It said "Your Pet May Be An Extra-Terrestrial"...

The news that the Weekly World News is shutting down reminds me of the Weird Al song Midnight Star:



What is Ed Anger going to do? :)

Be prepared!

In honour of the World Jamboree celebrating the 100th anniversary of Scouting this weekend, here's Tom Lehrer's Be Prepared:

Three little maids from the 'hood are we, booty filled to the birm with girlish glee...

A YouTube wag has wed footage from a Gilbert and Sullivan play a rendition of Baby Got Back by Sir Mixalot. Is it me, or does the singer sound like Robert Goulet? :)

Hello camera man, we're the band in this video and we're over here. Hello...Helllooo!

The French band Les Chats Sauvages is almost an afterthought in this video promoting their French cover version of the Four Seasons song Sherry. Watch this scopitone and you will see what I mean!

Post for my mother

Big Girls Don't Cry...



Walk Like A Man...

Neato...

My blog will go over 50,000 page views some time today... :)

"Bill, you can't hurt Jessie! Neither of us can!" "I don't want to..." Crow T. Robot: "...but I have to. This is a soap opera after all."

Mom might like this post. The gang from Mystery Science Theater 3000 starts an episode by making fun of an early 1960s episode of General Hospital!

Their spoof starts 5 1/2 minutes into this video...



and continues in this video:





"You wiped your feet on the doormat of my heart!"

These gumboots are made for walkin'

The audio is 1960s singer Eileen doing "Ces Bottes Sont Faites Pour Marcher", her French cover version of These Boots Are Made For Walking.

Sorry, I don't know who the young lady with the boots is. :)

Today, we're singing with Heino! Today, we're singing with Heino....

Heino, a German singer with blond hair and ever-present sunglasses, must be seen to be believed. Here he is on his TV show Sing mit Heino.



He's Mitch Miller with a side order of Bratwurst. :)

There goes my planned series of posts on South Park :)

Mingle² - Thanks to Mingle2

A neat trick!

Here is a video of Gitte, singing a song called "Come Back" from 1960s German television. Once I got past the dancers in the video doing what looks like The Bird Dance, I realized that they were moving in front of and around the singer while remaining in silhouette. I wonder how they did that!

I said a nah, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah...

One would think at first that this Scopitone cover version of Land of A Thousand Dances was pretty cheesy...



...until you watched the World Wrestling Federation version of the same song, which I remember from my childhood!

I can imagine the producer of this saying to himself, "What this music video needs is more helicopters!"

This Scopitone video of Gelou singing "Ils Croient a leurs danses", a French hit from 1962 has the surreal "We're making a Scoptone!" touch. See if you can spot what wouldn't makie it on MTV today. :)

"Who's that banging on the piano?" "I dunno."

It's Leader of the Laundromat by the Detergents. (Actually, this features Ron Dante in the first of his many studio band hits.)

Just Like Romeo and Juliet

This is a neat video of The Reflections performing (Just Like) Romeo and Juliet, but can you make any sense of the dance that the main go-go dancer is doing? It looks almost like a dance that you would see in A Charlie Brown Christmas...

How not to build a house

One Buster Keaton short that I really enjoy is One Week, in which Buster tries to build a prefabricated house, and fails, amusingly.

It looks like something that...oh, I'm going to be good and not finish the thought. :)

Part 1 of 3



Part 2 of 3



Part 3 of 3:

Safety Last, indeed!

One of the most famous comedy segments in silent movies comes from the 1923 Harold Lloyd film Safety Last. In this part of the film, Harold climbs the side of a tall building and dangles from a clock:

Part 1 of 2



and Part 2 of 2:

"A ballerina deals with the problems of urban life"

A nice little Portuguese silent short:

Oh I wish I was back in old Canada...

Here's a delayed tribute to Canada Day. The Canada Song by the gang at MST3K!

Would you look like a dork in order to have a full head of hair?

Modern Mechanix has a 1924 ad for a hair growing hat. (No this wasn't a hairy hat, it is a hat for growing hair on your head as you wear it.)

Flying Saucer lands at Graceland

Lee Hartsfeld, one of my fave bloggers, has a copy of Dear Elvis by Audrey which, like Flying Saucer, is a "break-in" novelty record. Fun!

The Homer Simpson re-mix

The Spanish version of Homer Simpson, Homero Simpson, has inspired La Marcha de Homero by DJ Iguana

...and remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future!

The colourized trailer from Plan 9 From Outer Space...

Next, on America Has Talent....

Farmer Cecil Dill shows how he can make music with his hands in a 1933 Universal newsreel:



It's a good thing that Joseph Pujol, "Le Petomane", was mostly retired by the time that sound newsreels came to exist. :)

Not that there's anything wrong with that

A handy video guide for men about how to hug other men:

You Done Stomped on My Heart!

My parents might get a kick out of this Lee Hartsfeld post about the New Vinton County Frogwhompers. Lee's also posted MP3 files so you can listen to the bluegrass group's funny songs.

"Canada's Prince of Wails"

On YouTube, someone has attached a slide show to one of Bobby Curtola's minor hits. Hopefully, some YouTuber will post Fortune Teller, Three Rows Over, or another of Curtola's better-known songs...



[He's one of the few prominent people that you may meet who was born in Port Arthur, Ontario, before it was absorbed into Thunder Bay.]

In such matters, I'm a marathoner, not a sprinter

Americans will no doubt be glad to hear that earlier today Joey Chestnut set a new record for munching hot dogs while winning the annual Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest. Joey Chestnut ate 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes, narrowly beating Japanese non-gourmand Takeru Kobayashi (who has been cleaning up in the Nathan's scarf-fest, and other competitive eating contests in recent years).

Here's the contest, as it was broadcast live on ESPN!



And the exciting (?!?) finish:



[I'm just amazed that the ESPN colour commentators can treat this so seriously, while even managing to mention Paris Hilton. Did she practice inhaling hot dogs in the stir?]

[My personal best is 5 1/2 in 15 minutes. Back to training! :) ]

This reminds me of an interesting book that I read earlier this year Eat This Book, by Ryan Nerz, which is all about the world of competitive eating. Believe it or not, there are all sorts of events for competitive eating, where "gurgitators" eat everything from onions to cheesecake to test themselves against each other and the stopwatch.

Mr. Nerz's book is great fun to read, if a little dismaying. Aside from all the odd characters and their stunts (such as eating their way out of a phone booth full of popcorn, he reveals that there is an overseeing body for the "sport", the International Federation of Competitive Eating or IFOCE. Their website has videos of competitions and tables of records.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the scarf-meisters often have obscure technical details in mind. There's the "Belt of Fat Theory", which tries to explain why skinny fellows (such as Mr. Kobayashi) can out-eat stouter types. (The answer seems to be that the stomach muscles and diaphragm can stretch more when they are not encased in fat.)

Since, er, not keeping one's food in is a constant worry, there are handy euphemisms for that sort of thing on the IFOCE trail.

There's "a Roman incident."

There's "a reversal of fortune".

And, my personal favorite, "urges contrary to swallowing".