belong to the public domain, but CBS doesn’t want the hassle and expense of releasing them, despite impassioned pleas from Benny fan groups and the official sanction of the Benny estate. Here’s a link to the source article for the Boing Boing story, which explains many of the details and the efforts to convince CBS to release the films. This being the 21st Century and all, you can rest assured that there is a Facebook group you can join to show your support.
Dick Cavett, who occasionally blogs in the New York Times, had a recent remembrance of Jack Benny, too. In typical Cavett fashion, the story is really about himself, but told in that charmingly droll and self-effacing way that Cavett has. He is mostly skewering Tiger Woods and remarking on the price of being a public figure, and Jack Benny appears at the end to set up a hilarious punch line. Anyone who has ever read much about Benny and knows about his real personality (as opposed to the elaborate stage persona of the cheap guy) will instantly recognize the absolute truth and genuine humor of the story.
And back again to a link from Mark Evanier: a YouTube clip of Jack Benny and Mel Blanc performing the famous and hilarious “Si, Sy, Sue” sketch on an episode of the TV series. Blanc played dozens of incidental characters on the radio version of the show, and despite being a bit more limited due to his recognizable physical appearance carried a number of them over to television. THIS, my friends, is COMEDY:
I think most people have at least some dim awareness of the existence of food stylists — the people who make all the food in ads look so damn appetizing — but probably don’t grasp quite how extensively they tweak the appearance of things. This video features a real food stylist giving away the secrets about how they make the burgers in fast food commercials look like something you would actually want to eat, as opposed to what you get when you hit the drive-thru:
At least these tricks involve using (mostly) edible items. Some food stylist techniques include using Elmer’s glue in place of milk in cereal ads, painting food with glycerin to make it look shiny and juicy, and spraying food items with spray paint to enhance color. Granted, nobody’s ever going to eat the food used in commercials and photo shoots, but it’s the sort of unrealistic expectation that food ads create that results in situations like Domino’s Pizza having to “reboot” their product because the reality was so unappetizing. (I wonder if they’re going to fix the pasta bowls, too)
The BBC reports that the British department store Selfridge’s will officially roll out its Christmas shopping season this year on AUGUST 2. But American retail chain Toys R Us has them beat with a “Christmas In July” sale that runs this week. (although, as far as I can tell, that’s just a sale and not [...]
On Friday, I decided to stop having Facebook scrape and post my blog feed. I just don’t feel like blog posts fit the very ephemeral vibe of FB, and, frankly, it irritates the living crap out of me when people post comments about the blog posts on FB instead of posting them here. I am [...]
In my copious spare time, usually whilst sitting in the waiting area at Charlotte’s karate studio, I have been making slow but steady progress toward adding tags to all the posts on this site. As of right now, I have completed tagging all the way back to April 1, 2008. The current archive of this [...]
Just the other day I posted about a young man from Nepal who was trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man in the world. He’s only 22 inches tall, compared to the 29-inch tall He Pingping of China, who is the current record holder. Well, WAS the current [...]
boobcheese tickle fights child actor suicides Betty White Zombie Farrah Fawcett Canadian pissing habits that milkaholic Lindsay ChatRoulette whatever half-assed thing Google did this week out-of-control Toyotas
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
I recently posted about the use of menhaden in making fish oil dietary supplements and the potential risk that poses to the entire Atlantic Ocean ecosystem. One of the alternatives to using menhaden for omega-3 supplements is algae oil, because algae is the primary diet of the menhaden and is actually the source of all [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
This week Barack Obama committed the United States to at least two more years of war, 30,000 troops in harm’s way for no other reason than saving face, and umpteen billions of dollars wasted FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER and we are inundated with: Tiger Woods proving he knows how to put it in the [...]