Posts Tagged ‘humor’
Watch This: The Gay Alphabet (HD)
You always knew there was something different about the alphabet. Admit it.
We all had out suspicions, and now they can be put to rest.
The alphabet has come out of the closet in this new video: The Gay Alphabet.
Funny Money – Rick Jacobs’ Courage Campaign Passes Counterfeit “Arnold Bucks”
Here’s the latest creative effort from our good friends at the Courage Campaign Issues Committee, calling attention to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sending Californinans IOU’s instead of much needed aid or tax refunds.
Many Californians are so overwhelmed by this paralyzing crisis that they’ve just tuned it out. As a result, Arnold is not being held accountable for his failure to lead.
That’s why we decided to try something a bit unorthodox — raise awareness by using humor to highlight the absurdity of these IOU’s, or what we are calling “Arnoldbucks.”
We asked one of our members to see what would happen if he tried to use “Arnoldbucks” as legal tender at a few businesses in the area. You won’t believe what happened. It’s all caught on camera — even a few security cams.
Know a friend who might need a laugh? Share this video with them, download your own Arnoldbucks below, then tell us your ideas. (Courage Campaign: Arnold Bucks)
My favorite part: “The State of California would gladly pay you Tuesday for a cheeseburger today.”
Arnold can haz cheezburger?
Governor Schwarzenegger’s Hit Christmas Family Movie (but not Jingle All the Way)
The good folks at Courage Campaign Issues Committee (disclosure: I’ve done a bit of work for them) are making spirits bright…at the Governor’s expense.
Robert in Monterey talks about the piece at Calitics:
The Courage Campaign, in partnership with Donkey on the Edge and with the support of Cheri and Naren Shankar, put together this video of Arnold’s “California Carol” – Arnold is visited by the ghosts of California past, present and future, showing him the error of his ways.
Unfortunately, California’s Ebenezer Scrooge isn’t going to have a Christmas morning change of heart and suddenly decide to provide funding for schools and health care. Not unless we the people demand that he stop cutting and start saving California by signing the Democratic budget deal. (Calitics – Arnold’s Nightmare: A California Carol)
Lest ye forget, this is not the Governor’s first foray into holiday entertainment. As bad as the situation is in Sacramento, do we really want him going back to this…
Even Rudy Giuliani’s “YouTube-Style” Video Is About Tall Buildings Being Terrorized
Still clearing out a number of videos I have wanted to post about. This one is Rudy Giuliani’s “YouTube-style” clip from the GOP’s CNN/YouTube Debate.
It’s got a nice mix of humor, information and attacks on Hillary Clinton. If I were a Republican, I’m guessing that’d be a web video trifecta.
But did anyone else notice that even his “YouTube-style” clip managed to include skyscrapers in peril? Joe Biden was right.
PWNED! What Gravel was up to during the Vegas debate
Former Senator Mike Gravel was excluded from last week’s debate in Las Vegas. The video above shows how he handled the situation – by holding an event where he yells at the television. Thanks to Tivo, you don’t even have to miss any of the debate while he gives his responses.
Actually, this event was a nice way to deal with the situation.
Now, it wasn’t a surprise to the Alaskan that he was being left out of the party at UNLV. So, ahead of the debate his campaign also produced the video below, which takes a humorous look at what he’d be doing. To wit, he’d be pwning people at Halo III.
My Dinner With Andre…actually, Barack
Last quarter the Obama campaign went through stories sent in by their grassroots contributors to form a quartet that would sit down with the Senator over dinner to discuss the race and our nation.
I sometimes want to doubt these things – that it may have been part gimmick, part list-building tool, or part fund-raising ploy – and I don’t know how much of Obama’s massive grassroots financing effort came through the Dinner With Barack contest. In the end the intent and the numbers don’t matter, as it made for great online viewing.
It became a unique time all of us got to spend with the Senator.
Before releasing the clip of the actual dinner, the BarackTV team released a series of pieces talking to the dinner guests. We got a chance to meet them, to actually see their lives, to hear their stories, and to get a feel for what draws them to Obama.
Knowing a bit about the guests made the dinner video more effective, featuring the supporters as characters rather than props in the story.
The dinner itself went very well. This experience was quite different from what you usually get from campaign videos. It was quiet, personal, humorous, and conversational.
If there was anything I’d have done differently, it would have been to combine the guest footage with the dinner into a slightly larger piece, and to talk to Obama separately from the dinner, not unlike the talks with the guests. Get his point of view on what it takes to run a campaign from the bottom up.
Maybe a clip like that is still in the pipeline. Who knows?
But, bravo to the BarackTV folks! Bully for you for a cool project.
T&A at TBD: Looking for Obama Girl with Max Blumenthal at Take Back America
You may have seen Max Blumenthal’s words at The Nation or HuffPo. Or, if you were at this week’s Take Back America conference, you might have seen him conducting interesting interviews of such folks as Mike Gravel, Rev. Al Sharpton or “Obama Girl” Amber Lee Ettinger.
Actually, he never found Obama Girl at the event – but made sure to ask lots of people where she could be tracked down.
It appears the conference organizers were a little nervous about Blumenthal’s artistry, as he explains in this excerpt from his personal blog:
With over a thousand people waiting to view my film, my videographer, Thomas Shomaker, and I were whisked backstage. There, conference organizers told us “technical†problems made our screening impossible. I was finally told that our film was too “edgy.†In it I interviewed participants at the conference, including Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton, Mike Gravel, bloggers from Atrios to Matt Stoller, and activists. I suspect that its good-natured humor failed to meet a threshold of dull earnestness. Judge for yourself. Watch the film now. (MaxBlumenthal.com)
Don’t worry Max. Like all great artists, people will appreciate this video after you’re dead.
For a refresher on Blumenthal’s history in political conference filmmaking, check out his piece from CPAC:
Spike Jonze + YouTube = Al Gore is President? (or How the Wooden VP Became a Real Boy)
Going through unlabeled tracks in my iTunes library, I came across “What’s Up Fatlip?” by Fatlip (formerly of The Pharcyde). It got me thinking of the song’s excellent video – directed by Spike Jonze (see below).
Around the same time he was making videos and documentaries with Fatip, Jonze created a piece for the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. It’s in the Brightcove player you see above. If I remember correctly, the video aired in the afternoon during one of the sessions early in the convention week. As such, it was relegated to that portion of the convention that only those of us in the hall and C-Span viewers witnessed. Count yourself among the few to have seen it.
Had there been a distribution channel like YouTube in 2000, this is the kind of video that could have been tremendously effective. Apart from being too long (remember it was for a the most partisan captive audience imaginable), this piece had the right stuff to spread far and chop down Gore’s wooden image – not so much by defying that image, but reveling in it.
Forget the fact that you see Al Gore shirtless and body surfing. Any candidate can take off their shirt. Gore strips off the trappings of a life in politics.
The scene of Gore Family Movie Night is great. You see all of the things people tended to not like about Gore, that he is cerebral and a bit nitpicky…but it’s about which movies to pop in the VCR – and even how they get watched! As his kids gang up on him – even mocking his voice and demeanor – you see those qualities that were off-putting in the first debate in an “everyday people” light. All of those male voters who “wanted to have a beer” with Bush could watch that scene and instantly identify with the dad getting ribbed by his wife and kids.
I know I can relate.
Watch the scenes with Tipper and think about all the contrived videos you’ve ever seen of candidates and their wives (I’m looking at you, Mitt Romney). Watch his confidence and comfort in talking about global warming (famously verboten from the campaign at large). It’s no surprise that people started to like Gore more after An Inconvenient Truth. Jonze got that same performance years earlier.
For all of Hillary Clinton’s meticulously crafted attempts at humor, her trilogy of Song Contest films pale next to the humanizing power of Jonze’s loose, disarming Gore film. Hillary’s videos are clever and well produced, but how many of the views are like gawkers at a car crash…
“Oh my God…is she dancing?” or “Is that Bill? I can’t believe it.”
It’s a shock to see the Clinton’s in that light. It’s effective, but clearly canned. Jonze escapes that with Gore. From the last scene, it is clear that Jonze has just been rolling tape after tape after tape. It’s really just Gore talking…being Gore – to fall into the cliche.
Long disappeared, this video found re-release in the inaugural issue of Wolphin, a DVD magazine of unreleased short films. This first issue also contains the great Soldier’s Pay, by David O. Russell – director of I Heart Huckabee’s, Three Kings, and indie classic Spanking the Monkey. You can subscribe to Wolphin, or buy back-issues on their website.
The page on the Gore film features an interview with Jonze:
Q: So you just spent one day with them? You started in Carthage, Tennessee?
SJ: Yeah, I went down there to Tennessee and it was supposed to be just an afternoon. I guess he had liked my movie Being John Malkovich and so from that had I don’t know why he gave me this sort of access. It was very intimate and personal in terms of letting a cameraman into your home, but I guess that after the afternoon, they felt comfortable with me, so they invited me to go on their vacation. They were leaving that day to go to North Carolina, so in the middle of the afternoon the helicopters came and landed in the Tennessee farmhouse and we went to the army base and got on Air Force Two and flew to North Carolina. (Wolphin @ McSweeney’s)
For your viewing pleasure, here is the Spike Jonze-directed video for What’s Up Fatlip: