Culture

We Recommend: Your Friday Freebies

Featuring SNL's best cast members, Ghostbusters in Lego form, a better Wikipedia and Iggy Azalea as various foodstuffs.

by Junkee  22 August 2014

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Each Friday, our contributors send in a bunch of (legally) free stuff they’ve come across this week to help you waste your weekend. You’re welcome.

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Website: Grantland’s SNL Bracket

Recommended by: Simon Miraudo (“Let’s Take A Closer Look At The Most Bullshit Category Of The MTV VMAs”)

In a week marred by tragedy and rioting, not to mention the unexpected restaging of the Great Twerk Debate, Grantland attempt to restore sanity to the world with their latest bracket, which asks: Who is the Greatest ‘Saturday Night Live’ Cast Member Ever? Actually, now that I think about it for a hot second, this could divide us as a people even further.

grantland

As SNL nears its 40th year, a long-legacy of mostly-brilliant comedy (and Chris Kattan) in its rear-view mirror, it’s novel to reflect on its many incarnations and wonder which of its cast-members truly deserves the crown. I could only narrow it down to eight – Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Amy Poehler, Will Ferrell, Bill Hader – before collapsing into a weeping mess, howling “Choppin’ Broccoli!” to the heavens in despair. Perhaps you’ll have better luck.

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Video: Ghostbusters In Lego Form

Recommended by: Katie Booth (“Zelda Williams Forced Twitter To Rethink Its Woeful Anti-Trolls Policy”)

Breaking Bad, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Blues Brothers have all got Lego makeovers before. So it’s no surprise that some genius decided to remake a scene from Ghostbusters using Lego. Obviously Slimer (who appears in the movie as a green blob) couldn’t have a Lego equivalent, so Homer Simpson seems like a suitable replacement.

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TV: Frontline

Recommended by: Koren Helbig (“We Spoke To Rob Sitch About ‘Utopia’, Satire, And How The Australian Government Wastes Your Money”)

Last month the internet quietly offered up a gift of supreme excellence: the entire Frontline series, free to watch on YouTube. This is the stuff of 1990s legend; three seasons of hilariously caustic satire that tears Australian current affairs “journalism” a new one by exposing its cringeworthy double standards and exploitative, shallow practices. Rewatching the whole shebang (best three days of my life) makes it frightening clear that precious little has changed in the intervening twenty years.

Watching the show is like cracking open a too-good-to-be-true time capsule, with cameos from 90s stars like Don Burke, Rex Hunt and Sam Newman. The big hair! The gaudy, oversized clothing! Apparently New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia have all previously included episodes of Frontline in their high school curriculums, it’s that dang good.

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Extension: Wikiwand

Recommended by: Alex McKinnon (“Joseph Gordon-Levitt Makes The Case For Male Feminism, Is An Excellent Human Being”)

You use Wikipedia so much you kind of forget it looks like a great big pile of garbage. it’s ugly, it’s poorly formatted and it doesn’t use the great raw material at its disposal to its fullest potential.

Enter Wikiwand, the extension that turns crappy old Wikipedia pages into glorious, long-form style epics that look like this:

sydney

UGH. Look at that. I dunno whether I want to read that or buy it a drink.

Download it here, and never look at shitty-Wikipedia again.

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Video:  ‘’90s Sitcoms With The Verbs Cutout‘, from Clickhole

Recommended by: Steph Harmon (‘Junk Explained: What Is The #IceBucketChallenge, Who Is It For, And: Is It Helping?‘)

When The Onion launched its Buzzfeed/Upworthy parody site Clickhole in June, I was absolutely delighted — but also fairly convinced the joke would get old pretty quickly.

Nope! I was wrong. These guys keep churning out good after good after good, riffing on the seemingly endless supply of clickbait genres, while commenting on current events. Take this week, for instance: ‘10 Beautiful Interracial Arrests‘, ‘8 More Unarmed Teens Still At Large‘, and the stunning op-ed, ‘How Many More Black Teenagers Have To Die Before Racism Just Sort Of Goes Away On Its Own?‘.

This one appealed to me in particular, because it shows how meta Clickhole’s ready to go. It comes from the Find-A-Nostalgic-TV-Show-And-Edit-A-Scene-From-It-In-A-Very-Specific-And-Ultimately-Meaningless-Way genre, and it’s perfect.

Also, while I’m here: ‘8 Iggy Azalea GIFs You Need To See Right Now, Mom. Please Wake Up, Mom. Please.‘

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Twitter: @NoToFeminism

Recommended by: Elizabeth Flux (“Google Maps Has Been Tracking Your Every Move, And There’s A Website To Prove It”)

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Tumblr page ‘Women Against Feminism’ for existing, because if it didn’t, the world would be missing out on some pretty excellent satire. It started with ‘Confused Cats Against Feminism’, and has now progressed to Twitter. @NoToFeminism attacks the confused messages presented on the original page by echoing them in tweets littered with spelling errors and filled with deliberate and stinging hypocrisy.

In between highlighting the misunderstandings aired on ‘Women Against Feminism’, the account also makes some valid points about some real issues.

So, if you thought you needed feminism, let this account educate you. Because how can you argue with: “I don’t need fismen i love wolf-whistling so much i purchased baby wolves raised them on my own and taught them to whistle at me constantly”.

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Tumblr: Food That Looks Like Iggy Azalea

Recommended by: Katie Booth (“This Video Of Reese Witherspoon Drunk-Dancing To ‘I Will Survive’ Is Glorious”)

This does not need a description.

iggy2

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http://www.clickhole.com/video/90s-sitcoms-verbs-cut-out-819