Tim and Eric: New "Awesome Show" DVD, new music video dir. by Eric Wareheim, and Vanity Fair interview

(Video above contains adult content, NSFW).

I've been editing this blog post for the past couple of hours, and was going to start off with the fact that today, the third season of "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! came out on DVD, and that you should go pick up a copy because I think the show is wonderful, but then I had to add the thing about the recent Vanity Fair interview which does a fine job of illuminating their particular brand of creepyfunny, and then all of a sudden, LOL and behold, I saw this: a new music video for Major Lazer's track "Pon De Floor," directed by Eric Wareheim. I think it may just be the greatest music video ever. It's hella NSFW, just like Dance Floor Dale. The Village Voice called it "ToeJam & Earl + Donnie Darko + The Sims + a Japanese game show + straight-up pornography." Fader calls the performers it features "malfunctioned, horny and frightened Sims." I follow Tim and Eric on Twitter, you should too: @timheidecker @ericwareheim. Okay, I think that's about it, I'm going to publish this post now.

• [marco antonio]

  I don’t find it particularly ‘awesome’. Amusing maybe, in a “video made to look like an acid trip” kinda way. But that’s just my opinion. :)

• [popnwave]

  THIS IS AN EPIC VIDEO.. cannot wait to add it to my club rotation! Major Lazer is a blast to begin with and I only wish people did more crazy stuff like this these days.

• [Anonymous]

  I will give this a shot… and likely fail. I for one find myself in the middle of many T&E fans. I like them often, especially paired with others of great skill (J.C. Reilly, etc). On the other hand, sometimes the discordant elements, the pacing, etc… just annoy me. But I am cool with that. It’s off-center stuff like this that you have to willfully search for insights at times. It’s rarely ‘cheap’ even if it does sorta skip the ‘think about it phase’, and just click in your head at times (at which point you laugh like an idiot).

  As for the video: It’s super-extra-meta to me. It’s aping the culture and framework visually that the musicians are aping audibly (as they are certainly on the more playful & self-effacing of that genre), it’s adding an absurd ‘nasty sims’ element which should be instantly relate-able to most. The actors/dancers themselves work to be in on the joke, pushing the playfulness with odd faces, hyper over-plays, etc. It’s a big, modern version of looney-tunes. I could pick it apart for hours, because there really do seem to be a ton of layers, but I just prefer to laugh with/at it.

• [Fletcherism]

  This is one of the worst things that a smart person can say about something that others find humorous but they themselves do not:

  “Could someone explain why this is funny?”

  Let’s face it; there is nothing anyone can say that will make you find it funny. Period.

  I look forward to a season 3 marathon this Saturday with like-minded, no-need-to-explain-it fans.

• [Fletcherism]

  and also;

  Thanks, Xeni!

• [Anonymous]

  I’m wild about Tim and Eric-their ridiculously wrong pacing, their sweet earnest faces, the oddball co-stars, the songs.

• [nosehat]

  Anonymous #4:

  Very well said! I’m not really a T&E fan myself atm, but I figure that’s my loss.

  It’s so common to see people on the internet trying to convince others not to experience joy in something just because they don’t experience it themselves. This has always seemed like a bitter, jealous, spiteful waste of time to me.

• [obeyken]

  I agree with #4… I can’t *stand* a variety of opinions.

• [robulus]

  There seems to be some confusion…

  The video isn’t supposed to be funny. Its supposed to be really cool, ‘cos its Major Lazer which is this amazing production collaboration. It is really cool, you need to check it out and stop trying to laugh at it immediately.

  It’s just that the video is produced by one of the guys from a show called “Tim and Eric”, that I haven’t seen, but the comedic value of said show is debated with the same ferocity as Obama’s birthplace. It is so in dispute that a music video can be mistaken for content from the show.

• [jfrancis]

  It’s interesting how tracking a moving live action figure to a cg background (or vice versa) is no big deal now.

  We’ve been seeing it for a while, but in the early days of CG this was the great holy grail of visual effects. One of a VFX Supervisor’s main job used to be to make sure the live action camera was locked off motionless and untouched for the duration of the shoot, and you could always tell an effects shot was coming because the editing style changed from fast-paced to still, just for the one shot.

  And to even contemplate doing this, as it was first done in the Rolling Stones video for ‘Hard Woman’ in 1985, required getting data from a computerized camera on a motion controlled robot arm. A very involved shoot.

  Now it’s like, no biggie.

• [nutate]

  since when is freak dancing nsfw?

  prudes.

• [tmccartney]

  Xeni, given our mutual love for T&E and The Mighty Boosh, I would like to ask you to be my girlfriend. It doesn’t matter that you are probably not a lesbian and that I have a partner already, because you and I likely will never meet. This would be an “in spirit” thing only.

  Whatdya say?

• [IWood]

  I offer no opinion whatsoever.

• [logan morose]

  “Parisian Goldfish” — yeah reminds me of eric fensler’s video :

  http://www.fenslerfilm.com/videos/FL_PG.mov

• [Takuan]

  is there some fundamentalist cult that forbids dancing that we could send this to?

• [crankyoldman]

  FYI, AVclub just posted a “valentines day Q and A” by Tim and Eric. Many of the questions are in video/multimedia format, if you’re interested.

• [monument]

  DID SOMEONE SAY PEANUT GNORRR??

• [robulus]

  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087277/plotsummary

• [Anonymous]

  theres nothing nsfw about that video!

• [thatbob]

  I’m completely serious when I say that I love the influences from Toni Basil and Neil Cicierega that I find in this video.

  (And, for the record, I’m referring to her video work, and his animutations – not, say, her acting career or his Potter Puppet Pals.)

  Yes, it’s like Toni Basil and Neil Cicierega had a black baby who grew up to be a dancehall star. There I said it.

• [Anonymous]

  The search term everyone is looking for is ‘daggering’.

  It’s been a scourge of civilized parents for years now.

• [fistula spume]

  It hit all the right receptors in my brain. Especially that area that yearns to be completely thrown off balance. Giant fan of the song too. That’s “Parisian Goldfish” by Flying Lotus who is also sooper dope in his own right.

• [Anonymous]

  It’s easy to get if you’re high.

• [katamari88]

  I fucking love it.

• [StRevAlex]

  I think Tim & Eric are brilliant. Don’t call upon me to fully explain the reasons why. I could come up with reasons – their tendency to divide the audience into “love it” and “hate it” camps. Also, the way they carry “jokes” into eerie meta-territory past the point of simple amusement, the effect being this surreal place of public-access absurdity and media cliches with ridiculous conclusions, etc., etc… The truth is, they make me laugh out loud more consistently than anything else on television and that’s enough.

• [h3llc4t]

  I must have missed the boat. I don’t find people spastically simulating sex to be all that awesome.

• [pecoto]

  This kind of humor WAS awesome. When Kids in the Hall did it, or when Monty Python did it, or when Mr. Show did it…..I could go on like this for quite a while but will spare you the tedium.

  Like a lot of comedy central’s new adult swim lineup it seems to be a huge hit with the “Hey it’s late and I’m stoned and what the….(cue crazed laughter), but everything is super funny when you are tired and drunk/high/altered…a thing that has kept Saturday Night Live going for decades.

• [IWood]

  “‘Daggering’ Trend Is Breaking Jamaican Dicks”

• [sitar]

  ridiculous.
  love it.
  made me think of this

  http://i885.photobucket.com/albums/ac58/AlyHohan/10wofvtjpg.gif

• [Anonymous]

  Another Tim and Eric Boing Boing comments cavalcade! They stink! They rule! They aren’t funny! They are! What I don’t understand is people who don’t like something who insist that they are right and you are wrong. It’s like someone telling me that I’m stupid because I like a certain kind of food they dislike. You sure about that? What, people have different tastes in humor? Really? Explain to me in detail why you don’t think they are funny. Please. I’m quite interested.

• [HerbT]

  I don’t get it. It’s awesome, why exactly?

• [Anonymous]

  @Petcoto #3

  Guessing you mean Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup….

• [Anonymous]

  I never quite understood the hoo-ha over Tim & Eric but this video is astounding. Really astounding. I have watched it five times and I’m still mesmerized by the utter absurdity and brain fuck of it all. Dance Floor Dale was okay- a little too ironic and jokey, but this one goes into serious undefinable territory.

• [Torley]

  @#4 You called it. And preemptive strike on the “This is humor for people with Asperger’s” comments. ;)

  Usefully, look up “DUTTY WINE” on YouTube. A number of the dance moves in this fine video are inspired by or derived from such celebratory manoeuvrings.

• [13strong]

  “I don’t get it. It’s awesome, why exactly?”

  I don’t think you needed to continue that sentence beyond “I don’t get it”.

  FWIW, I thought the video was good fun. Also, what kind of boring places do you work that make comedically silly simulation of sex incorporated into dancing “not safe”?

• [nach0s]

  I think the video is further proof that humanity has failed.

• [Anonymous]

  if you could inject 90′s internet culture as a drug, tim and eric would be high as balls.

• [blueelm]

  I don’t get it either. Is it funny because most hip hop dance looks nearly like that? Is it funny because it has lots of colors? It goes on for soooo long though and nothing changes, just different sex positions?

• [blueelm]

  Why do people jump down your throat when you ask them what they like in something you don’t?

  I don’t need to *get it* as I have my own opinion, but that doesn’t mean I’m so socially retarded that I can’t be interested in the opinion of some one else, particularly when that opinion differs from mine.

  I thought this was boring and long, I’m not asking why people like it because I want to change my mind about that but because I’m interested in how other people think.

• [Xeni Jardin]

  Guys: this form of dance was not created by/for this video, as the previous commenter said you can find precedent by googling “dutty wine,” or watching some of the raunchier dancehall videos for prior art. Lighten up.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Oh, Dutty Wine. I thought you said Sweetberry Wine.

    • [Xeni Jardin]

      @antinous,

      FOR YOUR SIMULATED SEX ACTS!