Autotuning may be the most immensely played out crappy gimmick the music world has known since the fisheye lens in all of those Puffy videos in the late 90s, but this video of an autotuned Billy Mays selling affordable health insurance is …truly inspired.

The 2nd Youtube video featured in this particular article has been a favorite of mine for almost two years now, and I cannot believe I haven’t posted anything about it up until now. The first video is the original commercial for Crossfire, a board game that involves shooting little metal balls at targets in an effort to push them off of your opponent’s edge.

I’ve already typed WAY too much, just watch these videos and laff.

While eating dinner last night, a group of us starting reminiscing about on of the more fantastic one shot specials ever aired by Fox at the height of their ridiculous one shot string of specials (Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, anyone?), a delightful romp known as Man vs. Beast. The special pitted man versus animal in a series of challenges ranging from an Olympic sprinter trying to outrun a giraffe,  44 little people pulling a jetliner against a 8800 lb elephant, to my personal favorite – world champion hot dog (and everything else) eater Takeru Kobayashi versus a GIANT FUCKING BEAR in a hot dog eating contest. The results were hilarious, almost as hilarious as the color commentary throughout this clip featuring Mr. Ready 2 Rumble himself, Michael Buffer. Enjoy!

.

One of my finest memories of adolescence, aside from making very frequent and hilarious Michael Jackson jokes, was playing Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker for the Sega Genesis. If you’ve never heard of this game previously it’s not too surprising; the game, based on the 1988 movie was a …cult classic, to be sure. It also never, ever ceased to be totally hilarious. The premise: Michael Jackson must travel through five levels of varying oddness (a night club, a parking lot, a graveyard, a cave, and a robofortress), saving orphaned children from Mr. Big, the evil child napper (as played by Joe Pesci in the movie). That in and of itself seems fairly innocuous, yes? Yeah well let me just give you a bullet list of some of the “features” of this game that make it as bizarre and uncomfortable as the real-life and now deceased King of Pop.

Remember when I mentioned saving orphaned children approximately 6 lines of text ago? Well, this is accomplished by searching all manner of windows, doors, gravestones, bushes, car trunks – where the children are hidden. MJ explores said locations by flourishing with a spin, opening the container and discovering one of three things: Nothing, a bomb, or a child. In the happy event of discovering a child, the child dances in front of MJ, shouts “Michael!” and then flies off on a ….comet. Sort of. It definitely looks like a sperm. All this while MJ has his pelvis thrust outward. Hooray! Once all of the children have been saved, Bubbles the Chimp shows up on another comet and shows MJ the way to the exit. Precious.

Not to be undone by the strangeness of this philanthropic endeavour, I would also note that while attempting to save small children there are waves and waves of various enemies, from gun toting gangsters to cats to zombies, attempting to thwart our hero. MJ has several methods of dispatching these foes: either kicking stardust at them, spinning around violently and then throwing his hat at them – upon impact they EXPLODE, or spinning for an extended period of time and initiating a full screen dance routine – which results in everything on screen dropping dead. Awesome.

This routine extends for a full 5 levels, until the grande finale during which MJ turns into a gigantic robot, launching missiles and shooting lasers from his eyes, destroying absolutely everything and everyone in his path. Like most things in Michael Jackson’s existence, I couldn’t make this shit up. The last confrontation involves RoboJackson flying after Mr. Big in his space ship, pelting him with weaponry until he finally explodes in a fiery death. The children are safe. Don’t believe me? Here, play the game for yourself. Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (download to desktop, requires a ROM emulator to play) Shine on, you batshit crazy diamond.