This is one of the strangest and most uncomfortably funny videos I’ve ever seen.

Tiny Tim, “The Other Side” (1968)

It fills me with awe and brings many questions to mind:

1) Who’s the network television genius who thought of marrying frightening, drug-induced performance art with an audience of rapt tots (and isn’t it sad that it could never happen today)?

2) When did Tiny Tim, the ukulele-strumming, falsetto-squealing tiptoer through tulips, become a global warming environmental prophet?

3) Is there a documentary filmmaker out there who could please track down those children and find out how this experience changed them (I would expect at least some kind of life-long broadening of perspective if not a quantity of emotional scars)?

4) Is this the creepiest performance for kids ever filmed/taped?

The answer to number four can be found in the following clip, featuring a sweaty cherub of a host who licks, bites, kisses and repeatedly dry-humps a tyke on national TV. I know the Dutch are renowned for their tolerance and laissez-faire attitudes, but this is going too far.

Dutch TV HostThe best video clips are right here

- Elyse Friedman

More and more often (at least two or three times a week), I find myself exasperated and exhausted by the stupidity/greed/cruelty of people. Idiocy abounds, and sometimes I feel the need to remind myself that not all human activity is a roiling ocean of rotten pus. At these moments I never think about mankind’s great achievements, be they scientific, architectural or athletic. Moon walk, pyramids, Everest scaling… these kinds of lofty accomplishments do not make me feel any better about my fellow man. And while I can find solace in great art and music (Chopin “Nocturnes” soothe and smooth) it’s really only the goofy stuff that can restore affection. Like YouTube videos of the “Soul Train” line dance, for example.

“Soul Train,” Series 2, Episode #47 (1973); the song, “Love Train,” by The O’Jays

If watching that clip improved your disposition even a little, I invite you to take The Video Cure for Day-to-Day Disgust. It starts with eyeballing a performance of virtually any song from “Guys and Dolls.” Here’s one:

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, “Guys and Dolls” (1951)

If you’re in a profound people-hating state, you may want to opt for a student production, which is even more endearing and warmth-inducing:

Watching fireworks (and watching people watching fireworks) has always made me feel good about humans. These absurdly expensive, carefully choreographed eruptions of pretty exist only to awe and delight, and that purposelessness makes me happy. The collective oohing and ahhing of a crowd assembled for no reason but to gawk at sparkly lights in the night sky also fills me with gladness, and even hope.

And finally, any civilization that could produce the theremin, and a woman with this hair-do to play it, can’t be all bad.

Clara Rockmore (1911-1998)

Feel better?

- Elyse Friedman

This 59-second video of wild foxes stumbling onto someone’s backyard trampoline says a lot to me about how humans likely developed and progressed.

Two animals, in what appears to be a pre-mating play-fight, have jumped onto a trampoline. This bit of happenstance leads to an unforeseen result: intense springiness.

Notice how one of the foxes, I’ll call it Fox 2, is immediately intrigued and distracted by this new and unexpected feeling. ”What the hell,” Fox 2 seems to be thinking, as he separates from Fox 1 in order to explore the bouncy surface. He jumps up and down repeatedly, testing it out, feeling it. Fox 1 (who clearly has no imagination) doesn’t give a damn, and tries to resume the mating ritual, but Fox 2 is no longer into it. They separate.

Fox 1 goes to one side of the trampoline and sits—facing in, waiting patiently for Fox 2 to come around. Fox 2 wanders to the opposite side of the trampoline, facing out—he gazes into the distance, appears contemplative. I venture that this new experience has left him a changed fox. The wiring has been altered. A previously dormant part of the brain is twitching and lighting up. He turns, glances momentarily at Fox 1, then looks away and resumes examining his new discovery.

- Elyse Friedman

I have a love/hate relationship with delusional types. I know a woman, for example, who clearly believes she’s a great beauty. She exudes coquettish self-assurance and is always tossing her hair, batting her lashes, and strutting in clingy clothes. She is so convinced of her own sex-appeal and blonde loveliness that she has repeatedly paid professional photographers to take “glamour shots” of her.

When I heard this, I was surprised. She’s no beast, but she’s no contender for “Canada’s Next Top Model” either.

When she gazes upon her 8 X 10, Vaseline-lensed poses, she sees something that I don’t see, something that only she, and perhaps her mother, sees. On the one hand I find this admirable—she doesn’t look like a Hollywood star (except maybe Mr. Ed), but she’s as confident as one. Good. That’s refreshing. We shouldn’t have to fit the standard idea of beauty to feel good about ourselves. On the other hand, I find her questionable grasp of reality annoying and absurd.

“You’re the only one who thinks you’re gorgeous,” I sometimes want to shout. “Your glamour shots are ridiculous and they make me laugh.”

Sondra Prill, “Nasty“

When it comes to delusional artists, I am even more conflicted. Sondra Prill is someone who genuinely believes in her own talent, and has somehow managed to convince others to believe, i.e., the insufficiently clad dancers, whoever financed the thing, the person who filmed it or played the keyboards, etc. She went to a lot of trouble, spent a great deal of time and likely a fair whack of dough recording her abominable audio version of “Nasty” and then setting it to images.

I love this video. I love it because it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Everything about it is horrendous and hilarious—the vocals (those shouted lyrics, what the fuck?), the dancing, the hair, the ostensibly sexy moves and pouts. Sondra Prill is devoid of talent. She is preposterous. Loony.

Part of me wants to berate her for even attempting to make this video; part of me applauds her for going ahead and doing what she loves doing no matter what anyone thinks or says about it. That’s what an artist is supposed to do.

Does it matter that Sondra Prill is the Ed Wood of music videos instead of the Vincent Van Gogh? She really, truly believes, and there’s something goofy and beautiful and inspiring about that belief—she’s living her dream even if it’s an obvious nightmare to anyone remotely sane or with a modicum of taste. Something about her inability to see what’s really real, or to care, is appealing to me.

Having said that, when I think about all the Sondra Prills in my world—the literary world—I go back to feeling irked and repelled. There are so many Prill-like writers out there—talentless, but oozing self-confidence and belief in their own abilities. And like Prill, they have somehow convinced others to believe—arts council jury members, agents, even publishers, and I’m not just talking small presses here, not at all.

I kind of want the writer-Prills to stop writing. I want them to put down their pens and seek employment. I am exasperated by their delusions, especially when I’m being subjected to three or four relentless readings in order to get to a decent scribbler on the bill.

And so I remain divided in my feelings about the delusional. What do you think?

Please watch Sondra Prill perform her wonderful/terrible version of “Pump Up The Jam” (Sand in My Crack Mix), and tell me: do you pity, detest or admire the woman who would actively campaign to appear on film in a bikini with a bead-tail, something that looks like it should be hanging in a hippie’s doorway?

- Elyse Friedman