Yeeeesssss!

It's amazing what sick days can bring about.

Do you remember the days before the internet, where when you saw something, you really had to take it in, because you'd never see it again? Well, despite my youthful looks, I grew up without the internet (or a cell phone, or DVDs, or plasma screens, or...you get the point). So when I saw something I really liked, it was always bitter sweet, because I knew I'd never get the moment back.

And then Al Gore invented the internet.

Now you can relive virtually anything, virtually. (ha! See what I did there? With the English?) Ten seconds after something airs on tv you can find it on YouTube. When YouTube first started I used to search for some hilarious things I had seen, but, it takes time for the global community to upload every inane piece of useless crap, and the stuff I was looking for was particularly inane and useless. And then, you know, I got a social life and a job and years passed and I kind of stopped looking. I was moderately satisfied - having found Daft Punk's "Around the World" video that I had wanted to see again since seeing it on MTV2 back in the day and after finding Phil Collins "Land of Confusion" which I'd been dying to see again since I had this conversation:

Me: Do you remember that video? There were, I dunno, dolls or something? And Ronald Reagan was there? And a gorilla?
Matt: You made that up.

But there were some things I thought were destined to stay a memory.

But then I called in sick to work today and a soap opera star called Mason and I didn't really have anything to do and the planets aligned and I restarted my search and was, like, filled with joy - filled - because I found the crap I've been looking for for 10 years! Some of it's still missing - but I'm determined to renew my search with vigor.

So now I present to you: Stuff I Think Is Hilarious That I Thought I'd Never See Again.

1. The Days of Our Lives episode where Austin is in the Garden of Eden and someone is in a snake suit.

I followed Days randomly during 8th grade and then off and on for a year or two after that. Enough to know who the characters were for a while. I have this memory of being in the dorms freshman year of college and someone was watching Days and they called me in because they couldn't believe how ridiculous it was. I agreed, and laughed until I cried.



I seem to remember some guy floating into the scene in a bubble (like a soap bubble), but I couldn't find that part.

2. The episode of the Tellytubbies where they do the boom boom dance.

I think this episode is where my love of the Tellytubbies truly gelled. I was up early one morning because I had torn all the ligaments in my foot and it made everything uncomfortable so I couldn't sleep. I turned on the Tellytubbies as I oft did at the time (what can I say - I'm mesmorized by them) and I saw this episode...and laughed until I cried.

It starts out like all Tellytubbies episodes do. They run to the top of a hill because a pinwheel told them to and their stomachs light up and one of them shows a short tv clip on their belly. This day it was a group of kids in Africa doing the boom boom dance, as you can see here:



They always show it twice, and then the rest of the episode is usually the quartet doing something similar to what they watched in the video. In this case, the boom boom dance.

Now, the Tellytubbies are funny enough because they are built like babies and they have those huge butts and sweet faces. And when they dance, it's even funnier. But they usually do some sort of weird line dance or La La does ballet or something. But in this case, they must have watched Step Up first, because they are booty dancing. Like a ghetto girl in a club. Seriously - watch La La and Po and see how many times they just turn around and head ass first for the camera:





Po's:



The best one is one I still can't find. I think it was Dipsy (but it could have been Tinky Winky) that does this dance, straight out of 1980's Harlem. He does this dance that's basically full-body vibration. HYS.TERICAL.

Now this last one I almost didn't add, because I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. Or even close. I was looking specifically for:

3. The episode of Passions where Timmy is in the Norma Bates Hotel and there are cat shadows everywhere,

and

4. The episode of Passions (possibly the same episode - I don't think I ever watched Passions more than once) where this girl is in hell in her closet and she's just like waving non-chalantly side-to-side going, "Heeeelp."

What I did find was a clip of the witch Hecuba putting Charity (the aforementioned girl) in hell. Which is funny, yes, but what is funnier is that someone (looks like someone from Russia maybe, based on the captioning) videotaped the clip from their tv that barely has a signal. I'm picturing some guy in Siberia in a room with nothing but a bottle of vodka, a tv, a video camera, and the computer capability to upload stuff to YouTube, who was either bored into mental illness or was mentally ill to start with. I was squinting through the fuzz, trying to visualize the hell in the closet, when I realized how shitty the reception was and was like, "Who recorded this? And then uploaded it? And for God's sake WHY?" I think you'll agree that it's pretty funny:



Ok, correction. This isn't the one with the Russion captioning. That was a different really-fuzzy-recorded-by-holding-a-camera-in-front-of-a-television clip of Passions. It's super ridiculous too, because, like, what the hell is going on here? And why is Jabba the Hut on Passions?



I wish I had more sick days. I'm almost positive I could find clips from Short Circuit or the Monchichis or probably even Flight of the Navigator in its entirety. And maybe, just maybe, I could find that show where there's this koala and a hunter who chases him, but the hunter can never get the koala because the koala disappears into thin air like it's no big thing and just chews on eucalyptus leaves, chillaxin, while the hunter gets all upset.