Awesome Weird

This music video came out in late 2023 but is too good to ignore. Directed and animated by Everfresh and accompanied by Caravan Palace’s neo-swing track MAD, the hilariously weird clip drops us into a 1930s-style cartoon world where musical cockroaches live in a secret world inside our bodies.

(PG-13: Language) This hilariously weird Adult Swim short from Arthur Studholme and Cosmo Wellings of Uncle Shortbread tells the tale of one of the last hairs living on the head of a balding man. When the hair decides it’s time to quit his job for greener pastures, his employers have something to say about his plans.

Artist Sy Goldstein uses generative AI tech to create wild and imaginative street scenes from 1980s and 1990s New York City. Created in collaboration with Lenski, The Last Head Shop envisions a wild time when The Big Apple’s head shops sold human skulls – at least until the mayor came through and cleaned up the city to make way for The Disney Store.

Is there really a reason to walk around wearing pineapples on your feet? Apparently so. After hearing that pineapple skins are fireproof, Connor Creates decided to put that to the test by making a pair of shoes out of the spiky tropical fruits. Along the way, he tested other fruits to see how well they held up to fire.

While it’s not quite as terrifying as xenomorphs landing on our planet, gigantic crabs could do some damage. North of the Border created this tiny sculpture of Earth, then crafted a pair of continent-size crustaceans to battle it out in the Northern Hemisphere. He floated the whole scene in a bath of clear epoxy resin.

Quiietjay makes nature videos about cryptids. In this clip, you’ll learn all about a strange-looking creature called a “prince,” which hails from the Greenhouses region of the Far Plane. Measuring over 5 feet long and 3 feet tall, it has a see-through glass body like a living Prince Rupert’s Drop. It comes from the same neighborhood as the Golbo. (Thanks, Rob!)

Here’s something we never thought we’d see – mushrooms playing a keyboard. BionicandtheWires put together this strange setup which uses sensors to detect electrical fluctuations in a mushroom plant. It then takes those signals to trigger solenoids that move mallets and strike the keys. And it makes precisely the kind of music we’d expect a group of fungi to make.

You know the three-legged race game that people play at company picnics to get them to work together? This is like that but at a much higher level. Dating back to the Ming Dynasty, the traditional Chinese sport of board-shoe racing forces cooperation by strapping three athletes’ feet to a pair of wooden boards so they must run in lock-step.

Can you tell a diamond from a piece of glass? We just watched this animation by Meat Dept., and we came away both hypnotized and perplexed. The surreal short is populated with strange-looking characters embroiled in a war that involves interpretive dance, shawarma cookers, and jet-powered wingsuits. The clip is underscored with an excellent track by Arlo.

At first we weren’t sure what we were watching, but we were immediately transfixed by this video. The footage shows someone taking a knife to a sphere made of countless layers of tape. As they cut deeper into the tape, a rainbow of colors emerges. Go figure that there are a bunch of tape-cutting videos on YouTube.

Joseph Marr specializes in sculptures made out of sugar. As his profile with Great Big Story reveals, his edible creations often invert the stereotype of the eccentric artist. Joseph is absolutely baffled that people would lick and eat his works when they’re out in public. But he does love the interactive aspect of his material, as evidenced by his latest piece.

Gorilla Candles’ Car Guy collection is filled with candles for gearheads and racing fans. There are separate scents for gasoline and race fuel; there’s an engine oil scent, and, of course, there’s that new car leather smell. We’re not too sure about the exhaust-scented one, but we’re morbidly curious about lighting one of each and breathing it all in.

MSCHF revisits their wacky backward sneakers with a high-top model that’s even more ludicrous. Always provocative with their tongue-in-cheek designs, the art collective’s $200 BWD High sneaks are completely impractical on the basketball court but certainly make a fashion statement. Drops 9.24.24. (Thanks, Harriet!)

Musician Nicolas Bras is known for making all kinds of unusual and inventive musical instruments. One of his sillier creations is this bagpipe he made from a duck-shaped pool float for its bag. But the duck is just full of hot air. The real music makers are the membrane clarinets he fabricated from PVC pipe.

Sitting on furniture made of balloons seems like a bad idea – especially if you have something sharp in your pocket. After seeing the work of artist Seungjin Yang, maker Connor Creates was inspired to build a functional stool out of skinny balloons bathed in epoxy resin. While the straight parts were pretty easy to make, the spiral seat was quite the challenge.

Because maker Allen Pan knows no bounds when it comes to engineering stupid things, he thought it might be fun to mow his lawn with lasers. After experimenting with a spinning blue laser rig, he moved on to a grid-style design with multiple lasers. We imagine that it fries some bugs while it’s cutting the grass.