Q: What ever happened to that white dude from the "Lethal Weapon" movies? You know, the one with the terrible American accent?

A: Crazyface Mel Gibson has emerged from his hideyhole to debut an entertaining trailer for his latest war epic. In case you missed it on the post-Oscars Jimmy Kimmel Live!, or the million blogs that already ran it...



This thing would have Oscar gold written all over it, except I'm pretty sure it'll mostly end up being about how the Civil War was caused by the Jews.

I continue to be disturbed by Mel Gibson pretending to be an American. Of course, he'd still have a career today if he'd focused less on dropping his Australian accent and more on dropping the quintessentially Aussie habit of drunkenly raving in the back seat of police cars.

Q: Does Andrew Sullivan have some kind of custom RSS feed for horrifying YouTube videos?

A: Yesterday when I posted that German flower mutants video, I was going to make a joke about it being Andrew Sullivan's most disturbing find since the sashaying horse. Then he goes and ups the ante today with this terrifying high-speed snail gangbang:



Boww chikka bow wow.

EDIT: This may or may not actually be some sort of snail torture porn. Sullivan has replaced it with, what else, another Pet Shop Boys video. I will leave it up, because either way, at least Dick Cheney will find it arousing.

EDIT, PART 2: According to a YouTube commenter, these snails are not, in fact, being salted to death:

"these snails are not dying, i have slug infestation in my home and they die in less than 30 seconds if you salt them. these snails are hibernating, the foam they make dries to leave a watertight seal and snails can survive inside their shells without food for months. these snails have realised there is no food about so have entered "stasis". the bit i found gross was the snail orgy you appear to have filmed. i think theres a touch of salt to stop them from leaving but not enough to kill."

I report, you decide.

Q: Where's Hitler when you really need him?

A: Feeling down in the dumps over the terrible economy? Well, Paul Krugman is here to cheer you up. Or, wait, no, make you feel much worse. Bottom line, Kruggers?

The bottom line is that there has been basically no wealth creation at all since the turn of the millennium: the net worth of the average American household, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than it was in 2001.

Good times. Good. Times. Fear not, though, there's still hope. For one thing, the Cheney household is doing better than ever. Plus:

If you want to see what it really takes to boot the economy out of a debt trap, look at the large public works program, otherwise known as World War II, that ended the Great Depression. The war didn’t just lead to full employment. It also led to rapidly rising incomes and substantial inflation, all with virtually no borrowing by the private sector. By 1945 the government’s debt had soared, but the ratio of private-sector debt to G.D.P. was only half what it had been in 1940. And this low level of private debt helped set the stage for the great postwar boom.

Hurray! Now all we have to do is go to war with Germany, beat them, appease them, wait for them to create a new Hitler, and then beat them again, with a little bit of Japan nuking for good measure.

Just be sure not to read Krugman's conclusion and everything will be sunshine and lollipops forever.

At first I was feeling guilty about all the Germans we'd have to explode, but then I saw this clip from Deutschland kinder-television [via] and all my doubts went right out the window.

Q: Want to know everything you need to know about everything you don't want to know about the economy?

A: Watch last night's Frontline -- or as Videogum calls it, "That Amazing Frontline Everyone's Talking About".

You better go watch it before everyone makes fun of you.

Q: How adorable is Sarah Silverman?

A: 



Also, how adorable is that Julie girl? Anyway: Register here, yo.

PLUS: More Sarah Silverman activism here. Currently crashing because they just mentioned it on CNN.

Q: Are you Blu da ba dee da ba die?

A: Someone in Buenos Aires has a lot of free time and also apparently a lot of hallucinogens. Pretty amazing, though:



Via Wires & Stars via Susie.

Q: Where is Osama bin Laden not hiding?

A: Once again proving that any footage is terrifying if you play the Requiem for a Dream score under it:



Civilization is crumbling, or something. In other news, go Tribe!!!

Q: Are you there, Margaret? It's me, Blog

A: Sorry for my recent absence, and for any wailing or gnashing of teeth that might have resulted.

So yeah, I live in San Francisco now, where I took a job working for the Internets. My goal here is to change the very nature of how human beings perceive and interact with information architecture, hopefully by around January.

Going forward, T.A.M.S.Y. will probably be a little more about tech/Bay Area living than before and also probably a little more sporadic, but I promise always to make room for Dick Cheney jokes.

On to business, the business of surprise: Baltimore's Dan Deacon is some sort of performance artist/musician/balding hipster. His performance of the song "Ohio" on WSAV's local morning show in Savannah, Georgia is a delight for at least two of the senses.



Check out Scott C.'s LJ for the complete interview, which is also fairly entertaining.

Deacon will be playing San Francisco and L.A. next week, but it's sold out [sked]. Tix still available for his forthcoming shows in NYC, Ohio and various other places. Recommended, maybe!

Q: Is our children vlogging?

A: Hey kids, look! A series of unrelated videos, presented in no particular order for your immediate viewing pleasure free of charge! What a wonderful world!

• 1999 A.D. A clip from a prescient 1967 film foretelling a glorious future in which mail is sent electronically, shopping can be done from home, and parenting has been replaced by espionage. They got pretty much everything right, except in reality, the only people secretly filming your children are NSA agents.


• The Iron Man trailer. Dan Hopper at BWE thinks it looks like a retread, but I'm totally excited anyway. And not because I give a shit about Iron Man (no one does, as far as I know), but rather for one simple reason, and I'll give you a clue, it rhymes with Shmobert Shmowney Shmr.


• Cop Gone Wild, which finally addresses the Q: Who's crazier? A crazy cop, or a crazy guy who drives around with a camera installed in his car's ceiling hoping to be brutalized by a crazy cop? A: Crazy cop. After a few minutes it gets boring, but the screaming part is fun. Oh policemen, you so crazy!


• BONUS, IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Oh Quebecois policemen, you so crazy!


• Steve Mahanahan's Child Clown Outlet. I hear good things about Adult Swim's Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, but this is the first bit of it I've seen. If you're here because you Googled "stuff that's better when you're high," and you meant "high on meth," this will do splendidly.


• Osama bin Chomsky. Everyone acts like it's all weird that bin Laden is talking like a liberal blogger now. But bin Laden has always channeled liberal bloggers, including in the interview he gave immediately following Sept. 11th. Of course, no one really read that interview, except for the 9/11 Truth crackpot brigade, because the mainstream media was too incompetent to tell you about it. Luckily, T.A.M.S.Y. will be happy to fill you in! Later.

Q: Why did no one mention Zach Galifinakis and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy made a video for Kanye West?

A: I should keep a better eye on my reading list. Whenever I take a few days off, I end up missing something like this:

[via Erin]

Better resolution version here. Commenters on Kanye West's official site seem to think this is an amateur video made by the Amish, but no, the protagonists are comedian Zach Galifinakis (one of America's famousest Greeks) and indie troubadour (and occasional actor) Will Oldham.

Here are a couple Will Oldham songs, because why not.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
Love Comes to Me
The Letting Go [buy], 2006

Palace
New Partner
Viva Last Blues [buy], 1995

Oldham's also in R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet, Chapter 22, but I've not had the pleasure of seeing that one yet.

Q: Is our children properly hydrating?

A: Earlier this year, BET Animation and performer Bomani "D'Mite" Armah teamed up to produce this very entertaining mock PSA.



It's way popular (875,000+ views), but I hadn't seen it until Brian Romero posted it to his cartooning blog over the weekend.

The controversy surrounding its racial overtones made it all the way to CNN, according to a YouTube commenter. It's not racist, so much as it is just an effective satire of la vie de crunk — but I'd imagine CNN saw it differently.

Q: Does the YouTube artistic wonderment never stop?

A: I was a little slow to take to the YouTube revolution, given that it seemed to be a whole lot of grainy video of culturally meaningless camp. But I'm totally coming around to that shit!

(If you read Perez Hilton, you'll have already seen this, apparently. But then, if you read Perez Hilton, you have bigger problems to deal with than stale videos.)

[via Wesleying]

Hurray for vacuous post-pomo confection!

RELATED: It goes without saying but hurray also for the continued existence of Andre 3000. Last October, Dre did a highly enlighten-taining interview with Terry Gross. Break out the headphones and check it out.

Q: Do I know art, or do I just know what you like? Pt. 3 (of 3)

A: Part three is the finest artistic achievement yet.

[hat tip: Lindsay]

Who needs fancy stop-motion animation when you've got Neil Patrick Harris?

Q: Do I know art, or do I just know what you like? Pt. 2 (of 3)

A: The second part of today's trilogy of mind-expandistic YouTubography takes us to Wesleyan University [UPDATE: or possibly elsewhere], for a short film named for and based loosely on a McSweeneys book, Dear New Girl or Whatever Your Name Is.

[hat tip: On the Record...]

It is not yet a hit, until just now when it was featured here.

UPDATE, PT. 2: Check out that backing song, MGMT's "Kids", over here. -- 8/21, 12:10AM

Q: Do I know art, or do I just know what you like? Pt. 1 (of 3)

A: Both. Thanks for checking.

We begin this Monday triptych of artastic filmosity with Process Enacted, a recent hit on YouTube.

[Hat tip: Drawn!]

I don't know what it means, so it must be very deep.

Q: Has everybody got something to hide, except for me and my monkey?

A: No, especially me and my monkey.

And speaking of people with monkeys on their heads, heeeeeeeere's Johnny.

Q: Aren't you dating some kind of bunny bender?

A: David Wain's The Ten hits theaters this weekend, and if you haven't heard, it's one of the funniest things ever, as reported by some of the nation's finest film critics. Well, most of them.

In the meanwhiletime, here's some bonus Wain to tide you over.



It's Episode 1 with more to come. Yay. Also, if you enjoyed that video of a young David touring Shaker Heights, there's more in his Super 8 Archive.

I'm on the way to California. Oh by the way, The Answer May Surprise You is moving to California, have I mentioned this?

EARLIER: 10 things you should know about The Ten

P.S., RELATED: Paul Rudd hawking Super Nintendo

Q: Are iPhone-hype jokes played out?

A: Eh, whatever.



Via the Fake Steve Jobs blog.

By the way, for those of you who live outside the Internet and hadn't heard: The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs is really fricking hilarious and simultaneously really fricking insightful (if you care about tech things even a little). I'd been avoiding it, because I thought it was strictly for Mac nerds, but it's actually entirely accessible and also brilliant. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, CNET has some background and an interview.

Q: Do you hate the Streets?

A: Then you may very well have trouble enjoying this goofy British video, by Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, in which the duo establishes the genre of grime-novelty (hereafter grovelty). The song: "Thou Shalt Always Kill".



I particularly agree with them vis-à-vis music and poetry, tragedies that occur in non-English-speaking countries, and Radiohead. [via Kevin]

Q: WTF ask why?

A: Bud Dry... humor.



[via crazy Sean McWASP]