Credit where credit is due, my friend Brent linked to these guys and it’s only through him that I found them. Nonetheless, this husband and wife YouTube sensation do incredible covers of songs you wouldn’t expect to sound so good. And they just seem so gosh darn happy!

Karmin — Price Tag

Karmin — Lighters

30 gifts to 30 strangers in Sydney from Lucas Jatoba on Vimeo.

Make sure to check out the Making Of… video as well for some fun behind-the-scenes footage.

I certainly know what I’m doing when I hit the big 3-0.

Earlier this week her music video, “Friday,” went viral. Big time.

The YouTube video quickly garnered 12 million views in the course of just a few days and now she’s doing the talk show circuit. But what differentiates Black from other YouTube sensations like Canada’s own heart throb Justin Bieber (I prefer Dwight from The Office’s “Justice Beaver”) is the reason why she’s become so popular.

Unlike The Bieb, Black’s video isn’t growing in popularity because she’s a great singer—an undiscovered musical gem from a tiny little town in Ontario—it’s her completely over-the-top cheeseball of a music video, and lack of any semblance of musical talent. When I first saw the video which features, at several points, Black trying to decide which car seat to sit in—the front seat or the back seat?!—I wondered if this wasn’t an SNL Digital Short. It was ridiculous, playing up all kinds of stereotypes, complete with Rebecca’s constantly auto-tuned voice and some of the worst lyrics imaginable.

But apparently it’s for reals.

Doing some digging I found out that Rebecca Black was recruited by Ark Music Factory, a record label that puts out casting calls looking for the next Justin Bieber. Ark Music Factory finds young people, gives them the songs to sing, and then produces high quality videos to stick up on YouTube hoping to make it viral. Whether the song Black was given to sing was an honest effort by some pretty minimally-talented songwriters or whether the joke was on her all along, it’s hard to say but the result is priceless.

The fallout, however, has been anything but kind. The success of the video is based on its terribleness. Black has been criticized and made fun of and given the kind of treatment that only the Internet is capable of. Her fame hasn’t come from her talent but out of what’s now become an embarrassment for her—her fame is at her expense.

And for me, this whole episode begs a pretty interesting question for me: Are we bullying Rebecca Black?

Here’s what I mean.

The same people—and you know them—who put those anti-bullying slogans as their status messages on Facebook are the same people who are spreading Black’s Friday video all around the Internet. The same people who stand up against bullying by wearing pink to school or work are the same people who’ve shared Friday with all their friends, and marveled at the badness of the whole thing. The same people who’ve sworn to never support a bully, to always defend their friends, their children, and their children’s friends from the harsh attacks of bullies are the same people who are showing this video to their friends, their children, and their children’s friends.

So what’s going on here?

On the one hand, our society says that bullying is wrong. We’re taught, and we teach our children, to respect others and their differences and their efforts. At the same time, we tell our kids to always try their best, to work towards their dreams and to never give up.

On the other hand, our society makes a mockery of those that we don’t agree with, that we find failure with. We speak out against bullying, but laugh at the Star Wars Kid. We hear in the news about assisted online suicide, people who have made a sport out of talking others into killing themselves, and we spread around a music video by a teenager poking all kinds of fun at it.

There is such disparity between our cultural values that it boggles the mind. We’re told not to bully, that bullies are bad, but we lambast anyone that we find funny, for all kinds of awful reasons, at the drop of a hat.

As a teacher, I find it troubling because I’m just as guilty. I laugh at Rebecca Black because it’s such terribly funny music and a wonderfully wacky video. I laugh because I’ve been taught that when people do things out in public they open themselves up to ridicule, to judgment. But am I being a bully? And how can I, on the other hand, tell my students not to make fun of one another when they’re trying something new? How can I expect my students to practice a level of maturity that I can’t even seem to muster myself? What’s going on here?

I don’t have a lot of answers. There’s some kind of collision of cultural values happening, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Rebecca Black is a real person, with real feelings, and we’re responsible for our actions towards her. At the same time, her music video is funny. I want to laugh, but I want to set an example at the same time. Bullying is very serious, after all, and this whole situation strikes me as just that: bullying. Can we laugh, though, out of one side of our mouths and condemn bullies out of the other? I don’t know.

Mary Carillo, former professional tennis player turned Olympic correspondent for CBS, was anchoring a late-night badminton match when she decided to compare “backyard” badminton to the stuff that the “bad boys of badminton” play at the Olympic Games. What ensues is a pitch-perfect Seinfeld routine delivered with such straight-faced seriousness that it makes you wonder if she wrote this ahead of time or if it’s all off the top of her head. Either way, Carillo doesn’t miss a beat and her performance is legendary. Shame I hadn’t seen this clip until now.

Via BoingBoing.

Via BoingBoing.

It’s a great gag, and worth the watch.

What makes these commercials so successful, I think, is that they’re hilarious, pretty clever, and just absolutely outrageous.

It’s obvious that Old Spice is going through a complete rebranding but perhaps the less obvious thing is that whoever they’ve got at the wheel is a complete genius. This is marketing for the 21st century. Their rebrand, “Smell like a man, man,” has become a complete Internet sensation. Their YouTube channel is getting a bazillion hits from people wanting to watch their hilarious TV spots and, what’s more, they’re pumping out new content daily online. They’re skipping the networks, skipping the distribution and putting it right online, for free, all by themselves giving people what they want which is, ironically, instant access to their commercials… and we’re eating them up!

They’ve gone even one step further by launching a new series, yesterday, of the Old Spice Man responding to messages from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. He has even gotten into a back-and-forth with Alyssa Milano culminating in him sending actual flowers to her house. We’ll have to wait and see if the Old Spice Man wishes to continue their relationship—only possible if he next donates $100,000 to the Gulf Oil Spill clean up, according to Milano.

But the kicker is that we will wait and see what happens next… this is an ad campaign that’s actually grabbed our interest and kept us entertained. Rarely, would a person go out of their way to watch ads, but Old Spice has got us doing exactly that. If anyone was wondering how to make money in a modern society where people skip the TV networks, download programs themselves, and watch ad-free television on their computers, I think Old Spice has hit upon the formula, and it’s pretty common sense actually, make ads that are entertaining.

Leave it to someone to find all of the answers to the questions we were left with after the LOST finale.

It’s as amusing as the original LOST questions video was. Pretty clever.