My Favourite Game

I love “My Favourite Game” by The Cardigans. Fantastic song, and I remember the video well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsMUQK4jdsQ

Where many music videos went over the top in an effort to stand out (don’t get me wrong; there were of course some cracking ones at the time) this one stood out because of its simplicity. Just Nina Persson, looking smoking hot and cool as anything, doing nothing but singing and driving. And it was bloody brilliant. Almost like Nothing Compares 2 U in its simplicity, but this made you want to party rather than slit your wrists.

So I was very surprised when I went looking for it on YouTube today to find this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq-I4orlEhE

It turns out that the original video was a lavish, car-crash studded epic, which cost £220,000 to make. The one that was played on all the UK music channels, the one that I grew up with, the one that I thought was a masterpiece of minimalism, was actually the result of editing out all the violent and irresponsible bits to please the censors.

And yet having now seen the original, I still much prefer the “censored” version.

Safety Not Guaranteed

Whilst looking up what else the cast members of the excellent Parks and Recreation have appeared in, I was very surprised to see Aubrey Plaza starred in a film with an awfully familiar sounding title: Safety Not Guaranteed.  Then I recalled where I knew it from: YTMND (remember that site? surprisingly it’s still going in the age of YouTube and Vine!) A single page from way back in 2005, that eventually became one of the site’s defining memes.

And yes, it turns out the film is based on it, or at least the original spoof newspaper advert which appeared in the YTMND.

Given this fond memory, and the fact it had Aubrey Plaza in it, I just had to watch it. And it turns out to be a rather charming little film, with great characters and witty dialogue.  Highly recommended.

Trailer:

Moments of Wonder

On another procrastinatathon through YouTube, I stumbled across the gloriously named “Philomena Cunk” and her Moments of Wonder from Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe. Somehow I’d completely forgotten about this, even though it was only on in 2013 and I found it great at the time, easily the highlight of the show.  It seems like something my friends would appreciate, and the American contingent probably missed out on it too given the strong UK news/TV focus of the rest of the show. So here’s four of the segments, unfortunately the remaining two don’t seem to be on YouTube.

Interestingly Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris are credited as “program associates” for the show. I thought those names seemed familiar, and it’s because they’re two of the people responsible for The Framley Examiner, my favourite ever newspaper/website/book. I’ve owned the book for, ooh, something like 12 years now, and I can still take it off the shelf and find new things to chuckle about in it. There’s definitely echoes of the Examiner‘s absurd humour in Cunk’s ramblings.