Why do you think you are nuts?
A video playlist for the long weekend
I brought you into this summer with a video playlist, and I’ll damn well take you out with one.
All of these videos were discovered by Hope and I at some point over the past few months. They contain memories of the current summer and summers past, with glancing relationships to the wider world. I make no excuses. Here’s the full playlist, or you can make more targeted selections below.
At some point during the early ‘80s, the state of Connecticut adopted a public-service campaign to get people off their couches and into the world, under the rubric “Life. Be in it.” There were ads about it on TV, and my local park had a big mural of the mascots - a cartoony white family, walking together - painted on the asphalt in front of the public pool. Turns out this was originally an Australian campaign that got some traction in the States. This weird and incredibly Australian ad was not part of our stateside rotation, but it serves as an exhaustive litany of all the stuff you were too lazy to do this summer.
If you’re wondering why an Italian disco band would release a go-hard paean to the 16th most populous city in the U.S., rest assured that it’s actually about the famous auto race that’s held annually nearby. This is why the performers spend so much time gyrating in a junkyard - you know, cars!
I didn’t grow up as a Dr. Who fan, but I’ve grown to appreciate the cozy campiness of its earlier incarnations. But maybe if I was given the opportunity as a kid to design a freaking MONSTER to be BUILT and BROUGHT TO LIFE on NATIONAL TELEVISION, I would have seen the light sooner.
Someday I gotta write my post about why Canada is The Absolute Weirdest, but in the meantime, you can enjoy this slice of government-subsidized anarchy. There’s nothing like Burl Ives’ resigned voice pronouncing a random woman’s death sentence. I think the entire thing is meant to take place in her stomach?
Hulk Hogan further congealed into the all-American caricature he’s always played when he appeared at the RNC this summer, so let’s look back to a sunnier time when our secular saint Dolly Parton saw fit to jump in the ring with him.
Okay but seriously, have you ever seen a kiwi bird in action? WTF???
This summer we lost Greg Kihn, who I only ever knew as the guy who wrote the song that formed the basis for “Weird Al’s” immortal “I Lost on Jeopardy,” which is undeniably more famous than the song it parodies. Turns out Kihn had at least one other earworm on hand, accompanied by this chaotic video that includes a line of dancing hoboes, the innards of a whale, King Kong playing sax, some godawful cannibal stereotypes, and Zippy the Actual Goddamn Pinhead.
YouTube recommends me a steady diet of obscure early Sesame Street clips, and do you see me complaining? The educational value of this one is questionable, but the entertainment value is not.
Okay, there are puppets and there are puppets - and then there’s whatever the hell this is. I’ve watched this way more times than I should admit, and every time I stare aghast, wondering, wondering…
As a palate cleanser, here’s the time the Soviet Union invented roadside TikTok in 1967.
Remember when an animated dog in a trench coat teamed up with a C-level pop start to convince us to stay away from drugs? Did it work?
Forgive the quality on this one, but holy hell - I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more real than this 1982 L.A. cable access clip of a song called “The Shrink” from Penny Pearce. It’s the wrongest right and the rightest wrong. Poorly mixed poetry. The runaway trainwreck I wish any of us had the guts to strive for. Absolutely legendary.
Speaking of legendary, here’s Russ Fucking Tamblyn. Hope and I have been finally catching up on Twin Peaks: The Return this summer, and I have to believe Lynch was thinking about this clip when he wrote Tamblyn’s Dr. Jacoby into a significant shovel-centered subplot. The guy’s 89 and just put out his first memoir. I’ve also been reading about him a lot in his role as a collage artist in the Los Angeles Beat scene of the ‘50s. I’m overwhelmed!
Earlier this year I got to see a handful of restored Fleischer Brothers cartoons on the big screen at MoMA. This wasn’t one of them, but it was a delightful discovery nonetheless. I hope you spend the last true weekend of summer howling on top of a back alley fence.
And finally, a reminder that Spooky Season is just around the corner…
I totally ate cigarette butts when I was a toddler.