All right, I swore I wouldn’t say this, but I must: sorry I haven’t posted in so long. Ack. There, it’s out.

To make up for it, here are some time wasting links:

Donnie Davies: Matt turned me on to this last week. If I was a good little blogger I would have posted it immediately, but I am not. By now, you’ve probably seen it. Here’s the synopsis: dude records a song called “God Hates Fags.” A web search reveals that he has a few different websites promoting his “C.H.O.P.S.” program (Changing Homosexuals into Ordinary People) and his “Love God’s Way” ministry. Seemingly, however, the dude didn’t exist before last week.

I assumed it was some kind of marketing thing, but the Internets are still abuzz with people who think it’s real. You can judge for yourself. Start at the bottom of the link above and work your way up. To me, his acting, dialogue, and writings seem more stilted than a Christopher Guest character, but maybe you’ll have a different opinion.

8th Graders do OK Go: This warms my heart.

Greg Kotis in LA Times: This is the best thing I’ve read about writing, maybe ever, by the guy who created Urinetown. I cut this article out of the newspaper so that I can save it for posterity. That’s a lie. I didn’t cut it out yet. I did save it from recycling, though, which should count for something.

I’m fascinated and repelled by Fergie in equal measures. There is something very alien about her, as though she was sent from Mars to inhabit the stereotype of what Americans find attractive, yet they forgot to give her that crucial, nearly imperceptible something that separates the humans from the Martians.

I heard this song on the radio the other day and I think it is pretty much the ultimate representation of the Fergie character made into song-form. Will.i.am, the dude from the Black Eyed Peas who produced this track (and guests in the video and molded Fergie from the clay surrounding Mount Olympus) has painted a master aural portrait of the artist. Just like Fergie, this song is missing something that I can’t put my finger on. Everything about it points to it being a totally catchy pop single, but somehow the negative amount of substance makes me feel as though I’m not actually listening to anything. From the title–(”Fergielicious”??? For real, is that a joke?)–to the bite of “Supersonic” on the verses to the phoned in will.i.am cameo to the strange, unnecessary stutter at the beginning of the second verse, it all seems methodically planned to result in a track that’s as vacant as the Baghdad HoJos.

I love these goddamn rabbits more than just about anything I’ve ever seen before, ever.

God bless the Internets sometimes, right? What did we do before the days when someone could post a list of the 50 greatest cartoons of all time complete with links to the cartoons themselves? Answer: we socialized with one another.

(Thanks, Boingboing!)

Mark and Mandy sent me this hysterically disturbing video of the new Elmo toy. It takes awhile to load, but it’s worth it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to see that Freedom Rock ad again.

(Thanks, Neatorama!)

Update: Watching these commercials has reminded me of how much I was obsessed with Max Headroom at a certain point. We children of the 80s (actually 70s, but who’s counting?) sure grew up in strange times. I was really into Max Headroom and Spuds Mackenzie. Let me repeat that: I was into Max Headroom and Spuds Mackenzie (the Budweiser pitch dog). I bought books and t-shirts (or probably more accurately, whined until my parents bought them) featuring these characters who were designed to promote products, and I didn’t think twice about it. And my parents, who I would say overall did an exceptional job of raising me, probably didn’t think twice about it, either. I wore my Spuds Mackenzie t-shirt to school all the time and my teachers didn’t say boo. It was a t-shirt promoting a mascot who promoted beer. That was the 80s, I suppose.

That being said, here’s an amazingly creepy video by the Art of Noise featuring Max Headroom. If I remember correctly, this song came out when the Max Headroom craze was on the wane. Matt Frewer (the actor who played Max Headroom) really phoned this performance in. He must’ve been getting tired of playing a head in a box.

Update Update: This sequel to the 80s commercial collection is much better than the first collection. One gets the feeling that the first list was put together by some dude clicking on random links on YouTube who then got schooled by the readers, because the second list is the one that actually contains the memorable commercials.

If you can make it to the end of this SNL skit, you are a far stronger person than me. I can guarantee with 100% certainty that this would not be the slightest bit funnier if I had ever seen Lost and/or had any idea what they were talking about. I have put this video in the “entertainment” category for lack of a more accurate term.

In 1985, Burger King spent $40 million dollars on a campaign known as “Where’s Herb?” Herb was supposedly the only man in America who had never eaten a Whopper. The campaign was universally lauded as the “most elaborate advertising flop of the decade.” I’ve taken a totally informal survey of my friends and almost no one remembers the Herb campaign. I remember, Burger King. You might not have captured the world’s attention, but you touched the life of one very special little boy, and because of that, your campaign can never be considered a total flop.

First, the commercial that started it all:

Note the total absence of any kind of humor in this commercial. This is in the wake of the “Where’s the Beef” ads, and suddenly commercials had to be quirky to get noticed. So we have all the staples of the “quirky” ad … the dead-pan dialogue, the over-enthusiastic narrator, the hokey music … but there isn’t a single joke anywhere to be found. It’s very disconcerting to watch something that presumes itself humorous without making a single stab at humor.

I’m not sure if this was planned from the beginning, but Herb’s identity was eventually revealed, to little fanfare. The poor sod who played Herb was sent to Burger King restaurants around the country to hang out until someone recognized him, sort of like a real life “Where’s Waldo?” The first person to spot Herb in each restaurant won $5,000. I would love to know how this contest worked in real life. Did they send Herb into restaurants unattended? And was it his job to determine who first spotted him? I could see this getting really ugly–patrons breaking into fistfights over who saw Herb first while the sorry bastard in the Herb costume is forced to referee. In the end, it’s not so much a campaign for Burger King as it is for violence and loitering.

I don’t know if you’ve heard about this yet, but Michael Richards, a/k/a Kramer from Seinfeld, totally flipped out on a heckler and went on a racist tirade at a comedy club last Friday. It’s pretty freaking insane. The saddest part is that I can sense him trying to do this for shock value, in that way that funny comics are allowed to be racist because really, they’re poking fun at racists. Unfortunately, he forgot the cardinal rule of shocking humor: it should have an element of humor to it.

This reminds me of a really hilarious episode of This American Life from ‘97 that they recently repeated. It was called Fiasco! and it examined experiences that went beyond the level of mistake or screw-up into a very special realm from whence there was no return. The first story, about a college production of Peter Pan, should be listened to immediately.

I heard some people talking about the Michael Richards incident on the radio yesterday, and some guy said it was a real tragedy, because as a jew, Richards should be able to identify with other minorities. I swear to God, that was this guy’s reasoning. In this guy’s world, the only people who have any prejudices in America are white, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual Christian males. Everyone else gets along.

(Thanks, Cass!)

This video is pretty dope. I love that they’re all, “dudes, you know we’re lip synching. Let’s call a spade a spade.”

(Thanks, Boingboing!)