Boing Boing » parody

Goodnight Moon as a horror movie

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 20:47:49 +0000

David sez, "Did the children's book "Goodnight Moon" help put you to sleep as a little kid? Not anymore. Especially after watching its dark reimagining in this gritty movie trailer. I'm afraid the family-friendly search results for this children's book are going to be ruined as this video makes its rounds. Made by the Gritty Reboots team who most recently brought you Calvin and Hobbes as a dark Hollywood blockbuster."

Goodnight Moon: The Movie (Trailer) (Thanks, David!)

Trending right now on Yahoo (not)

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:44:09 +0000

There are a bunch of these. By Sean Tejaratchi.

Scientifically accurate Spider-Man

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 23:00:57 +0000

Finally, the truth revealed. On the other hand, Spider-Man would be a lot more interesting if these editorial suggestions were taken to heart by the good people at Misney.

SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE SPIDER-MAN | ADHD (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Real Genius in the style of M. Night Shyamalan

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 02:47:03 +0000

You know what's better than the nerd-classic 1985 teen comedy Real Genius? How about the Real Genius trailer recut in the style of M. Night Shyamalan, by YouTuber dondrapersayswhat (creator of the Breakfast Club/Avengers mashup and this this insanely great Baby Got Back mashup?

Real Genius by M. Night Shyamalan: Trailer Recut (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Allan Sherman's Mad-Man-style comedy song: "When I Was a Lad"

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:49:04 +0000

This shuffled into my music player this morning, and delighted me as it ever does: Allan Sherman's When I was a Lad, a lovely bit of Mad Man-style period parody from the album My Son, the Celebrity. You probably know Sherman's work from "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah," but it's well worth exploring his whole catalog -- especially since there's a fabulous box set.

When I Was A Lad - Allan Sherman

BargainBinBlasphemy: a tumblog of greatness

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:25:39 +0000

At "BargainBinBlasphemy," vinyl album covers of pop-rock icons are upgraded into Black Metal. (Thanks, Sean Bonner!)

It's OK to Do Stuff: rude and funny parody of Free To Be You and Me

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:56:49 +0000

Rob Kutner and the Levinson Brothers (and friends) released It's OK To Do Stuff, an album parodying Free to Be You and Me. Guest vocals include Steven Page from Barenaked Ladies and Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Gos (featured here singing the album's themesong). It's a $6 MP3 download on Amazon.

It's OK To Do Stuff

Carl Sagan's Cosmos: The Meat Planet (with pork volcano)

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 13:46:11 +0000

"A giant planet with a liquid interior full of liquid beef and pork, into which a thousand earths would fit."

Darren Cullen of Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives and friend Mark Tolson edited together this 'lost episode' of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, about a fabled Meat Planet, with details of its famous pork volcano, Mount Sustenance, "well-known to astronomers since the time of Galileo."

If NASA would focus on the important planets, the delicious bacon-y ones like this, perhaps we'd have a real future in space exploration. Astronomy-gastronomy!

Binders Full of Women, the tumblr

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 03:55:47 +0000

Link: bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com. (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

Autumn: Spaghetti-harvest time

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:50:45 +0000

Some astute commenters in the Ukelele String Harvest video thread pointed out that this recent video is basically a re-creation/riff on this earlier, classic weird video, from a 1957 BBC show called "Panorama." From the Alexandra Palace Television Society, here's the whole story:

On April 1, 1957 the British television programme Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the shows highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, For those who love this dish, theres nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti.
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fools Day hoaxes of all time. It is also believed to be the first time the medium of television was used to stage an April Fools Day hoax.
Since 1955 Panorama had been anchored by Richard Dimbleby, whose authoritative, commanding presence had made him one of the most revered public figures in Britain. If Dimbleby said it, people trusted that it was true. Which is one of the reasons why the spaghetti harvest hoax fooled so many viewers. His participation lent the hoax an air of unimpeachable authority.
Almost no one else at the BBC knew about it. The segment was not mentioned at all in the pre-transmission publicity handouts.
The line-up for that days show included a long segment about Archbishop Makarios, leader of the Greek Cypriots, and a clip of the Duke of Edinburgh attending the premiere of the war film The Yangtse Incident.
The second-to-last segment was about a wine-tasting contest, and then it came time for the spaghetti harvest.
Dimbleby, sitting on the set of Panorama, looked into the camera and without a trace of a smile said: And now from wine to food. We end Panorama tonight with a special report from the Swiss Alps.
The screen cut away to the prepared footage. When it was all over, Dimbleby reappeared and said, Now we say goodnight, on this first day of April. He emphasized the final phrase.
Panorama never attempted another April Fools Day spoof, despite numerous calls for a sequel. However, the hoax did inspire a number of similar stunts in its honour.
This film footage is from the Archive Collection held and administered by the Alexandra Palace Television Society.

Baby's First Baby

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:46:06 +0000

"Baby's First Baby," by Darren Cullen (2012). via BB Flickr Pool.

The Nobel Prize in Quackpottery

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:31:13 +0000

At The Guardian, blogger GrrlScientist is passing out Nobel Prizes for Quackpottery in the fields of physiology, physics, and chemistry. The prizes are awarded to actual Nobel Laureates who have made deep and long-lasting contributions to undermining their own credibility by latching onto hypotheses they can't back up with evidence and then continuing to promote those hypotheses despite the lack of evidence. It's a nice reminder that scientists are human, and that even very, very smart people are not always rational people.

Andy Rooney x Chief Keef: "I Don't Like"

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:29:15 +0000

[Video Link, by @mrlaszlototh]

Set theory, Christians, and parody

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:41:37 +0000

Last week, I wrote a piece for BoingBoing about fundamentalist Christian objections to the mathematical idea of set theory. Those objections are, apparently, real—sourced to math textbooks produced by publisher A Beka. And, if you understand the cultural mindset, it even makes a weird sort of sense. But it's also ripe for parody. Read the first comment to this story at The New York Times. At first, it looks like a real world example of the stuff we were talking about last week. But it's not. The commenter is Stephenson Billings, a pseudonymous contributor to the parody site Christwire. I fell for this myself. Thankfully, Twitter user UCSD_Nanomed pointed out what was really going on.

Bob Dylan’s “Titanic” by Tim Heidecker (music video)

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 17:39:15 +0000

[Video Link]

Comic genius Tim Heidecker, who is roughly 50% of Tim and Eric (also behind "Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie," and "Check it Out! with Dr. Steve Brule"), has yet again created something I find very funny.

"Recently, I read that Bob Dylan’s new album Tempest will feature a 14 minute song about the Titanic," he writes, "So I wrote this song to see if I could beat the Master to it. I can’t wait to see how close I got to the real thing!"

Above, a preview. The entire opus is fifteen minutes long, and you can purchase it here.

Generate your own Malcolm Gladwell best-seller with this handy website

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 31 May 2012 19:36:27 +0000

Malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com is a source of high LOLs. (via @onthemedia)

Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 01:09:01 +0000

Link. (Red Scharlach Points At Interesting Things, via Andrea James)

The Kickstarter to end all Kickstarters

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:34:45 +0000

Oh, this is rich: I Would Like to Buy Kickstarter, by Eric Moneypenny. (via Joe Sabia)

Leave Kony Alone

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:48:20 +0000

Video Link. For those who are unfamiliar, this is a riff on a classic internet meme. Well played. (via Oxblood)

Stuff scientists say

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:26:15 +0000

Finally, a science-themed entry in the "Shit ______ say" meme. Science journalist Ferris Jabr and friends put this together and it's pretty funny. Reminds me a conversation I had earlier this week with a friend about her brother's social insect research. Another thing scientists say, "The hissing cockroach experiment is not going according to plan."

Bonus: Watch for a slide that references a previous scienceLOL you may remember.

Video Link

How To: Make America strong again

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:06:45 +0000

Perhaps you've seen Rick Perry's homophobic pean to the establishment of religion. It's the most hated video on YouTube right now. Naturally, there are parodies.

First: You don't have to sleep in every Sunday to know there's something wrong with this country.

Next: Finally, someone who will fight for the rights of dinosaurs.

My name is Maggie Koerth-Baker, and I approve the posting of other fabulous Rick Parodies in the comments section. EDIT: Cory already found a great one!

Thanks to Christopher Baker!

Video Links:

Atheist parody

Dinosaur parody

Occupy News Bins: miniature Lego OWS, complete with pepper-spraying cop

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:40:25 +0000

"No property was harmed during this installation," DocPop tells us about this hilarious teeny-tiny Lego Occupy. "From what I understand the piece has already been removed though I don't know by whom."

The Gun Snuggler: from parody video to actual holiday gift

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:51:03 +0000

The Gun Snuggler. "Because happiness is a warm gun." Comes in sizes to fit everything from handguns to assault rifles! This began as a funny internet joke, but so many people took it seriously that it is now being offered as an actual thing that you can really buy for real. (Thanks, Marque Cornblatt!)

EXCLUSIVE: photos of BofA's new #OWS-themed ad campaign

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:09:05 +0000

I have no idea who shot these, or who is responsible. Update: here are some daytime shots, from the San Francisco Mission district.

Post-modern, paleontological art

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:43:17 +0000

One a recent art crawl in St. Paul, Minnesota, I ran across the work of Michael Bahl.

Dressed in a white lab coat, Bahl bills his work as "post-osteological interpretation." Basically, he's built both skeletal monsters, and an ostensibly real research history to go with them. This creature, for instance, is a Chalicotherium laurentian. She is an adult female, part of a trio of fossil animals that includes an adult male and a juvenile. Here's Bahl's statement on the C. laurentian family.

Discovered in 1887 by Harold Vanselow, a maverick dinosaur hunter and at one time a member of the Othniel Charles Marsh team from the Yale Peabody Museum, this Chalacothere was named appropriately enough after the Laurentian Divide in Northern Minnesota where tributaries of the St. Lawrence River divide and flow in two directions.

Dating from the Miocene era, the bones of these creatures retain the rich, deep color of the Iron Range where they once roamed in large herds. The purpose of the male's secondary head has been much debated, some experts believing it to be fully functional while others maintain it was most probably used in the mating ritual.

Research indicates that the family grouping seen here was first exhibited in the late 19th Century at a private museum in London and assembled by Walter Vernon, the well-known enfant terrible of those early years of prehistoric osteological display. Vernon's philosophy was explained in a lengthy article which appeared in 1901. He stated that he felt his specimens acknowledged not only the accurate presentation of a skeleton, but the millions of years that the bones had been part of the earth itself and the impact the internment had on them. "Tribute must be paid to the beauty given to these beasts by the greatest of artists -- time."

The exhibit caused a furor in scientific circles largely because no other specimens or even fragments had been unearthed. It was both hailed as a work of art and villified as "expressionistic". Matters were complicated further by the disappearance of Vanselow's notebooks and meticulously detailed maps. The exhibit vanished in 1904 after fire destroyed the hall in which it was housed, and as if by unspoken agreement it was quietly forgotten.

Then, in 1994, the bones were rediscovered embedded in the foundation of a home in South St. Paul, Minnesota. They had been packed in crates originating in Prague circa 1914 and, since the house had been built in 1939, it is not known where the remains of this might species had been kept. Although some structural repairs were necessary, the specimens are otherwise presented here in the splendidly ancient condition in which they were found.

If Cormac McCarthy was a Yelp reviewer

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:51:34 +0000

Yelping with Cormac is a rather arch and very funny Tumblr with a simple premise: what if Cormac McCarthy was addicted to reviewing restaurants and stores on Yelp?

Whole Foods Market
Noe Valley - San Francisco, CA
Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM
Four stars.
The sheriff and the posse were now a block away and riding seven abreast rifles in hand and horses snorting and wildeyed. The outlaw dropped his pistol and stiffwalked into the parking lot of a grocery store. Around him young women in skintight sporting clothes stopped and stared.
The ground shook as the posse rode up on the parking lot entrance but the sheriff stopped his riders with a raised hand and sawed his palamino around sending the animal sidestepping like a showhorse into a newspaper box which fell over with a great cacophony. When the noise subsided the neighborhood and the parking lot were silent. The riders and the outlaw and the women frozen like actors in some gypsy roadshow.
A rider wearing an elaborate mustache and carrying a Winchester onehanded nudged his quarterhorse toward the sheriff. Hell he’s right there sheriff.
I know it. Im lookin at him same as you.
What are we waitin for then.
We caint touch him now deputy. They got their own way here.
The riders watched as the women left their station wagons and strollers and encircled the outlaw. As if some ancient instinct united them. Silent as wolves and staring intently at the broken man standing there. He saw his mistake and called out to the riders reaching toward them with his one good arm but was struck down with a savage blow from a rolled yoga mat.

Yelping with Cormac (via Making Light)

Cain Train, Baby: another Tim Heidecker mock campaign jingle featuring Rich Little (audio)

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:47:25 +0000

I don't know how Tim Heidecker's gonna top this latest song: "CAIN TRAIN, BABY." Audio's here. Featuring famed voice actor Rich Little.

Heidecker, in case you don't know, is half of "Tim and Eric," and has been cranking out these weird surrealist Herman Cain anti-jingles for a couple weeks now.

Anyway, that's Heidecker, in the sexy photo at left. Follow him on Twitter. And at top, Kevin Ackley made this fan-art homage to the Cain song cycle. An album cover, perchance?

Oh, and Herman Cain's sure having a busy day today!

"Lord Cain," by Tim Heidecker (music)

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:00:41 +0000

Herman Cain speaks at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition's Presidential Forum in Des Moines, Iowa October 22, 2011. REUTERS/Brian C. Frank.

Because Herman Cain's actual campaign ads just aren't weird enough:

"Lord Cain," an opus by Tim Heidecker (of Tim and Eric fame), as promised.

Download: MP3, Ogg, and other options here. You should follow Tim's Tumblr.

UPDATE: Dylan Mitchell-Funk created a fan-video. Eric Wareheim sure is looking good these days!

Zoomertab 2.0 Activity Tablet

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 14:54:20 +0000

[Video Link] Sure am glad someone posted a copy of this "Timeless Seasons" shopping network clip, so I could share the good news about these ladygadgets with Boing Boing readers. I almost expected them to feature the Petticoat v 5.0, but I suppose that's an older model, from another show. (thanks, Casimir Nozkowski)

UK government kills Copyright Great Firewall, establishes user rights

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 11:11:25 +0000

The UK government has abandoned its plan to establish a copyright-based national firewall that media executives could use to block websites to which they objected. The proposal for a UK Great Firewall was part of the Digital Economy Act, but the expert reviews conducted by Professor Ian Hargreaves and the regulator Ofcom both advised against it. UK Business Secretary Vince Cable has, therefore, nixed the idea, which means that entertainment companies will actually have to win court injunctions ordering ISPs to block sites -- still scary, but at least there's some due process there.

Meanwhile Cable has also announced that the government will include a parody copyright exemption in our fair dealing laws (until now, it's been illegal to reproduce copyrighted works for parodical purpose), a relaxing of the rules on format-shifting, and a rights clearninghouse to make it easier to license works for lawful use. A rare moment of common sense in UK copyright policy!

UK Government Abandons File-Sharing Website Blocking Plans