#1GF!: What are you doing today.
Me: Practicing my beatboxing.
#1GF!: What?
Me: Practicing my beatboxing.
#1GF!: Oh no.
Me: Gahd. It’s not like I’m going to do it while you’re here or anything. I know the rules.

I’ve been a sucker for beatboxing since I first heard The Human Beat Box in 1984 a sucker for people who can beatbox, and Beardyman shows us the recipe to a perfect beatbox mix. This is what got me buh buh pft buh b’buh pft’ing for hours.

Kitchen Diaries

If you can hear the Super Mario theme and feel like you’re home, then two things are true: you’re old and you’re a geek. Yesterday, while watching Attack of the Show, I saw a video of a radio controlled car playing the Super Mario Brothers Theme and thought it was awesome enough to add to my list of 44 Ways to Enjoy the Super Mario Theme.

After watching it a few times, I’m not so sure that I should’ve included it. The tones of the bottles during the test runs at the beginning of the video really don’t match with the tones when the theme is playing, making it seem like it might be a hoax.

What do you think? Is this a fake?

Sarah Silverman shared her secret with Jimmy Kimmel that she was fucking Matt Damon. Jimmmy also has a secret to share with Sarah “We Are the World” style.

I can’t stand Josh Groban, but I have to say that I have a new respect for the guy.

Jimmy Kimmel: I’m Fucking Ben Affleck

I know that Valentine’s Day is over, but I couldn’t resist this Valentine’s video mix of PostSecret postcards.

If you’re wondering where you can find the song from the video, it’s called “Shhh” and can be found at Donora’s myspace page

Sarah Silverman spills her secret to her boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel through the wonder of song and the magic of television.

Knock Knock
Who’s That Knockin’ At My Door?
Imfa
Imfa Who?
I’m Fucking Matt Damon

I’m Fucking Matt Damon

In the old days when the internet was still young, there was a site called goatse.cx that people would trick each other into visiting. On the site was a pretty gross picture, so people would snap pictures of peoples’ reactions when seeing it for the first time and post them to the web. This was internet humor back in 1999.

The new generation is a video generation, and they have no need for the goatse of an ASCII internet age. They have recently taken the goatse to new level with the youtube video, “2 girls, 1 cup”, and like the goatse, have been capturing people’s reactions as they watch it.

Because the reactions are so amusing, you’ll find your curiosity piqued and you’ll naturally want to see the video that the people are reacting to. I certainly did. I don’t have any problem with gross stuff, but “Two Girls 1 Cup” takes gross to a whole new level. It is easily the grossest thing I’ve seen on the internet this year, and unless you have a strong stomach, I really, really don’t suggest watching it. If you’re leaning towards watching it, let me remind you that there is no way to unwatch something once you’ve watched it.

We all need to thank BeardPick for sending in this video of himself with 2,000 toothpicks stuck in his beard. He beats Payton, the 1600 toothpick guy (also featured below) by 25%. Who’s stepping up for the next 400?

You will not be surprised to find out that BeardPick is in IT and undertook this death-defying stunt to entertain his co-workers. I think my favorite thing about the IT crowd is the strange things they do to entertain each other.

2,000 Toothpicks

1,600 Toothpicks

It’s Halloween and I want to make sure that you all stay safe this Halloween, so please watch this instruction video from Common Craft.

Happy Halloween!

While hunting for some free entertainment for Halloween, I discovered that there were a surprising number of horror movies that can be legally and freely downloaded because they have fallen into the public domain. I found cheese-filled creature features like The Giant Gila Monster (1959), Attack of the Giant Leeches (1953), and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962), but I also came across a number of films that I realized have been musically inspirational to some big name bands.

Here are the top 10 musically inspiring horror films in the public domain and what they inspired. The IMDB star rating is included so you can determine what to (or not to) download onto your ipod.

10. The Wasp Woman (1960)

The owner of a cosmetic factory becomes the test subject for wasp enzymes that are supposed to make her look younger. The drugs have unintended side effects.

IMDB: 3.4 stars

Musical Inspiration: This movie was said to have inspired the Misfits’ song “Queen Wasp” which appeared on Earth A.D, released in 1983.

When I watched the first video by DJ Sara and DJ Ryusei, I was sure that it had to be fake. I voiced this opinion to my monitor (which didn’t respond) and eventually found myself two inches from the screen trying to see if anyone modified the videos to attach some DJ’s arms to the kids.

After watching a bunch of their videos, I’m convinced that they’re awesomely real. These kids are only 6 and 8 years old…

This week, I sat through about ten minutes show called Extreme Dating, which was so good that it was being broadcast at the prime slot of 6:30 AM. The premise was that two people go on a date, but one of them has an earpiece that is connected to the other’s exes. The exes then try to ruin the date by feeding questions and insider information.

This episode had an extremely high-maintenance Swedish girl who was looking for a guy to read poetry to her all day and wait a mere six to eight months while she

I know Stormtrooper week is over, but I found these under a folding table while I was sweeping up.

Troops

Troops is a parody of the “Cops” reality TV show.

Stormtrooper Clerks

Parody of the movie, “Clerks”.

Stabbing at Leia’s 22nd Birthday

If they had only invited a Stormtrooper in the first place, none of this would’ve ever happened.

It’s Fridays are usually music posts, so you might have been expecting another round of the Shotgun CD reviews. Because we’ve been churning through Stormtrooper posts all week, I couldn’t let the final day pass without one last post.

So here it is: the Grand Finale to Stormtrooper Week. Watch it while we break down the elaborate sets and tip the caterers.

Shatner Sings “My Way” to George Lucas

Stormtrooper Week happened largely by accident, but did you enjoy it? Are you sad to see it go or did it just go way too far? Let me know in the comments…

Somehow it has become STORMTROOPER WEEK here at dyers.org! Not that you mind because you know that Stormtroopers are awesome. They may even be more awesome than ninjas.

And all these Stormtrooper posts have awakened that secret childhood desire to dress up like Stormtroopers, haven’t they? It certainly has for Kerry and Johnny Wadd, and it probably has for you too. No one should have to deny their inner ‘trooper, but with Stormtrooper costumes starting at over $650 on Ebay, getting your trooper on will probably require that you sit down and make the costume yourself.

Yesterday, I highlighted 101 pictures of Stormtroopers in every day situations. Most came from Flickr pools like the 501st Stormtrooper Legion, but a few of my favorites came from Danny Choo, the dancer in the Tokyo Dance Trooper video below. I don’t know if it’s the maids, the dancing, or the guy on the train trying not to stare, but I crack up at this every time.

Tokyo Dance Trooper

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I think it would be impossible to get through all of my daily reads without using both my RSS reader and my social bookmarks. You’ve heard me discuss why you should use RSS feeds before, but have you heard of social bookmarking? The following is an incredibly well done introduction to social bookmarking from CommonCraft.com. Watch it before moving on.

A Video Intro to Social Bookmarking (3:25)

The Advantages of Social Bookmarking

So now you know that social bookmarking simply means that you store your bookmarks on a web site rather than in your browser.

The one disadvantage to this is that anyone and everyone can see what you bookmark. Social bookmarks are not for things that you want to keep private (i.e. bookmarks to financial institutions, etc.) Social bookmarks are only for those links that you want to share.

I know that it still might sound a little crazy, but remember, there are several advantages to social bookmarks.

1. They’re more efficient: With normal browser bookmarking, the best you can do to organize your bookmarks is to split them into folders. That’s a start, but what if you want to bookmark a video of Gerald Ford falling down? That bookmark could go under either the “funny”, “video”, or “political” folder. Because you can only put it in one, it may be difficult to find when you’re looking for it in a couple of months. With Social bookmarking, you can add multiple key words to your bookmarks (called “tagging”), which allows them to be sorted in several ways. In essence, it’s like putting your Gerald Ford bookmark into the “funny”, “video”, and “political” folders instead of being forced to choose just one.
2. They’re more flexible: You’re no longer tied to a single PC to access sites that you’ve bookmarked. With social bookmarking you can access your bookmarks whether you’re at home, the library, a friend’s house, or Crazy Uncle Larry’s, as long as there is a PC with an internet connection.
3. They save anxiety: Ever not e-mail someone a link because you’d rather not bother them with something that’s on the periphery of what they’re interested in? By sharing all your bookmarks, there’s no more worrying about what people are going to like and not like. You bookmark what you want and give your friends the link to your social bookmarks page so that they can filter out what they like from it. In essence you give them more things to look at without peppering them with unnecessary e-mails.
4. They save time: If the endless stream of joke e-mails from Uncle Larry are clogging your inbox, you can eliminate the time spent scrolling through the pages and pages of forwards to get to the “really funny” link by getting Uncle Larry into social bookmarking. He posts all his “really funny” links to his social bookmarks page, you go in and check one page once a week, and the e-mail stream dries up. You save time, aggravation, and you no longer want to choke him out.

Get Started!

If you’re ready to try it out, then sign up for your free del.icio.us account (I don’t think they even require an e-mail). If after you sign up you want to see some of the funny or useful stuff that I just can’t seem to jam into my posts, Add me to your del.icio.us network.

Then, forward this to your elders and drag them into the 21st century.

I hate posting videos two days in a row, but this one was too good to pass up. Whether love or hate Kevin Smith you have to respect his response to an audience member’s question at Comic-Con 2007.

The question was, “Do you ever plan on making an original movie without rehashing any of your old characters that doesn’t suck?”

Kevin Smith Strikes Back

Today, I caught a cool story from Boingboing where a guy had supposedly modded old Chuck E. Cheese robots to play rap songs for him in his basement (link). Actually, the robots were the The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronic stage show from Showbiz Pizza Place, a forerunner of Chuck E. Cheese.

After watching the strange animatronic version of Bubba Sparxxx’s “Miss New Booty”, I went on to watch Fergie’s “London Bridge”, Nickelback’s “If Everyone Cared”, and really well done rendition of “Lithium” by Evanescence, which was just too weird and creepy not to share.

“Lithium” by Evanescence

If you’re interested some of the behind the scenes details, the creator of the videos posted a video to refute the argument that he’s just slamming buttons to make this all work.

Tyler Hudson: 12 Year Old Drum Prodigy

While I can’t prove the kid is from Boston, it looks like his band plays all over the Boston Area, so I’m claiming him as our own. The video is compilation of the Tyler drumming from age 2 until age 11. It’s pretty incredible.

Dunkin Donuts Commercial Starring Ace Frehley

There is nothing more Boston than Dunkin Donuts. I laugh every time I see this ad, although I wish that Ace had said, “I’ll give you the P&L Statement, baby!” It almost sounds like he wanted to say it, but didn’t.

Ernie Boch Jr. on Rescue Me

#1GF! and I were watching an episode of Rescue Me in which a police chief stepped up to the mic in the background of a scene. You only saw him for four seconds, but you could hear him for most of the scene.

I went into a mini fit.

Me: That’s… thats…
#1GF!: What?? What??
Me: [hits pause and starts waving wildly]
#1GF!: WHAT?
Me: gaaaaaaherniebockjunior. It’s Ernie Boch Jr. The chief. It is. I know it is.
#1GF!: That would be funny if you’re right.

Well, I was. The uncredited police chief was none other than Boston’s car dealership mogul, Ernie Boch Jr.

Have other funny or interesting Boston videos? Drop them in the comments…

The Participatory Culture Foundation has just released Miro, a free, open source RSS reader for video feeds. It can handle just about every video format that you can think of, has a built-in bittorrent client, and runs in both windowed and full screened modes. Formerly named the Democracy Player, this cross-platform player is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux.

Miro displaying the channel guide

With a million video players and sites out there, why should you care about Miro? You should care about it because Miro is the first solid step toward independent TV. By creating an integrated player and channel guide, Miro is not trying to supplement your TV watching: It’s trying to replace it.

By including a built-in channel guide that containing nearly 1600 channels, Miro is taking all of the legwork out of finding quality, independent video on the web. With more channels being added every day (trust me, I volunteer moderating them. It never stops.), there is something available for every taste. I ripped the following category list out of the channel guide this morning so you can get an idea of the wide range of channels available:

• Activism 44 Channels
• Animals 14 Channels
• Animation 62 Channels
• Arts 217 Channels
• Business 44 Channels
• Comedy 227 Channels
• Education 120 Channels
• Environment 27 Channels
• Family 32 Channels
• Food 33 Channels
• Government 10 Channels
• Health 22 Channels
• International 117 Channels
• Kids 8 Channels
• Mac 16 Channels
• Movies & TV 194 Channels
• Music 177 Channels
• News 158 Channels
• Politics 102 Channels
• Religion & Spirituality 42 Channels
• Science 36 Channels
• Sports 77 Channels
• Technology 165 Channels
• Transportation 11 Channels
• Travel 65 Channels
• Video Blogs 196 Channels
• Video Games 19 Channels

Tons of content doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s anything worth watching though, right? While I will admit that there are a few high school video blogs in there (LOL! OMG! WTF! BRB!), they are generally outnumbered by the amount of quality content. If you like news, ABC, NBC, Reuters, BBC, Fox, G4TV, and plenty of independent channels are available. If you’re a sucker for comedies, there are tons of regularly produced, independent sitcoms like The Burg, We Need Girlfriends, and Cearealized.

I currently have over 50 channels loaded into my player that range from G4 TV Shows to independent web-only sitcoms, and there are more videos in those channels than I could watch in a week.

If the guide isn’t enough for you, you can blaze your own trail with the built in video search feature. It will let you hunt down videos on Blip.tv, YouTube, Videoh, DailyMotion, Google Video, Blogdigger, and Revver from a single interface. It will also allow you to save those searches as channels, so that you can get constant updates on your favorite topic, whether it’s “Robot Chicken” or “chicken monkey donkey porn”. You can even set up playlists of channels to have Miro play all of your videos back to back in full screen.

With all this downloading, it would be logical to expect that you have to keep a watchful eye on your hard drive to keep it from getting packed with the videos that you never watch, but Miro is designed to work within a limited space. When you add a channel from the guide, Miro will manage the download and storage of the videos to prevent your drive from filling up. After you watch each video, you have the option of saving it, deleting it, or letting it delete itself automatically after a set period of time.

Sound cool, yet? It should. It’s the future of independent content.

Miro Will Kill Your Television… if you let it.

The Participatory Culture Foundation is a Massachusetts-based non-profit organization which seeks to balance the playing field when it comes to producing and distributing content. They were recently funded by the Mozilla Foundation and seek to help solve the growing problem of a small number of corporations controlling mass media. You can help balance the scales by turning your eyeballs away from the TV and onto Miro. I have no affiliation with the PCF beyond being a volunteer channel moderator, so I’m not employed by them nor am I qualified to speak for them. If you want to blame someone for any errors or mentions of chicken monkey donkey porn, you’ll have to blame me in the comments or by email.