The Hooksexup Video Blog: Deep, Deep Inside The World of Online Video

...I was debating with myself over whether to put up a video of London hipsters dancing to "Thriller" on the subway -- oh boy! another "Thriller" parody! jaded hipsters recreating 1980s stuff! -- when I came across this second video; actual authentic weird stuff from the 80s. ...It's the Japanese new wave band "The Plastics," performing their song "Top Secret Man" on SCTV, back in the day... Featuring: penguins! pancakes! pool toys! Sweet.





Oh, fine. ...Below is the "Thriller" video too. Honestly, I feel like such a prostitute sometimes. Okay, so yeah, it's a funny video. But it also reminds me of why I got sick of living in big cities, like London... or New York. Here's this weird, funny thing happening, and everyone's dominant reaction is, "Oh god; weird hipsters doing crap. Let me just ignore them and try to read my book on the subway." I guarantee you that if random strangers started dancing to "Thriller" on the streets down here in New Orleans, they would not be ignored. Everyone would either start dancing with them... or would beat the fuck out of them. And either way would be good.

My alternate title for this blog was the fairly predicatable "Food Fight!" Meh. Anyway, like I said... it's a history of modern warfare since World War II, told entirely using food. ("Sushi" = Japan. "Hamburgers" = America. "Kimchi" = Korea. Etc, etc... You dig?)

It's fun, and yet profoundly disturbing at the same time. Take that, Matzoh! Oh, wait. ...Those are the Jews. Yikes. Never mind.

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Update: ...I was watching this video again, and it's bizarre that it took a video of animated food to make me realize this, but... modern wars can no longer be won. Crazy. If you watch the video, World War II is the last war fought with "conventional warfare," and the last war with an actual clear winner. Every war since then has used some modification of a nuclear threat and/or terrorism. And every war since then has been a stalemate.

Korea = stalemate.

Vietnam = stalemate, hypothetical loss for the U.S., although we could have possibly won if we'd been willing to absolutely decimate North Vietnam... which, to our very, very, very minor credit, we were not quite willing to do. (And if you ever want to get really freaked out, read some history books about Vietnam. President Nixon would get drunk, late at night, and order the army to nuke North Vietnam. And the generals would be like: "Sure, sure... we'll get right on that, Mr. President." And then they wouldn't. And when Nixon sobered up, the next day, he'd be like, "I didn't tell you to nuke Vietnam, did I?" And the generals would be like: "No! Of course not!" Anyway. Absolutely terrifying.)

Cold War = stalemate.

Middle East, fight over Israel = stalemate.

first Iraq war = technically a "victory," although it led to the current... stalemate.

Afghanistan = stalemate.

second Iraq war = stalemate.

...Totally fascinating, and I never really thought about this before. You can win a war tactically, now; but the use of personal terrorism makes it impossible to actually "win," even if you occupy the other country. And the possesion of nukes makes it difficult to even fight a war tactically, because if you go too far... kablammo!

Anyway, it's a good argument against not just the Iraq war, but against any future war... because, duh... even if we "win," we won't be able to win. Craziness.)

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(Additional, bonus, fairly unrelated story about me: I was at this bar the other day, flirting with this random girl, and I got really bored, 'cause she was boring. So I just started quizzing her about random historical events. "Hey, when did World War II start and end? The Civil War? The American Revolution?"* These were the easiest questions I could think of. She couldn't get any of them right. So I left.)

...Here's news footage from 1970, in Oregon, of an eight-ton whale being blown up with a half ton of explosives... with fairly predictable bad results. Just because "Tom & Jerry" do it doesn't mean that it's a good idea, fellas! Not all problems can be solved with dynamite.

1) "Freddie Got Fingered," starring Tom Green. Trust me when I say that I did not have to agonize over picking the worst movie ever made. Please allow me to quote my old dating blog:


So there you go.





2) "Hello Again!" starring Shelley Long. I'll never know how I got roped into seeing this movie. I was pretty young at the time, and I think I didn't have total control over things like "What movies my family went to see." Anyway, if you've ever said to yourself: "Hey, remember Shelley Long's screechy, neurotic, unfunny character from 'Cheers'? Man, if only there was a two-hour movie version of that!" -- then this is the movie for you.





3) "Paycheck," starring Ben Affleck. This is an extremely new addition to the list, because I accidentally saw a half hour of it last weekend on "TBS." Wow. Okay, so, there's like this scene in the movie where Ben Affleck is being held captive in FBI headquarters, right? Are you with me so far? And he's surrounded by ten guys. So, the lead FBI guy, for no reason, lights a cigarette -- and this is the genius part -- he lights it directly beneath one of those fire-alarm sprinkler things. Even though this movie was made, like, two years ago, and no one has smoked a cigarette inside a federal building for the last twenty years. So, duh, the sprinkler goes off, and in the ensuing confusion, Ben Affleck escapes from his shackles, beats up ten FBI guys -- because they're all so startled by the water -- and escapes from the center of FBI headquarters.

This is the same level of thought that went into the entire movie. The movie, by the way, seems to involve time travel, and having your memory erased for three years, and it's one of those movies where even though Ben Affleck is just a "average joe" guy at the beginning, within five minutes he's completely adapted to the whole time travel, having his memory erased, being chased by FBI agents thing, and is making jokes and getting in car chases and beating people up. I can't even adapt to ordering something in a restaurant that quickly. Anyway, I'm sorry to talk about this movie for so long, but it was really bad.





4) "Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones," starring whiny Hayden Christiansen. Thank god, I've already beaten the badness of this movie to death in several other blogs. For example: here.







5) "The Real Cancun," starring a bunch of jerks. This was the equivalent of watching a two hour-long version of "The Real World," except that you had to pay money for the privilege. 'Nuff said. By the way, my going to see this movie was my friend Jeremy's fault.





6) "White Noise," starring Michael Keaton. ...And seeing this movie was my friend Tiffany's fault. It was one of those, "Hey, it's Friday night, we've got nothing to do, should we go and see a terrible movie or stay home and commit mass suicide?" kind of evenings. And so we saw this movie. It's a horror movie, it stars Michael Keaton, it makes no sense at all, and Michael Keaton dies at the end. I just intentionally spoiled the ending for you, so that you will never ever want to see it; which, trust me, you don't.





7) "The Thin Red Line," directed by "Captain Pretentious" -- Mr. Terrence Malick -- and starring Sean Penn and a lot of people doing pretentious voice-overs. This trailer features the one good line in the movie, said by the evil Sean Penn character: "...In this world, a man alone ain't nothin'. ...And there ain't no other world but this one." That's a good line, and Sean Penn does a good job of acting here. Everyone else does a bad job of acting.

I also hate this movie because it came out at the same time as "Saving Private Ryan," an actual really good movie about World War II (if you ignore the 'present day' scenes at the beginning and the end.) All my friends liked "The Thin Red Line," and hated "Saving Private Ryan," which drove me crazy. No, guys, no. This movie is terrible... It features five minute-long pointless shots of fish and trees, to show that it's deep. And it features voice-over narration like, "...Maybe there's just one big soul, and we're all a part of it." And the central message of this movie is, "War is bad, because people die." Thank you for pointing that out, Mr. Terrence Malick! Are you kidding me? Were my friends all stoned when they saw this? Anyway, I'm sorry to go on for so long, but I really hated this movie.





8) "The Matrix: Revolutions," starring, "Whoa. Dude. Spoon." I'm going to spoil this movie on purpose too, so that you'll never see it, although you've probably already seen it. Keanu Reeves dies at the end. And Trinity dies in the lamest, most pointless way possible. (Whoops! I fell on something! And it's sharp!) Keanu Reeves's character acquires magical powers for no reason halfway through the movie, and the directors never bother to explain why. This movie was so awful that it managed to make me sort of dislike the first "Matrix" movie, which up until that point, I had loved.





9) "Batman and Robin," starring the artist formerly known as George Clooney. Man, I bet George would like to erase this movie from his C.V., huh? ...Anyway, this movie features the line, "It's the hockey team from hell!" within the first three minutes. Also in the first three minutes: Batman and Robin (the Boy Wonder) fly into outer space for no particular reason, then float miles back to earth just using their capes, and land as if nothing had ever happened at all. Plausible-ish! And the movie doesn't get any better from there.

And also in the movie, the bad guy, Mr. Freeze, needs to raise a bunch of money in order to save his wife's life, and he has invented this amazing freeze ray. ...So, instead of -- I don't know, selling the freeze ray for a bunch of money and saving his wife, he decides to become a supervillain, and freezes the entire city. Oh. That makes sense. I mean, I know this isn't Shakespeare or nothin', but come on! That's just dumb.





10) "Contact," starring Jodie Foster, unfortunately. Let me put it this way. There's a scene in this movie where Jodie Foster is in a spaceship. And they give her a cyanide death-pill to take, in case something goes really wrong. As soon as she got the pill, my friend Tiffany and I started screaming -- "Just take the pill!" -- and we didn't stop screaming it for the next fifteen minutes, until the movie was over. No one else in the theater minded, because this movie is terrible. Oh, and the alien at the end? It's her dad.

--Oliver Miller

...So, speaking of the film "Meet the Spartans," as I did in my previous Britney blog, I don't really go to see movies so much anymore, because I no longer have a social life (my new cat keeps me plenty busy, thanks) ...but if I did go to see movies, I would run, not walk, to avoid "Meet the Spartans."

According to Slate's Josh Levin, quote, "This was the worst movie I've ever seen, so bad that I hesitate to label it a 'movie' and thus reflect shame upon the entire medium of film." Huh. Harsh words. But just from seeing the trailers, I agree:








...I think if I see these trailers even once more, I will spontaneously combust, or start bleeding out the ears, or something. ...So, it's, like, a comedy? ...And are those... jokes? How are those "jokes"? ...Aren't they just... references to... pop culture things? Spiderman! Donald Trump! You Got Served! Scarface! Penguin! Britney!

God, makers of "Meet the Spartans," I didn't realize that it was all so easy. From now on, I will write this column as follows:

"Lindsay Lohan!"

"Talk to the hand!"

"Living la Vida Loca!"

Um... "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome!"

"Degenerative Bone Disease!"

No. Those last two jokes were bad, right?

Anyway, in honor of "Meet the Spartans," I will be back later on with a list of the ten worst movies ever made. Because I love me some lists. But for the moment, I have to go to school, since I am, apparently, a "law student," in addition to being the writer of a "satirical video blog."

More later.

Well, early this morning, Britney Spears got hauled off again to the hospital by police, and... Hey! I won the gambling pool! I picked January 31st!

But no. That's not really funny. Or is it?

I was thinking about Britney, as I sometimes do, and I was thinking of those godawful "Meet the Spartans" commericals that show her getting kicked into a bottomless pit of death, and I was thinking that maybe I should write something else about her, so I typed "britney spartans" into the search engine on YouTube, and I got this following video, shot by some teenagers inside the movie, with all the queasy graininess, and unpleasantness, of a snuff film, or the latest Al Queda video:





Ha! She got kicked into the pit and now she's dead! And her baby too! That's funny! Or is it?

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It's weird to me that there is such an outpouring of sympathy for, say, Heath Ledger, and none at all for Britney, who, despite everything else that you might say about her -- and I know that there's plenty, believe me -- is, after all, a twenty-seven year old single mother.

But then, Heath Ledger was "cool." For the most part. He was in good movies (for the most part), he dressed the right way, he said the right things. And then he died of a drug overdose, or suicide, depending on your point of view.

Britney, despite her panicked attempts to act cool, is "uncool." Her music sucks, she's from Louisiana (of all places!), she's dumb, she dresses badly, she's a bad mom, she's a drug addict. And she's probably going to end up dying of a drug overdose, or suicide, depending on your point of view.

Ha! That's funny! Hey, let's kick her down into a bottomless pit and watch her die!

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The "Leave Britney Alone!" guy, for all of his insanity, had a point. (And no, I've never watched the video. There are some things that I won't do, not even for this job.) And yeah, his point was undercut by him being a completely insane celebrity obsessed wack-job. For sure. But leaving Britney alone? Might that not be, you know, kind of a good idea?

But of course, we're not going to leave her alone. We've never even considered leaving her alone. We'll follow her to the hospital -- and "E!" and "Star Magazine," will follow her wherever, to the grave, if need be. We'll follow her to her funeral, and shoot coverage of that, and do endless recaps, and follow her children around, and shoot made-for-TV movies about her life and death.

"But she was asking for it," you say. "She's rich and famous. She could have the world's best life, but instead she keeps on fucking up. God, give me some of that money. Give me some of that fame. Fucking Britney, that untalented wench, she doesn't deserve it."

Yeah. You're right, in a way. She doesn't deserve it. She shouldn't be rich or famous. But she was an uneducated seventeen year-old girl when she became famous. Do you think, maybe, that she didn't know what she was getting into? Do you think, maybe, that she wasn't ready for it?

Do you think maybe, that if she could do it all over again, she might give it all back?

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Some books and films and stories have subtext, hidden meanings that you have to root out. The "Meet the Spartans" clip, above, as far as I can tell, has no subtext, only text. And here's the text, as far as I can tell: she sucks, she's lame, I hope she dies. Let's watch her die, and laugh.

...Ha. ...That's funny.

No it's not. Enough. From where the sun now sets I will write no more about Britney forever.