I've been looking back over my 2007 archive and putting together some year-end posts as I've done in the past, and I ran across this reference to a crazy Bloggingheads snafu that made me laugh a lot back in February. But I couldn't embed the video back then, and I can now, so let me show it to you. It's Jonathan Chait and Jonah Goldberg, and neither knows that Chait's camera is going into demo mode:
December 26, 2007
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7 comments:
helpless giggling while trying to talk to my father on the phone.
Almost as if Chait is bored and decided to take a short-term dose of LSD to get through Goldberg's pompous speech.
Goldberg has a rather large head and looks doughy.
Chait on the other hand is doable. Is he a mo?
Very funny.
Using the same logic as The Wizard of Oz, ("Ignore that little man behind the curtain") Chait wins that round hands down!
I'm sitting here listening to it and wondering, "What the hell's so funny about this? It's a pretty serious--"
And then I look up and the guy's camera does a "Star Wars" wipe.
It's like something out of "Airplane!" Everyone's deadpan while something wacky is going on aorund them.
I've watched this clip and laughed a lot at least 10 times. I'm trying to analyze why it's so funny.
It reminds me of the Weekend Update bits from "Saturday Night Live," back when Chevy Chase was on the show. Jane Curtin would be reading the news seriously, and Chase would be making faces. But why was that so funny? It's something about how the person talking doesn't see what is happening. Chase made it funny by reverting to a poker face whenever Curtin looked over at him.
Chait, who looks a little like Chase, seems to be making it funny by keeping a poker face, but he doesn't know what's happening either. I think I find it funny because I get the feeling that Chait is doing it on purpose and taunting Goldberg with his crazy antics, and then because I also know that Chait could not possibly do that. Also there's something about the way the effects escalate. The revolving cube seems particularly rude to Goldberg.
I was distracted by how much Chait was touching his face. Isn't there some code that says if you touch your face in a conversation, you're very (romantically) interested in the person you're speaking to? Does that apply over videophones as well? It seemed as if Chait himself was completely smitten with Goldberg, whereas his technology was practically doing back-flips to keep him away from that Evil Conservative Guy.
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