Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

Freakdom of Speech

Patrick Bristow's Freakdom of Speech is a satire of the diversity of dumb to be found in America.  The first episode is America on Obama:

Read NewTeeVee's review here.

The Gob Act: A Tribute to Arrested Development

Although I'd normally post this video to my tumblelog Freedom to Dither, I am such a fan of Arrested Development that I thought i'd post it here instead.  So here The Gob Act: A Tribute to Arrested Development:

Heart by The Richter Scales

At The Crunchies, The Richter Scales debuted a brand new song, Heart. In a post at TechCrunch, Jason Klncaid says the song "depicts a hilariously overoptimistic startup and pokes fun at just about everything in the tech industry, from overhyped launches to ridiculous product ideas."  Here is a video of the performance:

Other songs from The Richter Scales include Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and Here Comes Another Bubble.

Best videos of 2008

Continuing my end-of-year wrap ...

What follows are the top ten videos I've embedded either here on Freedom to Differ or on Freedom to Dither this year.  This list is very subjective - these videos are not necessarily the most viewed or most commented on, nor are they necessarily the funniest or the most original, but they are my ten favourite videos from 2008.  However, before I list the the top ten, here are posts that contained the runners-up ...

Serious videos and videos that make a point - An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube (another fascinating video from Michael Wesch); From Little Things, Big Things Grow (GetUp's song for reconciliation); Music 2.0 (a video from music futurist Gerd Leonhard explaining what music 2.0 is and how the music industry should change to adapt to 'web 2.0' principles); Some EU politicians support file sharing (the Greens EFA party of the European Parliament publicly expressed their support for file sharing on the internet).

Political - Candidates on Colbert (Clinton, Obama and Edwards all on the same show); Some election themed videos (one funny, one a bit more serious); US election videos (my five favourite viral videos from the US election); A post on the US election (Slate V makes fun of CNN's election night holograms); Keith Olbermann's "homoerotic" obsession with Bill O'Reilly (Red Eye's Greg Gutfeld gets angry); Palin on Saturday Night Live (at least Sarah Palin was a good enough sport to appear on Saturday Night Live); It's just a flesh wound! (inspired use of Monty Python's Holy Grail to highlight Hillary Clinton's struggling campaign); A duet (a Juno-style duet between Clinton and Obama); Changes (Hugh Atkin's first big US political video).

Advertisements - Lenovo parodies MacBook Air ad (a send-up of the MacBook Air in favor of Lenovo's own X300); Levi's viral hit (an effective viral marketing strategy from Levi Strauss); My favourite Super Bowl ad (a great ad from Coca Cola); I don't get it (I was very confused by the advertising strategy of the Commonwealth Bank).

Funny - I want more porn (a ballad about porn, spam and pop-up windows); Four videos (a random collection of videos I found funny); JibJab 2008 Year in Review (no list is complete without one or two JibJab videos); Twitter's downfall (another very funny adaptation of the Hitler video); But That's Not My Point... (a funnt rant written, directed and starring Auggie Smith and Patrick Sauer); TubeDeeDo (a funny music video from the The Kings of Myspace); My Name is URL (a cute video parodying My Name is Earl); Happy Easter (this is one violent Easter Bunny); Corey Delaney's other party (another Hugh Atkin video); The Internet Party (what happens when Google leaves town for the weekend).

Web series - If you don't include Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog, the best web series of the year was The Guild. 

And here is the top ten ...

10. The World Isn't Clear Cut - Perhaps it was because I was a high school and university debater, but I was very taken when this promotional video for the Griffith Organised Debating Society (GODS) aired on Q&A during the year.  (See my original post here.)

9. John McCain gets Barack Roll'd - My favourite US political video from Australian Hugh Atkin.  (See my original post here.)

8. Prop 8 The Musical - An all star video making fun of California's Proposition 8 that banned gay marriage. (See my original post here).

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... by Jack Black

7. Goldfish funeral - a great ad for Channel Bee with a very funny twist you don't see coming.  (See my original post here.)

6. Facebook in reality - Imagining what the world be like if Facebook played out in real life.  (See my original post here.)

5. It's Just Gone - In South Park the internet disappears.  (See my original post here.)

4. JibJab's Time for Some Campaignin' - Although not as good as JibJab's brilliant This Land from four years ago, it was still  the best political video of 2008.  (See my original post here.)

Funny Cartoons at JibJab | Funny Animations at JibJab | Animation Videos at JibJab

3. Yes We Can - The viral sensation of 2008 that captured the mood of America - and indeed the world.  (See my original post here.)

2. The Censored Count - Everytime I see this video I can't help but laugh out loud.  (See my original post here.)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

1. Sarah Silverman is fucking Matt Damon - Without a doubt the funniest viral video of the year.  (See my original post here.)

You should also check out Jimmy Kimmel's response here.

JibJab 2008 Year in Review

JibJab's annual year in review:

Forum: Internet filtering and censorship proposals

Tomorrow (Thursday 27 November) the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre is hosting a forum to explore aspects of the Australian Government's current internet filtering and censorship proposals. The aim of the forum is to "get beyond the more heated claims and counter-claims circulating at present and explore some of the underlying issues and constraints, hopefully giving room for various perspectives and arguments to be considered on their merits". It promises to be an excellent event.  For more details about the forum visit the resource page for the event here.

Stilgherrian will be live blogging the event with others (including myself and Michael Meloni):

A post on the US election

So much has been already written about the extraordinary US election on Tuesday and President-elect Barack Obama's historic and meteoric rise, that I know there is nothing further I could add.  But before I move on and blog about other topics and issues, I thought I'd link to a couple of different things related to the election that have grabbed my attention over the past few days, ranging from the serious to the not so serious.

First up is Judith Warner's poignant piece for the New York Times, "Tears to Remember":

I will admit that back in January, when Barack Obama, in his post-Iowa victory speech, spoke about the “cynics,” the “they” who said “this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose,” he was talking about me.

I will admit that the call of “change” did not speak to me as an achievable goal.

Until it actually came.

On Wednesday, there was a run on newspapers, as voters rushed to grab a tangible piece of the history they’d made. My husband Max and I, unable to find extra copies, brought our own worn papers home to 8- and 11-year-old Emilie and Julia.

Sept. 11, the seismic event that we’d feared would forever form their political consciousness, shaping their world and constricting the boundaries of the possible, had actually been eclipsed, light blotting out darkness, the best of America at long last driving away the demons of fear. We wanted them to see that it was the end of an era.

...

Two images will forever stay in my mind to mark this epoch-breaking Election Day. One is that of Jesse Jackson’s face, drenched in tears, in Chicago’s Grant Park on Tuesday evening.

And the other is a photo that ran in The Times on Wednesday. In it, a black mother and daughter sit on the floor of a church in Harlem. The mother, Latrice Barnes, having heard of Obama’s victory, is doubled up in tears; her daughter, Jasmine, is reaching a tentative hand up to soothe her. To me, she looks like the future, reaching out to heal the past.

At the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, Latrice Barnes, right, is comforted by her daughter Jasmine Redd, 5. (David Goldman for The New York Times)

It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it’s a matter of what has come before. The young people joyfully frolicking in front of the Bush White House never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama’s victory and Jackson’s tears.

This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the “values voters” around whose sensibilities we’ve had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.

The election brought the return of a country we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.

For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.

Read more here.  It really is a new day:

Although the world is very pleased that Barack Obama will be the next US President, it is also appropriate to reflect and pay tribute to John McCain, as John Macintyre did in his superb piece for The Times, "John McCain: a man who fought and lost with honour":

I am glad Mr McCain was defeated. By almost every measure, he was the lesser candidate. When the economy faltered, so did he. His claim to greater experience shrivelled in the light of his rival's blinding charisma. McCain was yesterday and Obama is tomorrow.

Yet as the new President heads to the White House in a blaze of adulation, it is worth recalling just how worthy an opponent he faced: history offers few more admirable presidential failures than Mr McCain.

...

A McCain presidency would probably have been divisive, aggressive and dangerously short-lived. He is a flawed figure, but he remains a civilised politician in an age of uncivilised politics. The world is a safer, more hopeful place without John McCain in the White House; but the world is a better place for having men such as him in it.

Read more here (from The Times).  The Weekly Standard also paid tribute to McCain:

In politics, as one suspects in life, no good deed goes unpunished. John McCain staked everything on success in Iraq. He advocated the surge publicly and made the case for it privately. He defended it passionately and intelligently, and was indispensable in beating back critics, shoring up nervous supporters, and keeping enough public support for the surge so the Democratic party's repeated efforts to abort it failed.

The surge worked. It worked better than even its proponents expected. The strategic and moral calamity of an American withdrawal in defeat from the central front in the war on Islamic jihadism was averted. The positive outcome of a reasonably stable, democratic, and friendly Iraq is now in sight. Thanks in large part to John McCain, we did not have a second Vietnam-like humiliation. Thanks in large part to John McCain, the United States is on the verge of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

And as a result of the remarkable progress in Iraq over the past two years--progress whose possibility was scoffed at and whose reality was then denied by all leading Democrats except Joe Lieberman--Iraq faded as an issue in the presidential race. And with it, the critical question of who should be commander in chief also receded. By the fall of 2008, McCain got no credit for one of the great acts of statesmanship by a senator--let alone a senator who was also a presidential candidate--in American history. President Obama will now be able to draw down in an orderly manner, following (we trust) the guidance of Generals Petraeus and Odierno--generals who consulted with McCain often and whose achievement McCain helped make possible.

John McCain said repeatedly that he'd rather lose an election than lose a war. We ended up winning a war, and he ended up losing the election. It's not quite the cosmic injustice of the British electorate rejecting Churchill in 1945--but it's no small injustice either.

Read more here.  Meanwhile Politco is already speculating on who the Republican candidate will be in 2012.  But before we get too obssessed about the next Presidential cycle, Mark Newman has some fascinating maps of the 2008 Presidential election.

There has also been quite a bit written about election night itself.  CNET put together a fun list of the top 10 election tweets worth remembering, including:

7. Los Angeles-based twitterer Bill Palmer noticed that literally everyone caught election fever: homeless guy on Hollywood Blvd with a sign that says "Obama aint the only one who wants change"--now that's clever.

Read the full list here.  And of course, much has been said about CNN's ridiculous holograms:

So, how are we going to kill time online now that the election is over?  Well, Slate has some ideas, including:

Watch CollegeHumor. When all else fails, turn to funny videos. The Web is full of them, and new ones come out every day—just head to Digg, FunnyOrDie, the Onion, or BuzzFeed for the latest and greatest.

One suggestion: If you missed "You Suck at Photoshop," the 20-episode Web series in which a disaffected loser dishes about his miserable life as he tries to teach you how to edit photos, stop reading this and watch it immediately. (Note the mysterious celebrity cameo in the final episode, which just hit the Web last week.) After that, head over to CollegeHumor.com, which for my money produces the funniest videos on the Web. As the name implies, CollegeHumor deftly traverses the line between the clever and the sophomoric—it knows every pot-smoking joke you can think of, but it's also got a mean way with Internet memes. (See Professor Wikipedia or this much-passed-around clip imagining a business meeting of the kind of people who write comments on blogs.) My favorite CollegeHumor series is this incredibly cruel prank-war between two of the site's regular performers. The whole thing's true—these guys really pulled these pranks. They start off innocently enough but over time escalate into a battle so big that it's kind of sad. But mostly it's hilarious.

You can read some Slate's other ideas here, but it seems as though laughter is the way to go:

US election videos

Here are my favourite five viral videos from the US election:

5. Chuck Norris Approved

4. I'm Fucking Obama (if you haven't seen the original on which this video is based, you should watch it first here)

3. Hey Sarah Palin

2. John McCain gets Barack Roll'd

1. JibJab's Time for Some Campaignin'

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

McCain on SNL

With three days left before the election, John McCain makes fun of his situation on Saturday Night Live:

The Sarah Palin gotcha call

According to Politico's Ben Smith, Sarah Palin was only "mildly amused" when a pair of French-Canadian comedians spoke to her impersonating Nicolas Sarkozy:

Sarah Palin's campaign issued an "mildly amused" response to having joined Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy in having been the victim of a prank by a pair of French-Canadian comedians who impersonated Sarkozy on a call with the Alaska governor.

...

"Gov. Palin received a phone call on Saturday from a French Canadian talk show host claiming to be French President Nicholas Sarkozy," emailed spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt. "Gov. Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy, and other celebrities in being targeted by these pranksters. C'est la vie."

Palin didn't say anything particularly compromising in the call, and indeed, wouldn't take the bait when "Sarkozy" said he saw her as a president.

"Maybe in eight years," she said.

It's unclear whether she suspected it was a prank as the call grew increasingly absurd.

Read more here and listen to the audio here.

Some election themed videos

These two US Presidential election themed videos have been viral video hits over the past few days.

The first features Will Ferrell returning to Saturday Night Live as George W Bush giving his endorsement to John McCain and Sarah Palin:

The second asks wassup:

Palin on Saturday Night Live

Sarah Palin made two appearances on Saturday Night Live this weekend:

Sarah Palin opens the show:

The Palin Rap:

But Sarah Palin was not the only political figure to have some fun this weekend - both Barack Obama and John McCain made fun of each other and themselves at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner:

McCain part 1:

McCain part 2:

Obama part 1:

Obama part 2:

 

Twitter's downfall

Another very funny adaptation of this Hitler video.  The problem this time?  Twitter is down:

(Hat tip: Mark Pesce.)

Four videos

Seeing this has been a long, tiring week (well, for me at least), I thought rather than a series of tech or law posts this evening, I'd embed four videos that I find funny.  The first two come from one of my favourite blogs TVNewser and show that newsreaders and their stories can be funny.  The last two are promotions for upcoming movies.  If you have the time or inclination to watch one skip right to the end, as I saved the best for last.

First up is NBC newsreader Brian Williams telling a very strange story that will never be seen on the Nightly News:

Next is a Fox & Friends segment that resulted in a lawsuit.  Here is the background:

A judge ruled yesterday the slander lawsuit brought by Lewiston Middle School superintendent Leon Levesque against Fox News will not go to trial.

The full story goes back to April 2007, when Lewiston Middle School made news because of students leaving a ham sandwich on the table of Somali students to insult their religion. Then, a fake news story came out about the incident, with fake quotes from Levesque, and Fox & Friends picked up on it as if it were real. Brother blog FishbowlNY detailed the whole incident last year.

"So many people are typing in saying, 'you're making this story up,'" said co-anchor Steve Doocy. "No we're not making this up."

Co-anchor Brian Kilmeade responded: "You know I hope we're not being duped."

They were. But as the judge ruled, failure to fully investigate the story, "even when a reasonably prudent person would have done so, is not sufficient to establish reckless disregard."

And here is the clip:

Now here a clip promoting the movie Heckler, featuring comedians recounting experiences with heckler:

And finally here is Ben Stiller directing Robert Downey, Jr. to torture Jack Black for the sake of promoting their upcoming film, Tropic Thunder:

 

But That's Not My Point...

The Daily Tube highlighted this very funny video by written, directed and starring Auggie Smith and Patrick Sauer:

It's just a flesh wound!

An inspired use of Monty Python's Holy Grail to highlight Hillary Clinton's struggling campaign:

More McCain

Here is another video of John McCain on Saturday Night Live:

For a previous video, see here.

Burgundy and Brokaw

Ron Burgundy interviews Tom Brokaw:

McCain is old

On Saturday Night Live John McCain makes fun of his age: "I have the the courage, the wisdom, experience and, most importantly, the oldness necessary [to be president]".

Who is younger than John McCain?

Ok.  We get it.  John McCain is old:

Stephen Spielberg presents: John King

Close Encounters of the magic wall kind:

(Hat tip: Blawg Review editor.)

Bill O'Reilly Flips Out - Dance Remix

Here is another video making fun of Bill O'Reilly's losing his cool when he hosted Inside Edition:

(Hat tip: Blawg Review editor.)

Colbert defends his mentor O'Reilly

Stephen Colbert responds to the leaked footage from earlier in the week of a Bill O’Reilly meltdown:

935 Lies

From Harry Shearer's forthcoming record Songs of the Bushmen:

Hillary's Downfall

is this offensive?  I found it very funny (and I'm a Hillary supporter), but techPresident isn't sure:

OMG! WARNING: Over the top, offensive humor!

There seems to be no limit to the power of the people to use the internet to express themselves politically, artistically, ... you name it. Continuing in my emerging pattern of video show-n-tell, check out Hillary's Downfall. You can watch the video and vote on whether you find it offensive on this Democratic Underground post. I thought it was offensive, but I was laughing too hard to cast my vote.

Really, it is not for children or the feint of heart.

And here is the offending video: