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Ze Frank on Getting Happy (ft. Chris Higgins)

Ze Frank has been making awesome internet videos since before that was a thing. Today, I have the honor to appear briefly* in his show Chase That Happy, which is concerned with how we get happy when we aren't. While the goal of life isn't to be happy all the time, perhaps it is to watch Ze Frank and hope that maybe, someday, he will blink. Representative quote: "For example I discovered Happy Typing, where you type like a Crazy Secretary in a silent film. [Frank types crazily]" Content note:... READ ON

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Ken Burns on Storytelling and Truth

Ken Burns, creator of innumerable documentaries including The Civil War and Baseball, is the subject of a new short film about the nature of stories and storytelling. It's compelling, smart, and complex -- largely because Burns, one of America's most famous and revered documentarians, discusses the reality of what documentary films are: that documentary is not about telling "the truth," it's about telling a story. (If you will, "a truth.") Representative quote: "All story is manipulation." Also:... READ ON

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A Song of LEGO (Ice) and K'NEX (Fire)

The HBO series "Game of Thrones" features an exquisite opening title sequence, showing cities and settlements growing like clockwork toys from the landscape, using a slightly bizarre tilt-shift computer animation style. That title sequence is helpful in establishing a map of the roughly nine zillion core locations crucial to the story; unlike the "Song of Ice and Fire" books, we don't have a map to flip to whenever we need it. In the second season of the HBO show, the opening sequence has been expanded... READ ON

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The Bat Symbol's Evolution

Meanwhile, at the Bat Cave, the Bat Symbol has been changing. Since its first appearance in 1941, designers have tweaked the icon emblazoned on Batman's chest and appearing on various Batphernalia, adapting it for each new iteration of the Batman story. In this video, you can watch the Bat Symbol morph through many versions. Watch as the symbol stretches, contracts, and develops new angles for each era. (I chose to mute the U2 soundtrack, for what it's worth.) For a non-video treatment of the... READ ON

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Watch 56 Episodes of "Star Trek" Simultaneously

Got fifty minutes to spare? Okay, how about an unbelievable reservoir of tolerance for cacophony and 60s color schemes? Perfect. Strap yourselves in and enjoy the first two seasons* (ish) of Star Trek. Yes, it's in HD. Put it on the View Screen, Lieutenant! * = The first season pilot (The Cage) was omitted due to length; instead, the first episode of the third season was used. I think we can all agree that The Cage isn't strictly canonical. Related: Watching 130 Episodes of “The... READ ON

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The Visual Poetry of Corrupt Video

In this five-minute video, we see portions of a Mad Men episode (episode 408, "The Summer Man") as it appears when incompletely downloaded via BitTorrent. The video is extraordinarily corrupt, showing strange artifacts like missing blocks of the picture, "melting" video, repeated actions, and other such glitches. Taken together, and with a surprisingly nice soundtrack, this actually does feel like art, though it's a sort of found art -- the found art of online video piracy and computer algorithms for... READ ON

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The Pitch for The Muppet Show

Wow. Here's the original pitch Jim Henson made to sell The Muppet Show to CBS. It's a slow build -- things only start getting wacky around the one-minute mark, but go completely nuts by the end. This is brilliant. According to Muppet Wiki, there was a little clip at the end that was edited out of this video (this version likely came from a DVD extra): After Leo's powerful speech, Kermit appears from off-screen against a CBS logo and shrugs, "What the hell was that all about?" My favorite... READ ON

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McBain!

Oh wow. Every clip of McBain from "The Simpsons," cut together in sequence. Put down the donut and enjoy McBain's witticisms and gunplay: "Ice to see you" indeed. For exhaustive details on McBain, check out this page. See also: Watching 130 Episodes of "The Simpsons" Simultaneously and Every "Itchy & Scratchy Show"... READ ON

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Watching 130 Episodes of "The Simpsons" Simultaneously

Earlier this week I came across Every "Itchy & Scratchy Show" Ever, and went to see if its creator MrBestDeni had made more "Simpsons" stuff. Turns out he hasn't done more YouTube videos, though he's on Vimeo now. Anyway, in the "Simpsons" video experiment below, fellow YouTube hero Romain Vuillemot runs 130 episodes of the show simultaneously, in a grid, for about three and a half minutes. The result is an extremely weird visual experiment -- we get to see how the opening credits differ between... READ ON

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The Late Movies: Next on "Mad Men"

With the fifth season of Mad Men premiering this Sunday, I felt it was time to dust off a classic set of videos I first saw in 2010. The work of master editor John Duffy, "Next on Mad Men" parodies the bizarre clips at the end of real Mad Men episodes. If you're a fan, you're familiar with these clips -- they're oddly content-free (apparently in an attempt to avoid spoilers), and frequently present conversations out of context, along with meaningless snippets of dialogue, all underlaid with moody,... READ ON