Another week is gone, another Tournament is under our belts. Hit the jump to see who earned the top 10 slots, who’s climbing the charts, and who’s taking home cash-money, honey.
Another week is gone, another Tournament is under our belts. Hit the jump to see who earned the top 10 slots, who’s climbing the charts, and who’s taking home cash-money, honey.
Let’s face it: fourth grade was pretty terrifying. Sure, there were action figures and sidewalk chalk, but there were also bullies and popularity polls.
Relive all the horror (in a charming, adorable way) in this week’s Atom Pick by comedian Brent Weinbach. The premise is spot on, the acting remarkable, and the overall feeling is a combination of nostalgia and the relief that it’s all behind you. So go ahead and grab your lunch box, sharpen your pencils, and give it a look. We dare you not to whimper sympathetically at “there’s pee on the floor.”

Whelp, here we are again, reeling from yet another week of fierce Tournament competition. Community member TOC once again took top honors, this week claiming both first and second honors as well as a sh*tload of facebook “likes” on his Twilight-themed videos, proof that sparkle vamps shall never die. What else is eternal? Your love for video games, perverted toys, and animals, according to the top 10.
Check it out:
Sometimes the brainstorm meetings here at Atom go, shamefully, something like this:
“Hey, what can we do for Angry Old Man & Gay Teenage Runaway?”
“Wow, that could be tough…”
“What about a list of our favorite runaways?”
“Dude…”
“…”
“What about Joan of Arc?”
and things sashay rapidly downhill from there. But yes, our newest series starring 30 Rock’s Lonny Ross got us thinking about the funny side of child endangerment, and while we are FIRMLY AGAINST IT, here are a couple lovable, and FICTIONAL, runaways who captured our hearts.
Full House was a show, once upon a time, about 3 dudes raising 3 babies, a la “Three Men And A Baby” except with two more kids and one less lip sweater. The show is rife with runaways, as one would expect from a family in which the parenting tactics revolve around Vaseline-smeared close-ups of painfully pastel heart to hearts, punctuated by shitty Popeye impressions.
In Season 3, Episode 20, spazzy middle child Stepahnie runs away to her friend’s house after crashing uncle Joey’s new car into the kitchen. Somehow, she ganked the keys to his new wheels, and, mistaking the “R” on the gearshift for “Radio,” she wound up driving through the kitchen. The resulting groan-worthy commentary would make me runaway, too:
DJ & Kimmy: WHOA BABY!!
DJ: There’s a car in the kitchen!
Michelle: I told you so.
DJ: Michelle, do you know how Joey’s car got in here?
Michelle: Yes, I do!
DJ: How?
Michelle: Through the window!
Wokka wokka!

Punky’s very origin myth stems from a wayyy heavy plotline that’s alarmingly tragic for a kids’s show. The first runaway to mention is her mother, who peaced out on the little squirt in a department store parking lot, leaving the 8 year old to squat by herself in an empty apartment. It’s there that the Punskter meets the guy across the street, a crotchety old man, Henry Warnimont. Henry tries to take Punky to a shelter, but what with all her abandonment issues, she’d rather stay with the weird old slumlord she recently met, than actually give foster care a shot.

Dorothy Gale runs away because her dog Toto bites someone. Specifically, he bites that old bitch on the bike with the theme music that to the day scares the pants off me, who then calls the Sheriff to have the dog murdered. Oof! Tough stuff, bitch on the bike. Tuff stuff.
Somehow, Toto the bitch-biting-dog escapes from doggie death row, and Dorothy decides that the only way to keep Toto alive is to run away with him. Her great plan is to take her dog and to escape into the endless, desolate farm land of Kansas, where she plans to survive by gnawing on corn husks and drinking dust(?) Luckily for her, she runs into a geeze of a fortune teller who totally rips her off, and tells her that her aunt is broken-hearted, which sends Dorothy home, only to get sucked into a tornado and put into a hallucinatory coma. Success!

Sucks to be burned at the stake at 19, huh? Maybe next time you’ll think twice before claiming divine guidance, turning an Anglo-French conflict into a religious war, and leading thousands of French troupes into battle. Kids those days!

I saw Benji in theaters as a kid, as did most of America (that movie was a huge hit!), and I spent the whole fucking time waiting for that dog to say something. Spoiler alert: Benji just hangs out in the woods most of the time. He does not talk. At all. TRY AGAIN, BENJI. I expect my animals to talk, if I’m going to fork out dough to see them in theaters. So while Benji was the most profitable runaway animal of his day, I too escaped that boring ass movie, to dreamland.

The circumstances of Kong’s escape (and subsequent scaling of the Empire State Building) are understandable. When you’ve been kidnapped from your cozy, dinosaur infested home, why wouldn’t you want to steal the tiny movie star you’re enamored with, scale the tallest building you can find, and fuck some airplanes up? Lord knows I do that when I’ve been kidnapped. So maybe Kong isn’t strictly a runaway, what he lacks in forlorn walks down dusty roads and make-shift satchels filled with peanut butter sandwiches, he more than makes up for with his temper tantrums.

Haley from The Wizard is kind of your ideal, modern day runaway. She’s scrappy, cunning, and willing to use an autistic kid to hustle suckers for money. And oh yeah, she’s down to accuse someone of pedophilia at the drop of a hat.
You may have grown up to be an indie-folk darling, Jenny Lewis, but in our hearts, you’re still trying to get to Reno.

Now, this is based on no knowledge of the Casper back story, and we were all unwilling to do the research lest it compromise the joke, but if we take the premise that Casper is a friendly ghost, then we can assume that at one point he was Casper The Friendly Child. And then, once we rule out the methods of death that don’t result in the need for your eternally tormented soul to walk the Earth, the odds of Casper at some point being some kind of runaway are worth taking. QED, Casper was so probably a runaway we’ve eliminated the need to look it up.

In a very reasonable concession that not all runaways must be animate, and just edging out the bus and then boat in the ‘Speed’ series, give it up for a very charming runaway train.
If you’re not entertained enough, here’s a clip from Angry Old Man & Gay Teenage Runaway. We’ll be premiering two new episodes a week for a month, so come back next week!
If you’re an angry old man or a gay teenage runaway, then you probably have limited internet access. Maybe you’re in a public library, or perhaps your grandson is teaching you how to share pictures on facebook. In either event, you and your non-angry-old-man or non-gay-teenage-runaway friends alike, will enjoy our new series starring Lonny Ross (30 Rock) and Fred Melamed (A Serious Man). As the theme song (penned by Rhett Miller of the Old 97′s, no less) explains, “one is mad, the other is gay”. Stay tuned tomorrow for all the adventures of this new odd couple!
How many comedians can you count in this video?
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Answer: 6. Six! That’s a whole lotta funny.
For those of you keeping score at home, we’ve got: Kurt Braunohler, Kristen Schaal, Wyatt Cenac, John Oliver, Hannibal Buress, and Todd Barry.
So what’s the deal?
Well, comedian Hari Kondabolu wrangled together a whole buncha joke tellers, hoping that they’d tell you just how funny his upcoming Comedy Central gig special will be. Based on this footage, the odds aren’t really in his favor, but hey, we think he’s pretty great. Guess you’ll just have to judge for yourself when you check out his upcoming Comedy Central Presents special, airing Friday, February 11th at 11pm on Comedy Central.
Wow, guys. What a week for the Tournament! Things were ca-raaazy around here, with video views way high into those really high numbers. We especially have to take our hats off to Chicken Fried Comedy, whose video Stan Fox 64 not only took home the big money, but also blew up all over the internet. Take notes, Tournament competitors, because these guys know how to do it. They made an awesome video with a clear audience and then promoted, promoted, promoted it using the Atom player. They were featured on Kotaku and Dorkly, and both sites helped to boost their views to over 95,000. Ninety-five-freaking-thousand!
While they were the big news of the week, there were plenty of other noble competitors worth another look. Check them out:
There are a million reasons why you might recognize the sketch group The Landline. It could be their rejected Super Bowl ads (how topical!), or their exploration of the bomb-smuggling potential of the penis. It could be their self-explanatory “Christian Bale Yells At Things In His Apartment” or their in-your-face “Blagojevich Balls.”
Keep your eyes peeled for their latest series “Hello, Dum Dum,” premiering on February 22nd, which revolves around the adventures of three office receptionists, played by Mackenzie Condon, Abra Tabak and D’arcy Carden, who can only be accurately described by the word zany.
In the meantime, go ahead and take a walk down memory lane with some of their other previous Atom videos:
It was another monumental week in the Tournament. Sleeping Baby has a Snack came out of nowhere with a viral burst of energy that managed to clean up! Congrats (and $500 bucks) goes to the little tyke. Maybe now he can afford to take a nap.
Hit the jump to see who made it into the top 10. The top 3 get cash, prizes and a chance to be on Comedy Central.
Dude! Remember when we said Black Swan parodies were as close to an Oscar as we’re gonna get? Ho-ho were we wrong!
Turns out, former Atom acquisitions alum Anne Rosellini has received an Oscar nom for her work on “Winter’s Bone.” That’s the big time!
High fives and digital daps, Anne.
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