Happy Festive Occasion

White Christmas, as animated by Joshua Held.

From my cousin Matt, who got this from his brother Ken (also my cousin ;-} ).

Just a quick little number for the holidays. Joshua Held animated this in 2002. The music is Irving Berlin's White Christmas as performed by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters in 1953.

I missed posting yesterday due to the usual holiday madness, and I'll be posting lightly until the new year. So a happy generic holiday to you, the viewer, and I hope you all come back in Ought 7.

It's Johnny Reb!

I'm continuing the festive spirit by posting another commercial. This one I found embedded in an article at Radar Online. The article counts down the top ten worst toys ever.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I personally had Number Nine on that list (oh, to be late 70's naive again), Number Eight, the 'Johnny Reb Cannon' was a real hoot of a toy. This commercial from 1961 demonstrates the 30 inch spring loaded civil war cannon replica firing eye-socket sized 'cannon balls' a perfectly gouging 35 feet. It comes with it's own rebel flag (children's secessionist uniforms not included, presumeably), and a theme song including the immortal line "we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home." - says the article,

"For only $11.98, young rebels got a cannon, six cannon balls, a ramrod, and a rebel flag. What better way to permanently maim your little brother while spreading valuable lessons about states' rights?"

The thing that worries me slightly more than the cannon though, is this excessively complex civil war re-enactment (in which the South clearly has the upper hand) being perpetrated by ten year old boys. With all that fire power, could the South Rise Again?

Lest you feel that this commercial is sexist as well as encouraging violence and dangerous anti-unionist sentiments, Remco wants you to know that girls love their toys too.

Thanks to Myya for sending the original article.

Happy Holidays.

An Uncensored Christmas

A Special Box from Saturday Night Live (NSFW: language)

Kelly Z sent around this one. I dug up the uncensored version elsewhere.

Andy Samberg is someone I've been following for a while. He and the rest of the Lonely Island crew are one of the main reasons SNL doesn't suck as much as it used to. On SNL the trio now focus on shorts, often music videos, and they've started to develop some real street cred for the show online (virtual street cred? GTA cred? who knows). Of course, NBC responded by sending cease and desist letters to posters, but they're new to this online game.

This music video featuring Andy and guest host Justin Timberlake, is about the ultimate gift a man can give his woman to show his love is real. Check it out.

This simplifies my Christmas shopping enormously.

Will an Ipod Blend?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

And what better way to celebrate than taking last year's hottest gadget, and sticking it in a blender. Will It Blend is a series of videos produced by Blendtec, makers of the Total Blender, a high end blender that they claim can blend anything. And they've set out to prove it.

Alright, yes. This is a glorified commercial. This video exists only to sell this product. But any nerd will tell you that using a device in a way you're not supposed to for random weird acts of destruction is endlessly satisfying. And Tom Dickson's matter of fact confidence is strangely charming. They've blended all manner of things with this monster, including lightbulbs, golfballs and rakes, and even a complete thanksgiving dinner. There's even a page where you can suggest items for them to blend. It's all very Web 2.0 and Cluetrain Manifesto. Plus blending stuff is cool.

There always seems to be a point where I have to fully disclose things in connection to this video, so this looks like a good time to point out that the embedded video for this is from Revver.com a video sharing site with an ad based revenue model, of which I am an affiliate, which means I make some negligable amount of money when you watch their video through my site. Rest assured that I don't have any further connection with Blendtec (I have a competitor's cheap assed blender at home), nor did I post this video solely for the revenue (trust me, it's not that much). From time to time I will use a Revver link if the video is interesting, and if it exists on more than one vid site and Revver is one of them, I'll use Revver. So now that I've gotten selling out out of the way, and in the second week of active posting, we can all take this dirty feeling and channel it into holiday cheer. And after all, isn't that what Christmas is all about?

Thanks to Voodoo Walters for this link.

UPDATE 12/18/06 9:06 PM
Corrected spelling of 'thanks' in the last sentence. All this filthy lucre made me forget to spellcheck.