Oops! Re the formatting (blush)

[Henry]

The 10 Silliest Videos We Wasted Time Watching This Year

Washington Post, Sunday, December 7, 2008; N02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120403
410_pf.html for article with live links


YouTube can be a great place to see the latest music videos, catch a
buzzed-about news item or get a demonstration on how to fold a fitted sheet.
But it is also a time-waster extraordinaire, flooded with clips that have
little or no redeeming value. And yet we watch.

Think back to time-sucks of previous years, such as the Star Wars Kid or the
sneezing panda (for links, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/popvulture):
What exactly did we get from all those repeated viewings? Well, a few
seconds of guilty entertainment. And with the depressing state of the world
today, should we really deny ourselves? Keeping that in mind, here are 10 of
the most entertainingly pointless videos that we fed our precious minutes to
this year. Some are lucky footage of random weirdness; others seemingly took
a lot of effort to produce, to no real purpose. Enjoy.

10. "Serious Baby." Not too long ago, an angelic laughing baby was the toast
of YouTube. This year, it was the evil-eye baby, who snaps between innocent
giggling and "I will mess you up" glares in a split second.

9. "Lady Spins on an Escalator." A woman lies across the handrails of two
escalators moving in opposite directions and becomes a human turntable. You
say to yourself, "That can't be safe" and "Why didn't I think of that?" The
stunt has inspired dozens of copycats (and those are only the people who
videotaped themselves doing it).

8. "Dog Malfunction." The canine in question is a scrawny lap dog with the
strangest bark you'll ever hear. As the little bug-eyed animal freaks out,
it sounds less like a dog and more like a gremlin being strangled.

7. "Dramatic Lemur." One of the follow-ups to last year's mega-hit "Dramatic
Chipmunk" (truly, the best five-second clip on the Internet, even if the
animal is actually a prairie dog), this is another masterpiece of, well,
animal facial expressions.

6."Go Shorty." It might not be that funny to see a lizard walk across a
street, but to see a lizard walk across a street in perfect rhythm with a 50
Cent song? That's comedy gold.

5. "Dog vs. Balloons." A Jack Russell terrier viciously attacks a bouquet of
74 party balloons, popping each and every one of them in less than a minute.
His tenacity is inspirational, especially when he goes after the two orange
ones that try to escape.

4. "Roomba Driver." Although the title isn't exactly accurate (the robot
vacuum steers itself), there's something indefinably cool about a cat
hitching a ride atop a Roomba.

3. "Balloon Fail." Before you watch, know that the man in the video does not
die. That way you won't feel as bad laughing at his horribly misguided
attempt to squeeze his entire body inside a big latex balloon.

2. "Star Wars According to a 3-Year-Old." The young lady in question puts an
absolutely adorable spin on George Lucas's sci-fi epic. Best line: "The
shiny guy always worries."

1. "Hamster on a Piano (Eating Popcorn)." Not only do you get to see a
hamster on a piano eating popcorn, but you get to hear the accompanying
theme song that somebody wrote and performed, the lyrics of which describe
exactly what you're seeing on screen: a hamster on a piano eating popcorn.
This is the kind of stuff YouTube was made for.