Fergie Can't Take a Joke, Kills YouTube Parodies of Her Song

Logging onto YouTube this morning I discovered that one of my video posts, an entertaining spoof of Fergie's song "Fergalicious", written by my cousin for a group class science-project and called "Sciencelicious" had been taken down without any notification from YouTube or explanation.

After digging around, I found out that many other parodies, be it "Mathmaticious" or "Chongalicious", have been taken down as well. The only explanation I can come up with? Fergie and her record label decided parody was an infringement upon her intellectual property. Which is BULLS**T.

Surprisingly, other parodies like "Bananalicious" and "Calculicious" are still standing, which leads me to believe either the lawyers' goons haven't found every other video yet (which is surprising when the "Related Videos" window to the right makes it oh so easy to do), or there's some other foul intent at work.

You know, I never really liked, or respected, Fergie to begin with, but crap like this, removing videos by innocent young people who just want to use that musical beat to make fun songs and then share those videos with the world, making absolutely NO financial or professional gain from it, doesn't help her case and is pretty ludicrous.

No news stories have picked up on this, and I don't expect many to do so. Maybe some emails to CNN will shed some light on this story.

Fergie, you're now on my Enemy List. Or would be if I was Richard Nixon.

--Cbake

Do America a favor: DON'T go see "Disaster Movie"

I'll keep this simple: Don't go see the new film "Disaster Movie" in theaters. Its not parody. Its not satire. It shouldn't even be qualified as comedy.

The writer/directors, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, are nothing more than hacks who don't or can't appreciate real satire. And while this may sound like the angry rants of a jealous filmmaker wannabe, let me explain why these guys stink at their job and why they dupe the American public into thinking they have talent.

First, we'll start with "Scary Movie", a parody of teenage slasher flicks, mainly "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer". These movies succeeded because, like "Airplane", while they made fun of particular films, they had their own storylines and characters that deviated a bit from the source material while also crafting jokes that exposed the inane qualities of the movies being parodied. These films stood on their own as being (debatably) good works of comedic art. That's what satire should do: expose the source as being ridiculous while being entertaining and informative in its own right.

What Friedberg and Seltzer have done instead is just reference every movie that has come out the previous year. This does not make satire. Their movies are crammed with pop culture and movie references that, when looked back in three years, will have been forgotten and possibly won't make sense to the viewer. Simply putting a character onscreen that looks like a miniature version of Indiana Jones or a nude Incredible Hulk is NOT funny on its own and does absolutely nothing for parodying the source material.

I watched their previous film "Date Movie" one day when it was on tv and I had nothing better to do. What a failure. Not funny in the least. I gave them a second chance with "Epic Movie", but that was only marginally better (and I credit Darrell Hammond's spot on Capt. Jack Sparrow impression for that). "Epic Movie" doesn't even qualify as a real full-length feature film. Feature films should be at least 90 minutes long. An hour and a half. "Epic Movie" clocks in at only 86 minutes, and TEN minutes of that was devoted to the end credits. The credits!

Only films like "Titanic" and "Lord of the Rings" should have credits that long, and while the case can be made that "Epic Movie" was making fun of epic films and their long credit sequences, I can't give credit to the filmmakers' intelligence. Not only were the credits stretched out to barely come close to being considered a feature film, but a useless and pathetic attempt at a "dance sequence" was inserted into the credits to make them even longer. It was sad to see these guys stretch so hard and still come up short. If they had actually come up with a real plot that truly made fun of epic films, filled with jokes that expose how seriously those films take themselves, then perhaps they never would have had to struggle to meet the feature-length runtime.

"Disaster Movie" looks even worse. Instead of crafting an interesting parody of disaster films like "Twister" and "Armageddon", it looks like these natural disasters take a backseat to lame references to recent movies like "Juno" and "The Dark Knight", to celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Amy Winehouse. This shouldn't be called "Disaster Movie". It should be called "Dumb Reference Movie" since the entire thing will be filled with lines like "Look, its Dr. Phil!" and "Look, its Hannah Montannah!", all the while the filmmakers will laugh and wink and say "Aren't we clever and funny for including those characters?" Just what the f**k do Alvin and the Chipmunks have to do with earthquakes and asteroids?!

And the problem is, the American public will fall for it. So I IMPLORE you. DON'T go see "Disaster Movie". Support real filmmakers who actually give their all to craft an intelligent and witty film. Go see "Tropic Thunder" instead. Or, as derivative as it looks to be, "The House Bunny". The people behind those movies actually tried to inject some originality into their films. Friedberg and Seltzer just string together bad skits and steal your money.

Don't help them. Don't encourage them. Only when these movies stop making money will these two finally be kicked back to the mailroom or production assistant position where they belong (and I certainly don't want to offend any true creative types that are still working their way up from those positions).

Seriously, if you go see this movie, I will lose much respect for you.

Hey look, its Iron Man being crushed by a rock!
--Cbake