That’s the president of the nation, not just California, appearing in a Funny or Die video with Zach Galifianakis. He would be the first sitting president to appear on an internet humor program, were it not for James K. Polk’s hilarious “What Treaty?” telegraph comedy routine with Sitting Bull. Still, it seems important that the president of the United States would do a low-budget video with a waning film buffoon. It’s something Reagan probably would never have—oh, wait.
Category Archives: Contemporary Media
The Daily Currant strikes again
A screen cap from The Daily Currant
The screenshot above is from an article in The Daily Currant, a satirical newspaper that has once again had one of its stories mistaken for fact, this time by a Maryland police chief who cited it in a presentation on the dangers of legalizing marijuana. Props to Jacek for the link. Annapolis police chief Michael Pristoop subsequently apologized for citing the story, adding, “This does not take away from the other facts presented in opposition to legalization or the good work of the Maryland Chiefs and Maryland Sheriffs Associations.” Actually, chief, it does. Your “good work” mistook a made-up thing for fact, and the other people in the room were, unlike you, immediately able to identify the thing as made-up. You should stop telling the people in that room what’s what. Pristoop can be forgiven for his mistake, however, as The Daily Currant continues to close the gap between “satire” and “false.”
Netflix pays Comcast millions to restore streaming speed
The promotional poster for “Scream, Blacula, Scream,” a quality film you can stream on Netflix
A mere 10 days after Comcast agreed to buy Time-Warner Cable, the cable/internet giant has announced a multimillion-dollar deal with Netflix. Here’s how it works: Netflix pays Comcast several million dollars each year, and the 25% drop in streaming speed that has plagued Netflix subscribers who get their internet from Comcast will go away. It’s probably a coincidence that this unprecedented deal comes three months after a circuit court judge struck down the FCC’s authority to enforce net neutrality. Welcome to the new internet. Netflix, which accounts for as much of 30% of total internet traffic during peak hours, now has to pay to play.
“Dumb Starbucks” less funny ha-ha, more funny legal ramifications
Dumb Starbucks, a kind of prank by Nathan Fielder.
It turns out that Dumb Starbucks, the mysterious coffeeshop that opened in a Los Feliz strip mall this weekend, was in fact a hilarious prank by comedy central show-haver Nathan Fielder. Here we use “hilarious” in its strict sense, to mean “funnier than an LA Times headline, I guess.” Basically, Fielder opened a coffee store that was almost identical to Starbucks except A) all the drinks were free, B) the word “dumb” appeared in front of them—dumb iced coffee, dumb frappuccino, et cetera, and C) it wasn’t inspected by the health department. LA County shut down Dumb Starbucks for item (C), but I’m more interested in what the parody store says about fair use.
Traffic stats show Colorado turned to pornography after Super Bowl
The Seahawks ram it through the Broncos’ tight little defense.
A. Ron Galbraith sent me this fascinating analysis of traffic on Pornhub.com during and after the Super Bowl, which suggests that Denver fans continued to have a hard time when the game was over. Get ready for more of that kind of talk. During the Super Bowl, internet traffic from Colorado and Washington to the web’s most popular pornographic video site deviated from average by -51% and -61%, respectively. After the game, Seattle traffic remained 17% below average, but Denver traffic was 11% higher than usual. It appears that Broncos fans drowned their sorrows in Kleenex, which gets weirder the longer you think about it.