Look Around You

It's been a while since I've done an update, so I figured I'd talk about something that so far hasn't really been on the Hell circuit aside from my panels. Look Around You is a BBC series, of which there have been two so far. The first, which was from about three years ago, consisted of nine 9-minute shorts, and much like how the Weird Al DVDs have those fake 50s B&W educational films, each episode was essentially a fake version of those 1970s "For Schools and Colleges" instructional science videos. The absolute best part of Look Around You is that there's no laugh track, watermark, or anything to suggest that it's fake or being done for laughs other than the sheer absurdity of what's being said and done on the screen. I like to just clip the experiment portions of the episodes (which run about one and a half to three minutes) and show those.

Here's the proper way to dispose of lab materials:



This is what happens to people after they drink champagne with sulphur mixed into it (a concoction scientists call "sulphagne"):



So far, I've used the brain experiments in my lineup, to great success. But I think my current favorite Anime Hell clip (I've sort of made it my key piece this year) comes from the second series, which utilized a different format. The second series was 6 30-minute episodes in length and aired earlier this year, and was done in the style of the very long-running BBC program "Tomorrow's World." Most people don't like the second series nearly as much as the first since the 30 minute format forces them to drag out the punchlines over an entire episode, but the buildup is what makes the particular clip I chose so great. It's for a diet shake called "Slimby" in which you're instructed to drink a glass worth before looking at the SPECIAL PICTURE which is SO TERRIFYING that your body just forces the fat out from under your skin in fright as per the diagram:



So what exactly IS the special picture? Well that's the punchline, so I won't give it away here (and if you've seen it, don't ruin it for others!). This clip makes even my jaded self laugh uncontrollably, much like the Pranksters skit on SNL starring Christopher Walken which I ran last year. I don't plan to bring back Pranksters this year, since it loses its impact once you've seen it once and now it's out on DVD. Hopefully people will forget about it after a year or so.

So how'd A-Kon go? And nobody here would happen to have Beyond Reanimator on DVD, would they? I simply must have that music video.