Open your eyes, look up to the skies, and see… Pokémon! Magik Mike put together this cursed mashup of the Pokémon theme song with Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Then Elton John shows up to launch the whole thing into space. Prefer your tracks with more drums? You’re welcome.
Musician and luthier Shane Speal is known for making guitars out of cigar boxes. But his penchant for creating unusual musical instruments goes far beyond that. In this short video, he shows off some of his crazy builds, including guitars made from a boat oar, copper pipes, and a shovel. The exit sign electric guitar is our favorite.
From the late 1970s to the 1990s, George Lucas was featured in a number of ad spots for Japanese electronic brands Panasonic and Technics. On their own, the commercials are a little strange and awkward, but in the hands of editor Neil Cicierega, the weird factor just hit Level 9000.
Artist Felix Colgrave is known for his weird and trippy animations, populated with strange-looking creatures. The Lost Suburbs drops us into a maze of streets where a highly energetic character keeps popping up and proceeds to take us on a wild ride. It’s not really an hour long, but you can let it play as long as you’d like.
Some things defy description, like these awesome slippers based on an indescribable art installation of the surreal “Glitzy Snurtle” street sweeper at Meow Wolf’s indescribably cool Convergence Station in Denver. Let it suffice to say that Snurtle Slippers keep your feet cozy and dust your floors as you shuffle around your domestic multiverse.
Jan Hakon Erichsen does just the kind of ridiculous stuff that we’d do if we were performance artists. He spends much of his time popping balloons in creative ways, but this reel reveals his appetite for destruction of pasta. We hope he cooked some of those noodles after he cracked them.
After giving us his “realistic” versions of a LEGO Minifig, Winnie the Pooh, and The Simpsons, Adam from North of the Border has created nightmarish interpretations of two beloved characters from Sesame Street, Bert and Ernie. The famous friends look especially creepy, with Bert wearing a unibrow and both with wrinkled skin and bulbous humanoid noses.
Adam from North of the Border apparently got confused and got the names of two of Marvel’s superheroes backward. His Man-Ant and Man-Spider sculptures are two of his most disturbing creations to date, making the insects the hosts with human genetics taking over their bodies. It’s the human skin that really creeps us out.
A typical ATV has four wheels, and a tank rolls on tracks driven by several smaller wheels. This unique ATV from Finland marches to the beat of a different drummer, rolling on 18 wheels, each with its own motor and springy suspension. Invented by Eldar Aliev, the 18-wheeler can crawl over rocks up to 14″ tall, fallen trees, ride through water, and even climb stairs.
Usually, candles are supposed to smell pleasant. But The Stinky Candle Co. has carved out a niche by making candles that smell like strange, unexpected, and downright gross stuff. Fragrances include gasoline, garlic, exhaust, skunk, and dill pickles. They also make pleasant scents like chocolate cake and bubble gum.
About the only thing Marshall Mathers and David Byrne have in common is that they both had hit songs. But what if the Talking Heads had written a song about Eminem’s career and his rhyming abilities? It might have sounded something like this track by Nick Lutsko. So put your orange door hinge in storage and hit play now.
Known for their ridiculous mods of crappy little cars, Carmagheddon is the Italian equivalent of Russia’s Garage54. Perhaps their greatest achievement to date is this junkyard FIAT Panda hatchback that they turned into the lowest drivable vehicle ever. And yes, there is a driver inside. You can watch the full build process Part One and Two.
After building a bicycle that rides on square wheels using tank-like tracks, The Q applied his creativity and engineering skills to create a bike that has no wheels at all. Instead, it rolls around on skinny, angular tracks with a very small contact point with the ground. We’re impressed he can balance on this thing.
The members of the Japanese group Bozestyle are proud of their bald heads. In fact, they’ve made them part of their performances. To bring their music to life, they rig their heads with buttons that can be used to trigger electronic sounds. Their version of The Imperial March is one of our favorites, but check out their Instagram for more.
The early days of AI filmmaking are here, and the results are just as strange as you might imagine. Justin Hackney’s short film takes us to a carnival filled with freaky characters and retro-futuristic tech. He used DALL_E and Midjourney to generate style references, then entered modified prompts into Runway Gen-2 to create the footage. (Thanks, Gregory!)
This wildly imaginative short film from Panic takes us on a tour of the creative studio’s methodology, using animation to guide our way. The story is driven by a goofy character named Berthold, who learns about the meetings, scripting, storyboarding, illustration, sound design, and editing processes that went into bring his own story to life.
After showing off his square-wheeled bicycle, maker, The Q is back with another bike with oddly-shaped geometry. This model features triangular wheels with a slight curve. The trick to maintaining contact without huge bumps is a flexible suspension and a pair of conveyor belts that press against the tires as he pedals.
We’ve finally found Bigfoot, and it turns out the elusive beast is not what we thought it was. Actually, Sasquatch is just a bunch of cats smooshed together. This delightfully weird 1000-piece Catsquatch puzzle was illustrated by artist Shyama Golden, as part of Fred’s Artist Series.
We’ve seen what artificial intelligence can do when asked to make a pizza commercial; now AI has been turned loose on a beer spot. Private Island used Stable Diffusion, Runway, and Modelscope to generate their version of those summertime commercials with bros ogling women while they sip their bland light beer.
(Gore) This darkly comedic horror film drops us into an insane world where a plant monster grows human houseplants. Filmmakers Benjamin Roberds and Katie Gregg of Dominar Films flip the script on the relationship between living organisms in this award-winning and unhinged short.
If you’re familiar with The Last of Us, the idea that a fungus could turn us into zombies isn’t that far-fetched. ZeFrank looks at three cases where this happens in nature, with a nasty infection that takes over the bodies of insects and controls them. You might not want to eat before watching this video.
“Girls with blue whiskers tied up with noodles… These are a few of my favorite things.” Sound collage artists Negativland’s deranged edit of My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music dates back a decade but was too hilarious to pass up. Their take on There’s No Business Like Show Business is similarly bonkers.
Humans like to give flowers and chocolates as part of our dating ritual. Other species offer gifts as part of their courtship too, but their selections aren’t nearly as appealing. SciShow explains some of the strange and downright gross-out gifts that animals and insects present to each other as an offering to potential mates.