Posts tagged “parody”

Bank of America “One” gets covered

Comedian David Cross blows my mind with post-modernity when he covers (with Johnny Marr on guitar) the widely-seen Bank of America corporate meeting new-lyrics-cover of U2’s One.

To recap, in 1991, U2 release song “One” on Achtung Baby. And very very recently, some goofy corporate dudes earnestly adapt the lyrics to motivate the Bank of America troops. And within 2 weeks David Cross covers that version (also at a comedy festival).

Meanwhile, Universal Music is sending Cease-and-Desist notices out to stop sites from hosting a song (One) to which they own the rights.

We truly live in wonderful times.

Meme Diffusion

I’m amazed (constantly) at how fast this blogosphere stuff is. BoingBoing posts a story about a stupid move by a corporation or politician, and within 24 hours there are t-shirts, slogans, dance videos on YouTube, mashups with new lyrics; all based on some simple and outrageous idea.

I was actually refreshed (instead of my usual infuriated) when a story about running into (a lookalike for) Samuel Jackson at the airport did not turn into a Snakes On Plane (or SoaP as it’s now known) story. Further, one of the people in the group hadn’t heard of the movie (et. al).

And no, I’m not going to explain any of that, or even provide links. That’s sort of my point – that a seemingly tight network establish common language and points of reference proceeds to further riff as any group does) in extremely inventive and entertaining ways. But it’s very disposable. You don’t need to know why my Rolling Stones group makes jokes about cheese, and you don’t need to know why Samuel Jackson wants to get the motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane. If you do want to know, there’s always Google.

But my impetus for this post (finally!) was this (via Chroma with absolutely no context provided): an instantly famous sports moment (a head-butt in a World Cup match) is now rendered as an 8-bit Nintendo game, complete with animation and sound effects and music.

Sure, it was the World Cup, and it was one of the more dramatic moments (I guess; I didn’t see moment one of the whole affair), but isn’t interesting how some people – many people – don’t know of the original moment, but others are doing their own versions of it? Indeed, maybe someone reading this will learn about the head-butt (and I’m not going to bother looking up the story, who it was, that’s my point, the partial knowledge or even lack of knowledge, in the face of all this other energy – maybe Ronaldo or Ronaldino or Rodolfo – either you know how wrong I am, or you have no idea what I’m talking about) as a second-order effect.

The classic example of this is kids using Mad Magazine as a source for plot lines and famous moments of classic films. I read many issues of Mad, long before I saw a James Bond film or Chinatown, yet I was conversant with their iconic aspects through exposure to the parody.

Update: moments after posting this I see (via Experience Curve, also without explanation) another funny site on the same incident – here – and learned that the player’s name is (presumably) Zidane. No Ronaldino, guess I was wrong. And I noticed that both these paraodies came from the same domain. Whoah! It’s called YTMND – You’re The Man Now Dog, and they’ve got a great story.

YTMND is a site created for the purpose of furthering the creativity of its users. It stems from an idea that, using sound, and image, and some text, the users can convey a point, funny, political, or otherwise, to the general media.

I know someone is reading this and thinking “Dude, you don’t know about YTMND?!”

Sloppy Chronicle

Today the SF Chronicle printed an August 11th essay by Cindy Sheehan. The text of the column is not available on their website, but the editor’s note tells us that the column appeared originally in Arianna Huffington’s HuffingPost.com. In fact, it appeared on HuffingtonPost.com. The Chronicle is sending its readers to a parody-site. Umm, oops.

Update: I sent in an irked correction

Today, page B5 – Cindy Sheehan essay – you list huffingpost.com instead of huffingtonpost.com – since no one bothered to CHECK that – you actually are sending people to a parody site.
Lame job, guys.

and got back

Subject: Thanks for alerting us to huffingpost error

The correct site, as I am sure you know, is huffingtonpost.com
The introduction was written in haste late Friday and, as you noted, not double-checked. Thanks for alerting us to the parody site.

IFILM – Viral Videos: ’88 Dodge Aries

’88 Dodge Aries is a fake TV ad for what was my first car. I can’t remember what year it was, but I bought it used. It had a really really awful smell in it, like an animal had died in it, but it took 3 months for the dealership perfume to wear off and for me to notice the smell. It needed a new radiator, but I had no idea; I just knew that even with the heat off, in the dead of winter, I couldn’t wear a jacket while I drove on the highway or I’d be just too hot.

I put a lot of miles on it, and then eventually it died – I think right around the time we traded it in for something else.

Source Surprise

The other night we were flipping channels and stumbled on a 1957 black and white drama called Zero Hour. Quickly we realized this was the original source for the “Airplane” movies. The pilot is “Ted Stryker” – a fighter pilot who must take over when the crew is struck down by food poisoning. But he’s guilt-ridden over past losses in combat and keeps flashing back at critical moments to horrific crashes and sqadron disasters. He sweats badly in these scenes, while down at Air Traffic Control, they are smoking like chimneys, talking in clipped tones, and rolling up shirt-sleeves. It’s pretty funny to see.

I see that it was written by Arthur Hailey, who then went on to write the Airport movies, those we most directly think of when we think of Airplane!

Series

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