My YouTube Party of Five is a new series in which we invite people to share their five favourite YouTube videos, the ones hold closest in their heart, the ones they’ll play at 2am while drunk at a party. This week: Spinoff staff writer Don Rowe.
Being forced to sit in front of YouTube videos after two in the morning is a special kind of hell. Showing off your favourites, however, is downright masturbatory. Look how I curate the web, you say! No we can’t watch BoJack, you insist. Yes, we’re watching right to the end, you rule. These are the five videos I torment my friends with when the beers are gone and the night seems cold.
Mark Twain shuts children in an alternate dimension – with Satan.
I have no idea who showed me this, or even when, but I do know that it is impossible to un-see. Three claymation children meet a claymation angel called Satan, and learn a little about what the Dark Prince thinks of humanity. It’s trippy, it’s spooky, it makes me yearn for a time when cartoons could scare the shit out of you (Courage, anyone???). Most unsettling, this animation was based on the writings of Mark Twain, who it turns out was more than just someone with a fondness for racial slurs:
“It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream–a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought–a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.”
WTF is that all about?
The kickboxing equivalent of a nuclear war
“SHIT JUST GOT REAL. THAT IS AN EVIL LITTLE OOPMA LOOMPA. THE MAYOR OF MUNCHKIN TOWN HAS TURNED IT ON HERE IN THE FIRST.”
Long before the UFC was a household name, K1 was putting on the most exciting fights in sport. The disparity in kickboxing technique even compared to modern-day UFC athletes is glaring, and this fight shows why it’s such a tragedy we don’t see much of it anymore. Mike Zambidis is probably the hardest puncher to come out of Greece since Hercules, and considering his opponent is Persian, this is an approximation of the movie 300 in the boxing ring.
Daniel Waples plays the world’s strangest instrument feat. an alien
This video was playing while I wrote this piece, and most of the pieces I’ve ever written. Look at that spaceship looking instrument! Look at the actual alien in the background at 2.50! Look at this white dude kind of pulling off dreads. Miracles abound. The Hang Drum is a fascinating instrument with a crazy back story: think burned out Scandinavian engineers harnessing harmonic resonance to realign their chakras and charging only thousands of dollars per instrument.
Occult symbolism gives YouTube commenters a panic attack
My ex-girlfriend threatened to dump me over this one. She called it creepy, gross, kind of fucked-up. She wasn’t wrong! But if you’re going to stare half-lidded and glazed over at the TV in the middle of the night, might as well get some occult symbolism in ya while you’re at it. And how good is that soundtrack? There’s Obama, Osama and Jesus with a third eye. We’ve got terrorist and Dervishes and what I can only assume is the demonic media made physical. Check the YouTube comments – this one scared the shit out of people. By my reading, however, it ends on a message of hope – by renouncing the world and all its trappings, you too might ride a canoe through blooming lotus flowers and into the divine light. How’s that for 2am, hey?
Skydiving from the edge of space is scary af
This video straight up makes the soles of my feet tingle. Easily the scariest thing on YouTube, the loneliness one must feel hanging from a balloon in the stratosphere is haunting. And by Christ, when shit starts to hit the fan, I too stop breathing and blackout like one of those fainting goats. If the thought of Sunday is too much, just be grateful you aren’t falling through the sky at 850mph.
Previously: