Web Crush Wednesdays: Oglaf

There’s a certain level of adulthood you reach where you realize that filthy humor really is hilarious, and you’re not fooling anyone by pretending it isn’t. Unfortunately, this realization tends to come at a time in your life when you’ve also realized that things like misogyny and racism are both incredibly shitty and incredibly prevalent. You want sex jokes, but you don’t want rape jokes, and you want to acknowledge that butt stuff can be hilariously awkward, but you also get furious when people are homophobic. Where can you, an adult with a refined palate for filthy humor, turn to satisfy your deep, aching need for inclusive, witty garbage? Esteemed readers, consider Oglaf.

Yes, it is a competition.

Extremely NSFW images under the cut.

Throwback Thursdays: Men in Black

For this week’s installment of Throwback Thursdays, I want to give a throwback to another one of my favorite childhood movies—1997’s Men In Black. I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately and since it’s on Netflix in Canada, I’ve been rewatching it quite a lot and I find it’s still fun, enjoyable, and comforting.

Spoilers for the movie below, obviously.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Halosche Two More Eggs!

Gather ’round, children.

In days of yore, we didn’t have fancy things like high-speed Internet access. We measured our bandwidth in baud, and nobody knew what it meant. In such primitive times, quality video was a pipe dream, at least if you wanted sound and recognizable human forms. Our creative types turned to Flash, a much-maligned but once-vital format now doomed to the dustbin of cassette tapes, laserdiscs, and DIVX.

But any medium can be a muse, and Flash smiled upon the Brothers Chaps. In 1999, they brought a beanie-wearing, star-shirted jock named Homestar Runner from his humble origins in Mario Paint save files to the masses.

Homestar, joined by an unlikely cohort of friends, enemies, and well-wishers including Strong Bad, the Cheat, Marzipan and the Poopsmith, delivered a decade-plus of the best internet comedy any of us had ever seen. In a crudely-animated cluster of absurdist humor, sight-gags, and invented words, the Brothers Chaps took over the world, even landing a reference to Strong Bad’s dragon, Trogdor, on the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and after 2009, little new Homestar content was produced, as the Brothers Chaps moved on to bigger and better things like Yo Gabba Gabba and Gravity Falls. The old website, Homestarrunner.com, gathers dust, a monument to those heady days.

But now, the Brothers Chaps are back.

Throwback Thursdays: The Fifth Element Holds Up to the Test of Time

I saw The Fifth Element for the first time when I was about ten or eleven. I loved it – the high-tech but grungy future aesthetics, Korben Dallas, the reluctant hero, Leeloo, the supreme being, and the story about how love saves the world. It immediately became one of my favorite movies and I’ve had a thing for Milla Jovovich and Bruce Willis ever since. The last time I saw the movie was a few years ago, so I decided to watch it again to make sure I wasn’t remembering it to be better than it actually was. And I wasn’t disappointed, mostly.

Web Crush Wednesdays: @ProBirdRights

We’ve done some very important things in this space, calling your attention to exciting creators, great games, and sharp analysis. Heck, you might even learn something.

This week, you’re getting a bird.

I been working on my summer bod: it the same as my regular body, but this time more popsackles in it.

—birdsrightsactivist (@ProBirdRights) June 15, 2015

Trailer Tuesdays: What We Do in the Shadows

I wanted to offer all of you a horror movie today. As one of the horror film lovers on this site—though my tastes tend towards the eye-roll worthy, admittedly—I feel that is it my duty to do so, especially in the spirit of this month. However, I’ve come to a realization that outside of a highly interesting-looking documentary on Quidditch (the sport of Harry Potter fame re-crafted for Muggle players) and a horror film about a Ouija board summoning that looks hilariously awful (like, Paranormal Activity 4 awful), there are just no movies I’d bother recommending. As such, I’m going to rec a film that’s already had its day in the sun but we’ve unfortunately missed talking about until now.

My Inner Child is Very Conflicted: A Review of Lady in the Water

I can’t sugarcoat it: this film is terrible. …And yet, I like it. When I went to the theater showing eight years ago, I couldn’t believe how mad everyone was when they left. Sure, it didn’t live up to the trailer, but what movie does anymore?  After re-watching it for the first time since then, I definitely understand why people thought it wasn’t worth their money. It’s offensive, pretentious, and ridiculous. It’s almost bad enough to be funny, but it’s stuck between that line of bad and funnily bad. What did I see in this movie? Believe it or not, this film does do a few things decently. It surprised me by avoiding clichés that I’d expect other scripts to use in a heartbeat. If nothing else, this movie proves there can be a silver lining after the darkest clouds.

Spoilers after the jump!

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Religion is Not a Joke

We’ve discussed before on this blog how few and far between characters of faith are in pop culture. When they do crop up, it is often of the extremist/terrorist/serial killer variety. The only other time it seems to come up is as the butt of a joke—literally. Far too often, religion is only brought up in a comedic line to get some laughs. Religion, how do we mock you? Let me count the ways.

Willow Rosenberg, Jewish on Hanukkah, Pesach, and whenever it’s convenient for a joke.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Mamrie Hart

Hi, and welcome to “Web Crush Wednesdays”! I’m Fiyero3305, and who do I think most deserves to be featured this week? Well it’s that pun-master extraordinaire with the long locks of fiery hair, Mamrie Hart!

Comedy for Everyone

There’s this idea (where it started, who knows) that there are comedies for different groups of people. With Bridesmaids, we had a comedy for women. With everything that is Tyler Perry, we have comedies for African Americans. We nerds dominate the internet with webcomics such as xkcd and web comedies such as The Guild. Are any of these niche comedies funny to peoples outside of their intended audience, or are those comedies simply not funny to other people? And who’s the audience for all those seemingly more generic comedies?