There is an Australian musical comedy group called The Axis of Awesome. I do not know how these guys escaped my notice before, but I am now smitten. Below is the truly frightening argument that all hit pop songs are made up of the same Four Chords. Actually, it’s not an argument: they are and the guys show you by playing them together.
And then there’s a wonderful video they just recently did for Funny or Die about How to Write a Love Song:
Next, a fun, deftly animated music video about Club Villain:
And lastly, this video shows the wonderful connectivity of the new Internet world. There’s this character actor, Jesse Heiman. I see him almost every week playing Buy More employee Fernando on the t.v. series Chuck. He’s done a lot of bit parts — NCIS, Maybe It’s Me, Hollywood Wasteland, American Pie 2 — and extra work. He’s best known for his role as the fraternity pledge Budnick in the Will Farrell film Old School and the indie movie The Jerk Theory. He’s the kind of actor you see a great deal, find the face vaguely familiar but probably don’t remember unless they get a breakout role. Salt of the unappreciated earth in Hollywood.
And then there’s this guy in Sweden, Wilhelm Hempel. In Sweden. Who happened to notice Heiman when he kept appearing in things and did some research. And he created a video called The World’s Greatest Extra which shows clips of some of Heiman’s numerous extra and bit part appearances. And this video has gotten nearly 2 million hits and made the Web media rounds. It may have helped Heiman’s career. Is this of earth-shattering importance in our lives? No, but somehow that an American character actor could have gotten a shout-out from a guy in Sweden that then ricochets about the globe makes me feel a lot better than the news coming out of Japan. If we’re going to be all electrical while the fuel supply still holds, we might as well get serendipitous. So here’s the video and an article with more info about Heiman. Whom I will wave to now when he shows up on Chuck.
http://www.vancouversun.com/Meet+World+Greatest+Extra/4497727/story.html
The Open Window 
Here is a lovely video that, while it might now cheer you up, I’m will to bet will give you a lovely sense of frisson:
From the artist/director, Yoann Lemoine: ” I wanted to make a statement about heroic fantasy, not in a kitschy, elf and trolls way, but to explore what Tolkien, Final Fantasy, and Matthew Barney did. How you create a world with social codes, in a documentary sort of way, with specific imagery, dogmas, political parties, currency, dresscodes, ethnic groups, races, geography… How you recreate these codes in a parallel world. And how to do this in a way that is less cheesy than we are used to seeing in heroic fantasy, more intellectual…”
A good way to start a Friday 🙂
I liked the dog drool and the smoke missiles. You don’t see enough dog drool in fantasy, really you don’t. 🙂
No frisson? Dang. You are a tough nut, Kat Goodwin!
Well, here was the problem — my mom did volunteer wildlife rescue work including birds of prey rehabilitation when I was growing up. I had owls like that in my basement. So I kept getting distracted by the owl and the woman, thinking, “Oh those bare arms of hers are toast.” I did like the two key motif.