Awesome Video Of The Day

Backwards Feet Throw It Down

It’s been a rough week, but hey - THANK GOODNESS IT’S FRIDAY, right?! I’d like to send you off on your weekend with something positive and uplifting, something that will make all of your problems seem petty and small and bullshitty in comparison. Your boss might be a jerk, and maybe you can’t quite afford that Crate & Barrel papasan (even though it would look awesome in that spare room), but hey - at least your feet aren’t backwards.

This guy is one of five people in the United States with backwards feet, but you know what? He’s not letting it get him down. Instead, he lugs his boombox out to Venice Beach, dances his ass off and tells his audience they don’t know SHIT about urban street dancing, about how to deal with the disabled, or even about how to deal with their own lives. “The world don’t owe you shit,” he says. “You owe yourself hard work, dedication and self-respect to get what you want in life. Very simple.” And you thought you were just watching some dude with backwards feet dance around all weird. Little did you know you were learning a life lesson.

I just wrote a whole paragraph that I deleted about how he’s a wigger suffering from a Napoleon complex and how someone should challenge him to a race, but then I deleted it because I realized that I found this guy’s story genuinely inspiring. I’ve talked shit about pretty much every video I’ve posted on this blog so far, but I honestly have nothing bad to say about this guy¹. Which means that I will probably never, EVER post anything even remotely inspiring ever again. Inspiration is NOT funny.

(Thanks, Ian)

¹ Other than the fact that the close-up shots that don’t show his legs make him look like a totally normal douchebag that I would be perfectly comfortable making fun of. Oh - and the fact that he’s probably a little too cocky for his own good. And the fact that he seems like the kind of guy who would take a casual drinking contest WAY too far and fall down shitfaced, and all these people would try to help him up because, you know, he’s disabled, and he’d scream “I’M FINE! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!” But he still wouldn’t be able to get up, and everyone would get really quiet, and he would stumble around for a while and eventually leave the party or bar or whatever, but it would probably be pretty uncomfortable for a little while (unless it was a big, noisy party, in which case nobody would really notice).

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Awesome Video Of The Day

Slide Owns Kid… Twice

I’ll admit it: yesterday was a little rough. Racism, stereotypes, puppets… it wasn’t for everyone, and several commenters made it abundantly clear that they didn’t think Chuck Knipp’s portrayal of southern black women was very funny. Today, I’d like to make up for it with a video of something I’m pretty sure we can all get behind: parents laughing at their injured, sobbing children.

I’m not a parent, but I’m pretty sure that openly laughing at your child after they do something stupid is a good rule of thumb. It sends a very clear message: “You have room for improvement.” Sure, you could rush to his side and tell him that he did a great job of climbing that slide, but you’d both know that wasn’t true. That would be a lie, and while it might temporarily boost his self-esteem, recent studies have shown that it would probably actually harm him in the long run.

Moral of the story? Laugh at your children when they hurt themselves and they will be very successful. Like they’ll grow up and become lawyers and politicians. That IS what you want, ISN’T IT?

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It’s time for another edition of the feature which provides you with essential news and analysis about vitally important topics of the utmost relevance to you. Opposite Day! Let’s begin…

Hat’s Off: Garth Brooks (whose 1997 Central Park concert was mistaken by me for a terrifying redneck invasion of New York City) has donated his trademark black cowboy hat (shown at right) to the Smithsonian Institution, where it will presumably be showcased as an article of national historical significance, somewhere between an original copy of the Declaration of Independence and Abe Lincoln’s buttplug collection. (In a related story, Chris Gaines’s eyeliner pencil was donated to the dumpster behind the taco truck in the Smithsonian parking lot.)

Marsters of the Homoverse: Actor James Marsters, formerly of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, got a little squeamish about some “Brokeback to the Future”-style action he engaged in while shooting the BBC sci-fi show Torchwood:

[Marsters] shared an on-screen smooch with openly gay actor John Barrowman for the hit show, but Barrowman claims Marsters wasn’t entirely comfortable with their man-on-man action. He says, “After the scene he snogged (kissed) his girlfriend to re-establish his masculinity.”

One little homoerotic kiss and he runs screaming to his girlfriend? Sounds like somebody has some issues about his sexual identity. Personally, I’m so confident in my masculinity that I had sex with like 10 guys before I even had breakfast this morning, just to prove how straight I am. Lightweight!

Put That in Your Toad and Smoke It: Desperate for new ways to fight the tedium of living in a relatively free, safe, prosperous, non war-torn country, American young people have begun experimenting with smoking the extracted venom of the Sonoran Desert toad, according to police. This novel method of self-medication is believed to have been discovered only after a rigorous experimental process during which the inventors had no reaction to the following:

• Poo-huffing
• Toejam snorting
• Antifreeze footbaths
• Poison oak brownies
• Tampon and banana sandwiches
• Dirt smoothies
• Scorpion enemas
• Licking old guys’ wallets
• Drinking pot
• Smoking wine
• Looking at pictures of sheep

Awesome Video Of The Day

Shirley Q. Liquor Goes To K-Mark

WARNING: Today’s video IS not FUNNY in any way, shape or form. It portrays hurtful racist stereotypes, and although it does so in an entertaining voice I can assure that it IS not FUNNY. I can’t speak for my fellow bloggers (I’m pretty sure that Swaim is a card-carrying Klan member), but I can tell you that I personally DOn’t THINK THIS VIDEO IS FUNNY.

Okay? Okay.

Shirley Q. Liquor is a character that was created by Chuck Knipp, a drag comedian who is also an ordained chaplain, registered nurse, and active member of the ACLU and Libertarian Party. On top of all this, he somehow manages to find the time to caricature southern black women and put it up on YouTube. Impressive!

His live performances have been protested several times, apparently, but I can’t figure out why. Maybe they’re picketed by people who hate the ACLU, or people who really hate drag comedians. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that he PERFORMS IN BLACKFACE. I don’t know. People can be so touchy.

While his critics call him a bigot, Knipp defends himself by saying he’s “lancing the boil of institutionalized racism.” I know I’m playing with fire by putting this question forward, but here goes nothing: What do YOU think?

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Awesome Video Of The Day

Skaters Rule, Bikers Drool

If you’re like me, you don’t really like watching anything more than 10 seconds long. That can make things difficult sometimes, but as this video shows, a lot can happen in 10 seconds. Be sure to watch it with the sound on. That’s really important.

If you get into a fight at a skatepark and you whip the other kid with a branch, that’s pretty bad. But if you whip a kid with a branch, get hit with a skateboard and collapse to the ground crying, well, I don’t even know what that is to be honest. Viral video infamy, I guess.

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Well that felt a little rushed. Hindsight is 20/20 and everything, but I wonder whether Tim Kring didn’t miscalculate when he rewrote this episode as an impromptu season finale. Instead of leaving a bunch of threads hanging sort in a sort of enormous cliffhanger, he’s instead capped them off in a really unsatisfying way. In my mind, this actually provides far less incentive to tune in for the next season – whenever that may occur.

My biggest criticism of the episode is that we still don’t have a terribly good explanation for why Adam wants to destroy humanity. It feels lazy to chalk this up to insanity, yet what other information do we have? With his biblical name and explicit references to God and his flood, it feels like the show’s writers were intending to create something much grander with Adam. But in the end all we got was a vague speech about wars and plagues, before concluding that the world would be better off without humans. Humans suck - there’s no getting around that - but the inner-grade-school-teacher in me really wants Adam to show his work here, instead of just blurting out the answer.

Also ruined by being rushed: the Noah-Claire reunion. What could have been a timeless piece of slap-stick comedy got compressed down into one of the weirdest two minutes I’ve seen on TV. The dialog was weird, the timing was weird, and the reactions were weird. It was all weird. The whole scene could have been acted out by monkeys on a trampoline and come off more fluidly. What a wasted opportunity.

Other things:

Mohinder, knowing that the world’s most dangerous man is in his apartment and is holding his adopted daughter hostage, decides that he can handle it on his own. I’ve been joking all season about Mohinder’s growing stupidity, but this is actually insane. Did he think even for a second of telling Bob about this? Doesn’t Bob have guys with guns at his disposal? Or an old black lady who can breathe fire or something?

If Mohinder wasn’t bluffing when he analyzed Sylar’s blood, we now know that Sylar had a strain of the Shanti virus, specifically the same strain they used to “cure” Niki. This seems reasonable – Sylar was held in a Company facility in Mexico – but it again raises the question: what was Sylar doing down in Mexico? Why was he saved, then infected, then hidden? Given all the other crap going on this episode, I guess it’s probably better that they didn’t try to shoe-horn this explanation in. Still, what point did Sylar serve to the story this season?

Unintentionally Funny Moment Number One: Maya to Sylar: “You lied to me!?”

When last we saw Parkman, he didn’t know where Victoria Pratt was. This episode, he returns from Maine, where he evidently found her house with ease. Adam and Peter found her really easily last episode as well. This is ridiculous. Did she go into hiding as a TV weatherperson?

Elle really backpedaled away from becoming an interesting character this episode. Nothing terribly complex or deep about this one: all she wants is her Daddy’s approval. Now that I think about it, there’s actually a lot of father-issue stuff in Heroes. What did Tim Kring’s dad do to him as a child? I’m picturing a pickup truck rolling down a lonely desert highway when Tim’s father pulls over, tell his son to get out and says, “Boy, if you don’t create a moderately successful comic-based serial drama on network television, you are nothing to me.”

Unintentionally Funny Moment Number Two: The picture of Bob holding up a fish. The only thing that would make him any less menacing of an evil mastermind would be if there was a picture of him splashing water on the Haitian in one of those peddle boats.

I’m still not too sure about Peter’s motives; i.e. how does he think he’s going to rescue Caitlin from the future, by changing it? I wasn’t entirely sure I understood this correctly, yet in this very episode, Adam actually confirmed Peter’s motives for both his benefit and the viewers. It still didn’t make a lick of sense, but to Adam’s credit, he did manage to keep a straight face the whole time.

Unintentionally Funny Moment Number Three: Parkman riding Nathan across the country, bareback.

The employees of Primatech Paper are really good at not noticing things. Two dudes stroll into the Primatech Paper warehouse and no-one questions them. Then another dude appears unconscious on the floor beside them with a sword, and no-one bats an eye. If the Primatech employees are in on the conspiracy, shouldn’t they be doing something to stop everyone from strolling into the ultra-secret vault? And if they’re not, why are they so non-chalant? At my office, work stops for hours every time someone gets new office supplies. How on earth these people didn’t notice the parade of men who were armed, flying, or Japanese is beyond me.

Unintentionally Funny Moment Number Four: When Molly can’t find a person it sounds like someone trying to start an engine that won’t turn over. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick.

For everyone sitting on the edge of their seat, anxiously waiting to find out the fate of Micah’s backpack, you can sleep easy now. It’s OK. I have nothing else to say about this subplot.

Ok, one thing. If a building explodes while Niki’s in it, and no-one’s around to care, does it make a sound?

Unintentionally Funny Moment Number Five: “Sylar’s gone; my dad is going to kill me.”

Special Cliffhanger of next season’s Heroes Analysis!:

Sylar will discover that his powers, impressive though they may be, can be enhanced with the power of spinach. He uses this knowledge to defend his willowy girlfriend from the local town bully.

There’s a new reality dating show coming out, and if these photos are any indication, the bachelorette really digs sex.

Her name is Calpernia Addams. She’s been a showgirl, an actress, and, oh, one more thing, she used to be a dude.

Yarp. Transamerican Love Story will premiere on LOGO and feature eight men courting one transgender woman. Unfortunately, LOGO just doesn’t have sound commercial instincts because all the contestants will know about Calpernia’s former status as a man before the show even starts. Personally, I would have preferred springing the news on a bunch of redneck suitors after a big sloppy kiss. But I guess LOGO wanted to go a different way. Something about showing that transgender relationships are a normal part of society. Personally, I think it’s unnatural. I like my women to have a cock and balls the way God intended.

Oh, and this just in, the FOX network is in production on a new series called Who Wants To Marry Calpernia Addams’ Penis?

Awesome Video Of The Day

Goodbye, Dignity

Last week’s Daily Nooners were marginally classy by Cracked.com standards. We explored different cultures (Japan, Canada and China), we looked at the occasionally baffling world of haute couture… it was like a barely-literate New Yorker or something, but it was also a litmus test to figure out if the Cracked Blog was capable of carrying itself with a touch of class and worldliness. Everything was going great for a minute: People were talking about socialized medicine and martial arts, discussing our cultural differences in a polite and generally agreeable manner. You could feel the winds of change blowing, a new, more sophisticated day dawning on the horizon…

Then some guy named “Choocher” showed up and started talking about “little asian baby balls.”

This is why we can’t have nice things. I hope you all enjoy this video of a girl barfing all over herself in zero gravity.

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If we didn’t know that Heroes was ending for the season next episode, this would have been a relatively satisfying episode. We got to find out a bit more about the Company and Adam Monroe, there was a modest amount of gunplay, and one of the Wondertwins got butchered. That ticks off a lot of check boxes. But knowing that we’ve only got 42 minutes of Heroes left this season, it’s hard not to feel like things are getting a bit rushed. The plague that threatens the world just doesn’t feel terribly menacing yet, there’s still a billion unanswered questions about Adam Monroe and the Company, and Sylar has been sidelined for most of the season. In the (potential) final episode next week, these topics are either going to be handled quickly, or not at all. That feels like kind of a rip. At first glance, the only ones we have to blame for this are the striking writers, and by extension, Communism. However, here at Cracked, our editors encourage us to take the long view, so I’m also going to blame George W. Bush, Rich Hollywood Jews, and my parents.

Things we now know:
How did Adam know exactly where Victoria Pratt was? Everything we knew about her suggested that she had gone deep into hiding, and very few people knew where she was. I’ll guess that the Nightmare man read Angela Petrelli’s mind and told Adam about it, even though we haven’t seen any direct evidence that the two are co-operating. Still, it beats my other theory, which centered around an edited scene of Adam and Peter Googling her.

We still don’t know whether it was Bob or Mohinder that decided to save Bennet’s life, although both are aware he pulled a Lazarus. The big question here of course is what form the inevitable father daughter reunion will take when Claire and Noah cross paths again. I’m personally hoping that it’s some kind of Three’s Company-esque situation, where having both had their memories erased by the Haitian, the two meet on a blind date. They immediately hit it off, and are only moments away from a passionate kiss, when they’re interrupted by Matt Parkman, who’s now their landlord.

Micah and his cousins are back, and take part in one of the most inane stories I’ve ever seen on television – the Great Backpack Caper. I understand that there have to be some lighthearted moments in a show that features such grave threats to the world, but this is taking things a bit far. Last year Hiro and Ando’s hijinx managed to lighten the mood of the show without coming off as contrived or trivial. Micah’s cousin (I’ve completely forgotten her name) has gotten a pretty raw deal. To be the worst new cast character in a field that also includes West and the Wondertwins is both astounding and shameful.

Speaking of everyone’s favorite Hondurans, a couple weeks ago I said I’d tolerate their return to the show once they finally did something. Technically they didn’t actually do anything this episode, though fortunately for us, someone did do something to them, in the form of a knife to the abdomen. Alejandro’s ambush of Sylar while armed with nothing more than a wispy mustache was woefully ill-advised.

Incidently, watching Sylar smooth-talk Typhoid Maya is really unpleasant to watch. It feels a little bit like watching old people flirt.

I’m a little fuzzy on how Peter intends to save Caitlin. How exactly does he think that changing the future will save the girl that he left there? For a plot device as overused as time travel, you’d think someone would have figured out by now how to use it properly. I’d suggest writers should steer well clear from using time travel in their stories. Aside from some very specific exceptions - e.g: stories where characters from Star Trek : The Next Generation travel back in time to take twentieth century fan fiction writers back to the future with them - I never use time travel in my own work any more.

It’s nice to see Heroes has finally gotten its teeth back. These last three episodes have booted the first six right in their collective crotch. Although one might suspect that the impending writers strike caused the show’s creators to accelerate the pacing for the abbreviated season, I don’t think that’s what’s happened here. As I understand it, only one episode was retooled to be a potential season finale, and that’s still to come. So this abrupt change from tedious death march to fast paced roller coaster of intrigue was planned from the very start of the season. It’s almost like the writers forgot everything they knew about pacing. One can only guess what the rest of this season would look like if it wasn’t interrupted. Eight episodes of Maya & Alejandro in a hot air balloon anyone?

One thing I really enjoyed about this particular episode was its limited scope. Only three subplots were present this time, with one of them taking up the vast majority of the screen time. This felt like a much better arrangement than past episodes this season, where five or more separate subplots got juggled back and forth, none getting more than a few minutes of screen time. I’d even tolerate the Wondertwins for half an hour, if by the end of it they finally did something.

More things we learned: (after the jump)

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