Tag Archives: Banksy

Videos killed the internet star.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Okay, I’ll admit that title makes no sense. Whatever. Some days you feel like being clever and coming up with good to decent to passable titles for your blog posts and some days the things on your mind CAN ONLY BE EXPRESSED IN ALL CAPS.

I’ll get back to you on what kind of day this is.

Anyway, some videos that I’ve come across in the past few days on the internet (yes, I’ll admit that these are all a few days old):

1. One of the new promos for Conan O’Brien’s upcoming show on TBS (debuting next month). This is just excellent stuff:

And it looks expensive-ish. Finally, with the addition of Conan, TBS’s tagline of “very funny” is actually becoming accurate.

2. The latest episode of Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, this time interviewing Bruce Willis.

…which you can find here. I don’t dislike this little gimmick that appears online every now and then on Funny Or Die, but it’s kind of one note. That said, Willis’ episode feels especially great to me. Why? Just cause.

3. That dirty/hot/bizarre sex scene between Mary Louise Parker and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Zack Morris!) on Weeds recently. I don’t watch Weeds but I do love that several people emailed me a link to this. Thanks, fellow internet weirdos.

That’s just the preamble to it all. You can find it talked about here and actually see it here (at around the 23 minute mark).

3 1/2. I’m really starting to hate the name Zack in any and all of it’s forms. No offense, but if you’re going to go name your kid Zack, then fuck you. It’s not 1987 anymore.

from here.

3 3/4. People doing condom tricks on youtube. Yes.

4. The intro to The Simpsons, as story boarded recently by Banksy:

Bottom line: It was pretty great. And all over the internet already. Shockingly it happened on major network TV when similar issues can’t be addressed on the cover of major magazines. Also, probably the best thing to happen on The Simpsons in, what… ten years? Jesus. Why not Banksy story board an entire episode next.

5. For cross promotional reasons, Michael J. Fox recreates the Back To The Future teaser trailer for the Scream Awards on Spike. And also because it’s the 25th anniversary of the film:

Back To The Future nostalgia is definitely something I can get behind, but that Spike thing just seems so sad. I’m just amazed that it’s taken a quarter of a century for us to actually see some of the footage of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly. I mean, shit, this isn’t news. We all knew that he was originally cast in the movie and did five weeks on it. Even Fringe referenced this. Of course, the footage scene in that clip floating around the internet is just meh, but the wowza really hit me, like a lot of people, when we saw that alternate fading away photograph:

The development of strange things.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

The U.S. government succeeded in ridding Alaska’s Rat Island of rats but may have poisoned forty-one bald eagles in the process. As Iraqi marshlands dried out, poisonous snakes were heading for the cities. House cats, which may have been domesticated in part because they are adorable, are originally from the Middle East. Biologists at Ludwig Maximilians University were surprised to discover that male seed shrimp have been creating sperm lengthier than their own bodies for at least 100 million years. “We would expect the development of these strange things,” said the team leader, “to stop at a certain point.” Panasonic engineers released a soft, fleshlike remote control that pulsates and becomes rigid when switched on. Italian urologists increased the size and improved the function of test subjects’ penises with a device called the Andropenis. Researchers identified the toxic herb that caused ancient Sardinians to die with sardonic grins. A small meteorite injured an adolescent German. Life could persist on Earth for a billion years longer than previously expected.

One in six Americans admits to having peed the pool. A Georgia Tech engineer created software that endows unmanned aerial drones with a sense of guilt. Scolded dogs look guiltier if they are actually innocent. Most people, were they to need a transplant, would not want to receive the heart of a murderer. A Spanish design student created a speech-recognition pillow into which the restive confide their worries, which are then printed out in the morning. In the Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram, a man discovered a color-changing frog, which some then venerated with prayers. “It is a bit unusual,” said zoologist Oommen V. Oommen. “I will collect it for study.” A vixen living on the Rhineland estate of Count Rudolf von Kesselstatt was found to have stolen more than one hundred shoes. A man in Munich beat another man with a swan, and in Dorset, England, three young men stomped a fawn to death. The Vatican said that fewer people were confessing their sins. A blue whale was heard singing near New York City.

The passages above are from the “Findings” section of the August 2009 issue of Harper’s and was written by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi. The pictures are from here and here and here and there.


What are you looking at?

Posted by Marco Sparks on

It’s getting late on a Saturday night on a holiday weekend. You should be out doing something fun. But if you’re not, you’re home and you’re tired, right? Enjoy a little Banksy and relax…

“Is graffiti art or vandalism? That word has a lot of negative connotations and it alienates people, so no, I don’t like to use the word ‘art’ at all.”

“I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said “that’s clever, it’s an anagram of art” and I had to pretend I’d known that all along.”

“Some people want to make the world a better place. I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don’t like it, you can paint over it!”