An android police officer, Ernest Borgnine and the dad from Good Times fight crime in what appears to have been one of the dumbest TV shows ever created. Great period dialogue such as: “Man, that’s the fastest white boy I ever seen.” That line was definitely not made in reference to Borgnine.
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Tags: Ernest Borgnine, John Amos, Michael Shannon
Amazing footage of Coney Island during the early stages of the Great Depression. Subways cost a nickel and rides were a dime. If you successfully threw a baseball into a circular opening, it would cause actual squealing pigs to shoot down a sliding pond. Educated horses did tricks with monkeys on their backs. Clowns bottle-fed small animals. Everyone went home happy.
A how-to video in which Grandpa, who is creepy as all fuck and has smoked four million cigarettes, teaches his grandson how to shoot his first gun. Either this kid turns out to be heterosexual or he is going to be deeply closeted.
Before we were wired beyond belief, a few hundred forward-thinking souls in San Francisco in 1981 got a jump on the future and gained access to the Examiner and Chronicle newspapers on their home computers (though it took them over two hours to receive the text of a single edition). As Steve Newman exclaims in this KRON report, “This is only the first step in newspapers by computer.” The tone of the piece suggests that newsprint might someday disappear, but that the actual newspaper companies would be fine. Of course, the rise of the Internet has been the bane of most of them, including the Examiner and Chronicle, which have both struggled while responding to the revolution that began in a small way on their home turf nearly 30 years ago.
Tags: Steve Newman
Mr. Rogers up in that piece, being all ghetto and shit. (Thanks Reddit.)
Tags: Mr. Fred Rogers
- Round One: Spaghetti and meatballs
- Round Two: Roast beef
- Round Three: Carrots
- Round Four: Sour Patch Kids
- Round Five: Wet dog food
(Thanks Reddit.)
Two of the most successful songwriters of their generation take the stage together in Los Angeles. Art Garfunkel drops by to encourage a horrendous fashion trend, and Andy Williams jokes about his recent divorce from singer Claudine Longet, who would have much bigger problems a couple years later. Grainy as hell, but well worth it.
Tags: Andy Williams, Art Garfunkel, Claudine Longet, John Lennon
If cuteness makes you vomit, don’t watch this video or you will barf your guts.
While the Soviet Union was collapsing, stuff like this was happening. Just brilliant. I don’t know Russian so I can’t translate the title, but I will refer to this work from here on in as Bloody Bloody Boris Yeltsin. (Thanks Reddit.)
“Why trust your family’s appearance to a cheap gadget?” asks this 1974 commercial which then asks you to trust your family’s appearance to a cheap gadget. For $2.98, you could own a Hair Wiz and turn each of your blood relatives into a poorly shorn freak. The product was available at Peoples Drug Stores, a chain of Eastern U.S. pharmacies that was founded in 1904 by Malcolm Gibbs. Peoples was eventually purchased by CVS.
Tags: Malcolm Gibbs
In addition to looking incredibly stupid, the Spinner Topp also promised to “keep your brain warm”–the very brain that the other kids would pummel after seeing you wearing a Spinner Topp. The item was manufactured by the Arlington Hat Company of Long Island City, New York, which still operates.
A film of protest but also one of reconciliation, Playtime is not only Jacques Tati’s masterpiece but also one of the biggest-hearted comedies ever made. Tati’s bumbling alter ego, Monsieur Hulot, is a man out of time, having grown at odds with Paris in the 1960s, with the arrival of modernity and technology. He staggers through a maze of confounding architecture, design and attitudes in a city he can no longer call his own.
Hulot attempts to visit a government official but grows discombobulated by the building’s odd furniture and space-age gadgets and winds up in a series of misadventures. He careers from an exposition of whirring products to a soulless, luxe apartment building to an excursion with a tourist group from America. Each sequence is beautifully calibrated so that Hulot is at the mercy of modern technology, as if he were Chaplin stuck in the gears of really well-designed machinery.
But all is not lost. One American tourist who hopes to experience the “real Paris” sees in Hulot a throwback to a grander time, and he begins to view the city with her enthusiasm. Together they find some magic in the margins, and Hulot learns how someone can more than make do even when it seems like he might be done.•
Tags: Jacques Tati
Toothpick artist and Marin County native Scott Weaver used his art–and 3,000 free hours– to recreate the gorgeous city of San Francisco. The excerpt below about him and his work is taken from Weaver’s website:
“My family lived in San Francisco for 3 generations. My great-grandfather had a winery in the 1880’s at Montgomery and Jackson St, about a block from where the Transamerica pyramid is located. My grandparents had a house at 518 12th Ave, between Anza and Balboa. My mom and dad had a house on Quintera, then moved to Marin, where I was born. I started building toothpick sculptures in 1968, when I was 8 years old. My early structures were abstract and about 2 – 4 feet tall. I built one sculpture that had a ping-pong ball roll through it. In 1974 I started a new sculpture and added the Golden Gate Bridge and Lombard Street, that also had a ping-pong ball roll through it. This is what started what is now “Rolling Through the Bay.” Over the years I have worked on “Rolling Through the Bay,” on-and-off, sometimes not working on it for years at-a-time, to do other projects and get married to my beautiful wife, Rochelle, and have a wonderful son, Tyler. I love working with toothpicks and hope to do so for years to come.”
Tags: Scott Weaver
“The Contraption” is three minutes of brilliant chain reactions by Tom Baynham and Ben Tyers, both of whom studied Manufaturing Engineering at Cambridge.
Tags: Ben Tyers, Rube Goldberg, Tom Baynham
Dong Kingman's "South Street Bridge," from 1955.
What a cool 15-minute movie this is of the late Chinese-American watercolorist Dong Kingman. This 1954 short was made during the ten-year period in the Oakland native’s life when he lived in Brooklyn and taught at Columbia University. It opens as the artist paints outdoors on Mott Street in New York’s Chinatown. Even if you’re not interested in Kingman’s work, the film captures the street life of that neighborhood from a bygone (and much slower) era. The movie was made by veteran Hollywood cinematographer James Wong Howe. You can watch it here.
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Tags: Dong Kingman, James Wong Howe
Sean Dunne’s seven-minute documentary, “The Archive,” tells the tale of Paul Mawhinney, a vinyl superfan from Pennsylvania who has the world’s largest record collection. He possesses a million LPs and even more 45s, most of which have never been heard by the American public.
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- Sharp LC-8 Calculator. (1971)
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- Monkey caught stealing grape.
- Carving a pumpkin with a gun.
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- Japan loves its lady robots.
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- Tot in watermelon eats watermelon.
- Deaf-owned KFC in Egypt.
- Costumed cat eating banana.
- Internet shopping predicted in 1967.
- The first Apple store.
- “Terminal Bar,” erstwhile NYC dive. (2003)
- Bruce Lee playing ping-pong with nunchucks.
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Tags: Paul Mawhinney, Sean Dunn
Vocal coach teaches aspiring rock singer how to improve his skills. Special. (Thanks Found Footage Festival.)
More Featured Videos:
- Sharp LC-8 Calculator. (1971)
- K-Tel Record Selector.
- Monkey caught stealing grape.
- Carving a pumpkin with a gun.
- Asinine infomercial by Balloon Boy dad.
- Japan loves its lady robots.
- Karaoke version of Bridge Over Troubled Water.
- Tot in watermelon eats watermelon.
- Deaf-owned KFC in Egypt.
- Costumed cat eating banana.
- Internet shopping predicted in 1967.
- The first Apple store.
- “Terminal Bar,” erstwhile NYC dive. (2003)
- Bruce Lee playing ping-pong with nunchucks.
- Four-minute Miranda July and Miguel Arteta film.
- Bulldog watching Family Guy.
- Bay Area self-help video.
- The most horrifying PSA ever.
- Iranian guy washes lion on city sidewalk.
- Guy in dog make-up sings about Jesus.
- Color film footage from 1922.
From what I can figure out, this Sharp LC-8 commercial, touting the world’s smallest calculator for $345, ran on TV in 1971. Within a few years, the size and price of calculators would be drastically reduced, but this was the very beginning of handheld computing, although you needed to have big hands.
More Featured Videos:
- K-Tel Record Selector.
- Monkey caught stealing grape.
- Carving a pumpkin with a gun.
- Asinine infomercial by Balloon Boy dad.
- Japan loves its lady robots.
- Karaoke version of Bridge Over Troubled Water.
- Tot in watermelon eats watermelon.
- Deaf-owned KFC in Egypt.
- Costumed cat eating banana.
- Internet shopping predicted in 1967.
- The first Apple store.
- “Terminal Bar,” erstwhile NYC dive. (2003)
- Bruce Lee playing ping-pong with nunchucks.
- Four-minute Miranda July and Miguel Arteta film.
- Bulldog watching Family Guy.
- Bay Area self-help video.
- The most horrifying PSA ever.
- Iranian guy washes lion on city sidewalk.
- Guy in dog make-up sings about Jesus.
- Color film footage from 1922.
The Winnipeg-based company K-Tel has a fascinating history, though it’s known mostly today for selling music compilations. Starting in the ’60s, K-Tel had a knack for making products you didn’t really need–or even would have dreamed of needing–but they designed them well, packaged them handsomely, marketed them intelligently, priced them fairly and they sold. The ubiquitous TV ads made Veg-O-Matics, Bonsai knives and Bionic Glue famous. (Thanks Dangerous Minds.)
Momentary look of guilt before a wave of utter defiance. (Thanks Reddit.)
How come it’s always male Japanese scientists working on female robots? (Thanks Reddit.)
Guns aren’t just for killing people anymore. (Thanks Reddit.)
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- Costumed cat eating banana.
- Internet shopping predicted in 1967.
- The first Apple store.
- “Terminal Bar,” erstwhile NYC dive. (2003)
- Bruce Lee playing ping-pong with nunchucks.
- Four-minute Miranda July and Miguel Arteta film.
- Bulldog watching Family Guy.
- Bay Area self-help video.
- The most horrifying PSA ever.
- Iranian guy washes lion on city sidewalk.
- Guy in dog make-up sings about Jesus.
- Color film footage from 1922.
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- Ryan smack talks the funny way you walk.
- Nick Gomez, aspiring comedian.
- Karate keyboard man.
- Bruce Lee screen test. (1964)
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- George Bernard Shaw in Miami in 1936,
- Peter Lemongello sings in 1976.
- Breakdancing in NYC in 1898.
- Polanski weds Tate in London. (1968)
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Richard Henne, the jackass Balloon Boy dad, has apparently invented an inane product called Bear Scratch, which is a scratching post for humans with itchy backs. The infomercial is actually dumber and scarier then pretending your child has been carried off by a runaway balloon. Thanks Los Angeles Times.
Tags: Richard Henne
I’m too poor of voice and self-conscious in nature to perform karaoke, but I love watching amateurs sing their hearts out, even more than I like listening to a lot of professional singers. I think what gets me is that karaoke is a chance for people to show a sincerity that is often otherwise discouraged in life. Watch this gentleman sing Bridge Over Troubled Water (in what’s likely not his first language). How many pros have this level of commitment and passion?
More Featured Videos:
- Tot in watermelon eats watermelon.
- Deaf-owned KFC in Egypt.
- Costumed cat eating banana.
- Internet shopping predicted in 1967.
- The first Apple store.
- “Terminal Bar,” erstwhile NYC dive. (2003)
- Bruce Lee playing ping-pong with nunchucks.
- Four-minute Miranda July and Miguel Arteta film.
- Bulldog watching Family Guy.
- Bay Area self-help video.
- The most horrifying PSA ever.
- Iranian guy washes lion on city sidewalk.
- Guy in dog make-up sings about Jesus.
- Color film footage from 1922.
- Ryan smack talks your significant other.
- Ryan smack talks the funny way you walk.
- Nick Gomez, aspiring comedian.
- Karate keyboard man.
- Bruce Lee screen test. (1964)
- Jaw-dropping Glamour Boyz music video from the ’80s.
- Freedomland Amusement Park in the Bronx. (1963)
- George Bernard Shaw in Miami in 1936,
- Peter Lemongello sings in 1976.
- Breakdancing in NYC in 1898.
- Polanski weds Tate in London. (1968)
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle interview.
- Mean jerks mock girls.
- Cringe-worthy 1978 telethon performance.
- School for aspiring beatniks. (1961)
- Phil Levine has been collecting cool crap for 52 years.
- Tiny Tim sings about the apocalypse to small children.
- Patti Smith sings Debby Boone on a children’s show in 1979.
- Ridiculously large vending machine in France.
- Ricky Gervais hassles Elmo.
A nutritious meal and no need for a babysitter. He ain’t goin’ nowhere. (Thanks Reddit.)