Astro Naughty – NASA Astronaut charged with attempted murder

NASA astronaut Lisa ‘Robochick’ Nowak proves that even robots can experience “love malfunctions” as she drives cross-country to confront her ‘love rival’, a woman she believed was romantically involved with William ‘Billy O’ Oefelein (astronauts, like Top Gun Academy pilots, all have groovy nicknames, apparently…). Nowak ends up charged with attempted murder based on the kidnap kit in her car. And it gets weirder. AP story here. Parody analysis below.

An Inconvenient Spongebath

A new report pins the blame for Global Warming on humans.  Who saw that coming?  And who is now in the clear?


State of the Mothaf***in’ Union

Tonight, The President is going to help us come together as a nation and realize it’s not 2006 any more…

SuperBowl troop surge

If we’re serious about winning this war, we’re going to have to put more troops on the ground, and put more Baby Jesus in the SuperBowl. Or so says the President.

Zefrankie goes to Hollywood

Seriously/hysterically-smartypants videoblogger ZeFrank is profiled in this remarkably (ze)frank New York Observer piece on what comes next for Ze (his year-long, five-days-a-week videoblogging project ‘the show with zefrank‘ ends on March 17th). Ironically, the show’s end will surely create enough vlog-ripples to result in a whole bunch of “new viewers” discovering the show, just in time to find out they’ve missed out on the daily spectacle of it (Ze’s made a habit of creating deliberately obtuse shows designed to mis-direct new viewers as to the true nature of the show – complete with the question, “have the new viewers gone yet?“)

iPhone in a blender?

You just know that the guy with the Blendtec blender is itching to blend an iPhone. But buyer beware – before you consider the purchase of an over-powered internet-advertised kitchen appliance, heed this warning. There is one question you should ask and it’s not “will it blend”…

Pause button review: Scriggity

Famously named after the 1996 R&B hit ‘No Scriggity’ by Blackstreet,  Scriggity has the most phonetically pleasing name of any show on the internet. A full 98% of the end-of-the-year review episode consists of a series of questionable characters saying the word as part of some complicated community service sentence (or it may be “internet famous” video bloggers… I haven’t checked). However, what really sells the show is…

New Year Resolutions – less fighting mountain lions

Resolved to spend less time fighting mountain lions in 2007? I know that feeling. Whether you’re a lover or a fighter, it’s time to get up close and personal with the latest episode of For Parody Purposes Only – just click on the Hello Kitty bandaids on my big bald head. Or click here (Quicktime) or here (Flash).

Pause button review: Starring Amanda Congdon

‘Starring Amanda Congdon‘ opens with the first lady of videoblogging struggling to flag down passers-by for some vox-pop on the subject of Time’s (You are the) Person of the Year issue. It is, perhaps, a wry nod towards the relative nature of Congdon’s star power, as she hops back and forth between the small pond where she sits atop the ‘net-telly totem pole, and the bigger picture (in, I’m guessing, the Big Apple) where she’s just another girl-reporter with a microphone. Albeit the girl-reporter ABC have franchise-level hopes for.

The war on Christmas

What’s Santa bringing me for Christmas? Well, I already got a Panasonic 42″ Plasma, and by God, it’s gorgeous (and believe me, I had to do a lot of whining to get it past the House Appropriations Commitee). There’s no danger of me getting all my content from postcard sized laptop video windows for a while yet. I’m also getting a furrowed brow as I work my head around how best to bring my various podcast videos, MySpace “conversational” videos and general opinions on the video space into one place. Next on my agenda? Whining until someone helps me make a ‘subscribe’ button for my videos and helps me stick it in the sidebar. For now, if you haven’t seen ‘The War on Christmas’ you can click on my Santa hat (or here) and strap yourself in for another tour of duty.