Not Praying for Rain

It was just about four years ago that the Democratic National Convention was taking place here in Denver. The bulk of the convention was held at the Pepsi Center, but Barack Obama's speech was going to draw bigger audience, and so that took place at Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos.

In case you're not from Denver, or in case you haven't been following the Peyton Manning watch speculating how he'll perform after leaving the domed stadium of the Colts, Mile High is an outdoor stadium.

Four years ago, Stuart Shepard, one of the voices of Focus on the Family, hoped to seize on that fact, imploring people to pray for rain that would force Obama's speech to be canceled. But you know, he prayed for God's wrath on his political opponents in a fun way. The original video has since been taken down, but a snarkily editorialized version of it is still available on YouTube:


I wrote about Shepard's first class douchebaggery four years ago, answering his disingenuous question "would it be wrong to pray for rain?" with a resounding "YES."

Well, here we are, four years later. The Republican National Convention is taking place in Florida next week, and Tropical Storm Isaac is gathering force in the Atlantic and may be headed in that very direction.

So I just want to take this opportunity to point out the difference between the kind of "Christians" that support Focus on the Family and people like me who oppose every horrible thing they stand for. I am not praying for rain here. I'm not hoping for a natural disaster to affect a day or two of the RNC (and hey... if a few million dollars in property damage and tragic loss of life happens in the process, thems the breaks).

No, I'm hoping the storm either weakens or changes course to not make landfall. I'm doing this because it's the right thing to hope for, what any decent person would hope for. Even though folks like Stuart Shepard will remain blissfully ignorant of the irony of devoting an entire night of their convention to a "We Built This!" theme, railing against government enterprise from inside a stadium built using $86 million of public funds (see the top of page 10). Even though one of the things they're all gathering to celebrate is their opposition to me having rights equal to theirs. Even though they're going to say that with my "lifestyle," I'm mounting a corrosive assault on the country's principles.

I just wish they didn't make it so damn hard (or should that be "so damn easy"?) to be a better person than they are.

Dialogue from S--[CENSORED]

Skyrim has just a sprinkling of PG language. (They earn their M rating with violence.) But these videos will make you think otherwise:

Some May Call This Junk, I Call It a Treasure

Some of my friends have acknowledged that they're so obsessed with Skyrim, it sometimes invades the way they look at things in their daily lives.

That probably looks something like this:

Use Da Force, Yo!

I could set this video up with something pithy, but really, what could I possibly add? It's a rap battle between Adolf Hitler and Darth Vader:

Say It Ain't So!

A YouTube ode to Firefly. If you've never seen Serenity, beware a major spoiler at around 1:15.

C Is for Cookie!

I have never watched an episode of Top Chef before. I suppose technically, I still haven't. But I got a lot of laughs from this video. And I thought I didn't like Elmo all that much!

That's Not True! That's Impossible!

It seems that the real MVP of the Super Bowl was the little six-year-old boy dressed as Darth Vader in the Volkswagen commercial that had everyone talking:



Personally, I don't see the big deal. Maybe it's because I'm so jaded about Star Wars at this point that it extends even to something like this. Maybe it's because I've haven't raised a six-year-old boy. I thought this commercial was basically a "whatever," and not a big one at that.

Then things went to the next level this morning, when the child actor, Max Page, was "unmasked" on The Today Show. This would have been another "whatever," until a writer at Entertainment Weekly magazine pointed out the kid's uncanny resemblance to Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself.

"No... I am your grandson."

Oscar, Please!

Behold! The trailer for a sure-fire Oscar winner:



And the extra icing on the cake is reading all the comments about the video on YouTube. Anonymous posters totally embracing the spirit of the video!

Someone Made a Boo Boo

Some guy spent an insane amount of time making this Yogi Bear "alternate ending" all by himself. (For maximum enjoyment, close your eyes for the first two seconds after you start the clip. On screen text ruins the fun.)



I think it's damn funny, though I've seen the movie that this scene is aping. (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.) Your mileage may vary.

As for the guy who made it, I'm sure he'll be getting a job animating CG for movies very soon. (Assuming he wants it.)

Snookered

I'm a little short on content today. All the way short. So I'm filling in with a great video that FKL brought to my attention this morning. Brian Blessed does snooker commentary:



In response to FKL's posting, I noted that as a kid, I used to get Brian Blessed confused with John Rhys-Davies. Probably had to do with seeing Flash Gordon and Raiders of the Lost Ark relatively close to each other. Anyway, both actors are awesome, but I think Brian Blessed pulls a bit ahead with this.

Anger Rising

I'm slacking off on the blog for my birthday. But so as not to leave you completely dangling, here's some awesome Angry Birds related humor as a precursor to the bird-related holiday:

Misery? Quite the Opposite.

I stumbled across another "YouTube celeb" recently, Mike Tompkins. He's a crazy-talented a cappella performer that multi-tracks himself, as in this cover of Maroon 5's Misery:



His instrument impersonation is so good that a few idiot commenters have completely missed the fact that this is a cappella. Yes, despite the message at the beginning of the video and the name of the video itself. Some people are morons.

He's got a few songs on iTunes. Needs a full album, stat.

I'm on a Spaceship with George Takei

I've been more of a "one-hour drama" kind of TV viewer for a while now, but I've actually been catching more sitcoms lately than I have for years. A lot of great new ones debuted last season and have only been getting better this year.

One is the sadly underwatched Community, which has been letting its freak flag fly this season with incredibly bizarre episodes parodying Apollo 13, something vaguely Good Will Hunting-esque, and more. For their Halloween episode, they decided to make a mini zombie movie, and actually just went for it.

The strange-awesome icing on the cake of that episode was the opening and closing narration by George Takei. And he signed off of the episode with (paraphrasing): "something special for the Kevins of the world."



Well, my name isn't Kevin... but a half a minute in Audicity fixed that audio up fine for my purposes. (grin)

Here Beginneth the Lesson

More awesome Sesame Street, this time augmented by the further awesomeness of Patrick Stewart:

Smell Like a Monster

Sesame Street proves yet again why it's awesome:



Although, given the recent asinine Katy Perry controversy, how long to you give it before someone is complaining that Grover looks like a terrorist 16 seconds in?

John Williams is the Man

My cousin linked to this geekily awesome video on YouTube today honoring the fact that John Williams is, in fact, the man:



To clarify, it's the a cappella group Moosebutter that's actually doing the singing here, not this random YouTube guy. But he does a pretty good job lip-syncing and putting the video together.

Calling Orville Redenbacher

My last game night with my friends somehow got a bit sidetracked at one point when this talk of a net video came up, in which people ring popcorn kernels with a few cell phones, call the phones, and pop the kernels:



Fake, by the way. And yet, we kind of felt obligated to try it... or at least were really pushed into trying it by one or two people present.

I wasn't really that reluctant a participant, but I think I was drawn to the experiment for an entirely different reason. When you stop and think about the amount of technology you're bringing to bear in one room to try this, it's kind of preposterous. Basically, you need six phones -- three to put on the table, and three to call the phones on the table. Plus, if you want to document your experiment, you might want a seventh phone to record video with.

The thing is, we had all this easily right there in the room. And it's not like there was an epic crowd playing games that night. Ten or fifteen years ago, you couldn't dream of even attempting something like this.

I guess what I'm saying is that we may not have flying cars yet, but we pretty much are living in The Future. A future where I bitch about my phone -- a computer I carry around in my pocket -- sometimes being slow at web surfing when it's still several times faster than by home computer was (by dial-up!) little more than a decade ago.

Vuvuzela Hero

World Cup humor isn't going to be funny for much longer. Indeed, it might not be funny even now. So I'd better post this before it's too late:



Score-wise, it's quite a bummer if you miss that first note.

Foreign Humor

I'm basically taking the holiday off, so here's a very funny German commercial for you to watch. Ahoy, matey! There be profanity here! (So don't watch at work without headphones, or don't watch at all if this may offend your delicate sensibilities.)

Yes, there is an irony to me laughing at this commercial when I myself don't speak a second language (at least, not fluently). What could be a more appropriate celebration of American Independence Day than that?

Charlie on YouTube

No, not "Charlie bit me" Charlie. This Charlie sings with himself:



It might not really work (depending on your monitor width) with the way the blog automatically crops my posts, so perhaps it's best to follow this link.