Nothing Is Sacred, Everything Is Terrible
HOLY SHIT. I just discovered the website Everything Is Terrible (which should really be called Bad Touch Central, or Kill It With Fire). JACKPOT. I kind of feel like a kid who’s just come downstairs on Christmas morning and discovered grandma giving Santa a hummer a living room filled to the brim with goodies.
A bit of background: long, long ago, I’d obsessively make bootleg VHS comps (later, DVDrs) of all of the funniest, awesomest, creepiest, most fucked up shit I could find, and share or trade them. Everything from Pinky the Cat to Sex Education For Trainables to obscure Italian giallo to The Terror of Tinytown to Death Bed to unsanctioned blooper reels to questionable commercials to Raping Steven Spielberg to crazy shit from foreign lands to “Blue Peanuts” to … well, you get the idea. It was this bone-deep, swap-and-curate compulsion that’s never really died.
Be warned: at about 1:45, this clip gets downright demonic.
After discovering stuff like RE/SEARCH, those Incredibly Strange Music comps, zine culture, and wandering the specialty video store booths at the (then much smaller, homegrown) San Diego Comic Convention, I realized there were entire fringe communities of weirdos compelled to do exactly the same thing! I was so excited! We were all trading these grainy, janky 4th generation bootlegs of our favorite oddball material. Pre internet, those communities were more localized. One the internet kicked in, it went global. Of course, now we have YouTube [and better yet, Vimeo]…
…and Everything Is Terrible –bless their black, festering hearts– has a channel chock full o’ madness. These are only a few of the more soul-rending clips they’ve culled from the etherstatic for our pleasure. If you’ve got an hour (or several) to kill (as violently and memorably as possible), you should probably head on over there. Or, if you quailed upon viewing these clips, click here instead.
More Everything Is Terrible curated gems after the jump.
EDIT 1 2009/08/04 1:50pm: Oh no! YouTube just suspended EIT’s account. “[You] won’t be able to watch most of our videos until we find a new home for them. We’re working hard to rebuild, but it’s going to take a little while. Sit down, breathe into a paper bag, and try to relax. We will keep you updated. Don’t worry, we will continue to post new videos.”
EDIT 2 2009/08/04 7:00pm: Apparently Yogi Oki Doki and family were not amused by EIT’s highly popular “edited for lulz” edition of his show. They registered a copyright claim, and as a result, YouTube took down ALL of EIT’s clips. Bummer. But fear not! They’re slowly but surely restocking their library over at Vimeo (a more preferable site, anyway). Also, you can always take the old-fashioned route referenced earlier in this post, and just buy their DVD.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
It’s the perfect guilty pleasure for “Laugh At The Internet” Night,
August 4th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Lungs… collapsing.
Brain… melting.
Eyes… welling with tears of blood.
I had seen a few of Everything is Terrible’s videos, but a few you’ve posted here are brand new to me. Some past favorites include knives vs. cops, Retro Bill, and, the clip I could watch for weeks on end and never stop laughing at it, Sale of the Century.
Nostalgia for the bootleged oddity tape community always reminds me of the Mr. Show sketch about The Underground Tape Railroad.
Glad to see the internet finnaly being put to use for something of value.
August 4th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
If you think THOSE videos are funny, check out this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUJ4es4cYIU
The first time I saw it, I laughed so hard I almost choked.
August 4th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Yes, Ligeia, “wiener poopie” is a classic, and has made many a cameo appearance in my internet life. :)
August 5th, 2009 at 3:39 am
Hmm. Most of these are funny…. but the one with the yoga cowboy molesting kids with his BIG BLACK COCK?
August 5th, 2009 at 10:26 am
You will also want to check out http://www.neave.com/television/
August 5th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Wow, Scotto, that’s an amazing pot o’ Wrong Soup. I wish it were easier to tell what’s from where, but otherwise, bravo.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
this post is for the molokai cops
August 5th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Huh, looks like the internet was not as cool as I thought it was. Curse you, YouTube. What happened? Did the makers of the singing babies video demand residuals?
August 5th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Say what you will about the Singing Babies, but we bought both DVDs (yes there are 2!) for my nephew, and infants and toddlers find it extremely hypnotic. It was the only way we had peace in the house some days.
August 5th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Dude. Did you just quote Hard Ticket to Hawaii? That’s awesome.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:35 am
A really really long time ago, I found this little box with old vhs-tapes on my attic. My housemate told me it belonged to a guy who used to live there, but “who was so vague he eventually just dissolved in thin air”. The artwork on the tapes looked like something between the album covers of the Butthole Surfers and Miles Davis. It was one of those weirdo tapes from the really early nineties, practically antique.
Watching it felt like coming home after being abducted to another planet and having had my mind erased. It looked a lot like the stuff above, but most of it was much more amateuristic and it was all in Dutch, usually with very strong accents, indicating it was made in isolated communities of weirdos on the outskirts of the country. Still it was pure awesome.
I can only imagine how much weirdo-footage from the pre-internet era must be withering away right now on attics all over the globe. Somebody should start a rescue attempt for this stuff.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:59 am
Oh no! Look! From everythingisterrible.com:
APOCALYPSE YOUTUBE
Ok, everybody.
It finally happened.
Youtube has suspended Everything Is Terrible’s account. This means that you won’t be able to watch most of our videos until we find a new home for them.
We’re working hard to rebuild, but it’s going to take a little while. Sit down, breathe into a paper bag, and try to relax. We will keep you updated. Don’t worry, we will continue to post new videos.
August 6th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Thank you so much for this, Mer! I have gone through EVERYTHING. What a pleasure it was!
I found the Yogi Oki Doki video mirrored on Break:
http://www.break.com/index/hippie-weirdo-yoga-farmer.html
August 7th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Oh yes, Yogi Oki Doki was by far my favorite.
“Oh, nice tomato! I’ll save that later for my sandwich.”
August 7th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
And that’s why you always host at multiple sites! :P