Overdubbed video idiocy — Guest blog by Jimmy!

Editor’s note: Ten years ago, my friend Jimmy and I worked together on a diary-esque website fueled by teenage melodrama and mutual obsession for Radiohead. Today, he works for an education nonprofit in Boston, and in his spare time, combs YouTube for hilarious re-dubbed video clips. Enjoy these linked gems in today’s guest blog!

I’m no historian, but I’m sure there was a time, long ago, when you couldn’t fire up your Internet browser and instantly watch any video clip ever produced within seconds. This was a world of profound emptiness — a world bereft of the ubiquitous Rickroll; a world where the only ridiculous overdubs were found in kung fu movies; a world where your friends could make obscure jokes about that one episode of Punky Brewster where she Just Says No to “a little nose candy” — and you’d have no way to see it without an embarrassing trip to Blockbuster.

Sure, there were college networks and the occasional FTP site, where, thanks to the benevolence of some shadowy saint, one might download 44 separate chunks of the Usual Suspects to assemble in a kind of strange and secret alchemy. But for the unanointed, this was the stuff of legend. Only the most intrepid and/or nerdy of us dared brave those sunken depths where no copyright law dared to tread.

And then, out of the darkness, was birthed YouTube. And there was light, and the light was good.

We live in an enlightened age. Now, instead of blindly groping for access to these pearls of human experience, we are faced with the opposite problem. With so many glimmering jewels, how to distinguish one gem from another?

As with all art, it’s a matter of personal taste. But for those seeking guidance, allow me to present the following suggestions to start you on the path to True Internet Video Idiocy (TIVI) — classic silliness re-dubbed, in all its grainy magnificence.

• Trent Reznor’s real inspiration? The starship Enterprise. (Apparently Monty Python’s, too.)
  
  
• Even (especially?) white boys got to shout about “Baby Got Back” as interpreted by Gilbert & Sullivan. And yes, that is Kevin Kline! See below.
  
  
  
  
• The Fenslerfilm G.I. Joe public service announcements teach us that total absurdity is half the battle.
  
  
• If anyone can top the Wayne’s World version of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” it’s… well… He Man:
  
  
  
  
• Passing the true test of Internet video glory, the best five-second clip ever has inspired about a million ridiculous remixes.