Th-th-th-th-that's awesome, folks

One of the features of YouTube that I'm quite fond of is their "Related Videos" column. The "If you liked this, try this" approach has landed me a lot of great finds that I likely would never have come across otherwise. This was especially true for tonight's entry.

Here a number of great Looney Tunes moments are set to "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen. The too-perfect visual for "I check my look in the mirror" made me laugh out loud.



But here's the thing - great as this is, I only found it because it was in the "Related Videos" file. It was connected to this piece of genius - a pairing of What's Opera, Doc? with "Bohemian Rhapsody."



Considering these are the two greatest opera spoofs of the 20th century (sorry, Marx Brothers fans), I'm amazed nobody thought of combining these before.

Since 1884

Normally I wouldn't put a Bugs Bunny cartoon on MeTube, as experience has taught me it'll be taken off YouTube in a jiffy. But I had to put up Ballot Box Bunny here, not because it's one of the funniest Bugs/Yosemite Sam cartoons (was Sam ever louder?), nor because there's yet another appearance of Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody on MeTube, but to point out the boxes behind Bugs as the ants take away his picnic food.

Yes, folks, Bugs Bunny drinks Moxie!



I used to enjoy subjecting people to their first taste of Moxie and recording their descriptions - my favorites were "rancid cough syrup" and "a Coke gone wrong." It's older than Coca-Cola and was once more popular; now it's more of a local favorite, but it's making an effort to go national once again. Last Sunday's Boston Globe had a nice article about it which you can read here.

Generally there are two reaction to drinking Moxie: either this...



...or this. (Wimp.)



Me, I brought two 2-liter bottles back from Maine the last time I went. It's definitely worth your while. (But stay away from the diet version.)

The Best of MeTube

One year and 356 posts ago, I began sharing my favorite clips off of YouTube to you, my virtual audience. Today I'm going to share my favorite favorites of the past year. (Sadly, nobody submitted their favorites, so the mix CD prize will just have to go to me.) Sure, they're reruns, but it's summertime and time for reruns anyway.

In reverse order, tenth favorite to favorite favorite, here they are:

#10. The Temptations performing "For Once In My Life."



#9. The Moody Rudy toy.



#8. The Billy Nayer Show.



#7. "You'll Come One Day."

You'll Come One Day | Viral | SPIKE.com

#6. The Ball Buster Toy.



#5. Miami Bugs.



#4. The Hungarian sausage commercial.



#3. "Sister Ray" on Lawrence Welk.



#2. The GI Joe PSA parody with "The Motorcycle Song."



#1. Vader Sessions.



Let's hope there are some equally good clips to come for year two.

Miami Bugs

I never got to watch Miami Vice in my younger years. My older sister, after much effort, persuaded my folks to let us "just watch the beginning" of an episode. Unfortunately for us, the episode began with some bad guys nuzzling naked female mannequins, then firing pistols at them; that was enough for my mom, who turned it off over my older sister's protests that they were the bad guys and they would pay.

So there went a whole chunk of pop culture for me; all I could do was listen to Jan Hammer's theme storm up the charts to number one and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Fortunately, somebody on YouTube created a version that would've been okay to watch - not just late Friday night, but Saturday morning too.



I don't care if the voices don't match the lips - I LOVE this.

Bugs Bunny Sells Out *snort*

Time for another in a continuing series of the famous and rich giving up their street cred to be just a little bit richer, and don't we love 'em for it. Today's victim: a certain rabbit.

Bugs Bunny quite literally drank the Kool-Aid in the '60s, when it was associated with acid tests just as much as with Saturday mornings. Here he is doing the Kool-Aid Kool (though to me it looks more like the Monkey). I'm not sure I want to know how one drinks Kool-Aid "bunny-style."



And here he joins three quarters of the Monkees, for all of three seconds. As one commenter notes, he only acknowledges Davy and then disappears: "Even he was embarrassed to be associated with the Monkees by that point."

Bugs Bunny, Racist

In the 1945 cartoon Hare Tonic, there's a moment where Bugs Bunny checks himself for B.O. and says, "Don't tell me I oh-fend." Well, he may not have in his day, but he had a few moments that make him one of the major offenders in animated cartoondom. I'm posting a couple here, but with Warner Bros. being quite vigilant about protecting their copyrights, I promise you that they won't be here long, so watch them while you can.

The first is a propaganda film from 1942 where Bugs encourages the audience to buy war bonds. An interesting curiousity, in that it's so short, it has Bugs, Elmer, and Porky altogether, and for fifteen seconds, it has Bugs in blackface.



But that's nothing compared to this. Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips was released in 1944, at the height of anti-Japan sentiment, and it finds Bugs doing battle on a deserted island. Here's a sampling. If you don't know what's coming, I'm going to warn you, this is not the Bugs Bunny you grew up with.