Looking for an excuse to check your email one more time before bed? Or maybe you’re just up late answering the siren song of the interwebs while you worry about loved ones, career, or the eternal blackness. Whatever the reason you’re sitting at your comp when you should totally be sleeping, here are some of my favorite funny ‘cheer up’ links on YouTube that I go to for distraction on those nights when real solutions just don’t cut it.
#10. Good luck to you and your cocka’roach
The 3 1/2 minute short “The Critic” (1963) is the first film ever by Mel Brooks. Brooks dons his 2000 Year Old Man-ish voice to challenge the artsy, ambiguous animated short he (and we) are watching, with a voice-over filled with hilarious, bewildered old-man anger and skepticism.
#9. The double nerdery
I try not to throw the word ‘brilliant’ around, but this fan-made video of classic Star Trek clips set to the tune of “Knights of the Round Table” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is brilliant. And with the potential crossover of Star Trek and Python fans, it’s a delight to nerds on multiple levels. I also believe that it is the best-edited fanvid ever in the history of YouTube.
#8. The best MST3K short
Poking fun at 1950s mores is like shooting fish in a barrel, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny! With its squeaky clean, creepy-wholesomeness, ‘Mr. B. Natural’ (1956) would be funny even without the great Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary. Whoever concocted this was obviously going for a Mary-Martin-as-Peter-Pan vibe in selecting a buoyant, short-haired actress to play a character who is referred to as male. Like Peter Pan, Mr. B Natural swoops into the isolated bedroom of an impressionable adolescent boy. Unlike Peter Pan, Mr. B doesn’t seem like anything but an abrasive, frisky 34-year-old woman. Double entendres abound. Oh, 1950s—you slay me.
(For PART TWO, click here)
#7. The Guilty Pleasure
The Army of Lovers “Crucified” video (1991) intentionally turns the theatrically-grandiose dial past bombastic to just silly. Never have three musicians done such fun, tongue-in-cheek pretentiousness so well. The Swedish band is an equal-opportunity employer too, as the effect of La Camilla’s huge lips, Bo-Peep cleavage and crotch-flower combined with Jean-Pierre Barda’s hairy straitjacket bondage and posey-pouch could really turn anyone to almost anything.
#6. Marcel the Shell
Stop-animation shell talks in a funny baby voice about how tiny he is, and about how various household items and day-to-day events impact his tininess. Awwww.
#5. The Happy Dance
You may recognize this Bollywood video from the opening of the film Ghost World. “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” originated in the 1965 Indian thriller Gumnaam, although the indescribable dance number and song by famous Indian singer Mohammed Rafi (the voice in the video but not the actor shown singing) is actually much more well-known now than the movie. Like Cartman singing “Come Sail Away,” once I begin watching this video, I cannot stop it at any point until it’s over. I also once made a custom SoulCalibur character that I patterned after dancer Laxmi Chhaya in her gold dress and thief mask.
#4. Tarzan lived in up a great big tree
On New Year’s Day, some friends and I were talking about out favorite Hal Roach “Our Gang” shorts and the 1933 short “Forgotten Babies”—where Spanky McFarland is coerced by the older kids to babysit a bunch of toddlers barely younger than himself—came up immediately. It’s from the baby-Spanky era, where directors presumably gave the little tyke some general topic nudging and then just let him ramble, with unforgettable results. The “Tarzan” story here is one of many great Spanky moments. A bunch of us also once agreed that it’s kind of similar to Dougal’s (Ardal O’Hanlon) rant about The Beast in Father Ted, except that Spanky doesn’t say Tarzan sounds like Liam Neeson chasing a load of hens around inside a barrel.
#3. Fun With God
Tony Millionaire, creator of the Sock Monkey comic and Maakies strip, is one of my very, very favorite illustrators. His work is all at once funny, sad, raunchy and so exquisitely rendered. Interviews and The Art of Tony Millionaire book allude to the artist’s colorful life, and to add to his mystique, Millionaire occasionally pops up in small acting spots like this one, where he plays God. I don’t know who’s playing the role of the wine-drinker, but the whole sketch is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Not safe for work, due to Millionaire’s hilarious and ribald swearing.
#2. The best bunny video, chosen entirely through nepotism
This is a video I made of my pet rabbit. It’s very cheeky of me to list a video of my own making, but it’s legitimate as something that never fails to cheer me up, and my rabbit Hazel is getting his own mini fan-club via his YouTube videos. It’s also not very stoic of me to reveal that, in my spare time, I make music videos of my rabbit to post on YouTube, but we all need hobbies. Hobbies, and The Matys Brothers’ “Who Stole the Keeshka?” polka.
#1. Stompy lamb
Have you seen The Confused Lamb? Jumping from room to room like a cartoon? I watched it, and in thirty-seven seconds I went from zero to almost hysterical with glee and beside myself with giddy joy. Watch it to make everything in your world infinitely better. For thirty-seven seconds.