I know. Right when I was chattering about the exciting momentum of my top ten videos countdown I go and hit the “pause” button for over a week, even slotting in another C&B post on an unrelated subject. What can I say? Never mind — the point is, no way would I let this list peter out. I made all these silver video-countdown icons (like the one at right), and I am damn sure gonna use ‘em.

At number 9 on this year’s list is a choice installment of Puddin’, a YouTube series described as follows by its creator:

Monday thru Friday I upload a live action cartoon. Racist, self hating, morbid, yet ironically very family friendly.

I have yet to see an episode of Puddin’ that struck me as having a racist intent. I assume he means that it’s racist in the same way that it’s “family friendly” — i.e., it’s not. At all. This particular installment is relatively tame, with only a single word rendering it NSFW. The description of Puddin’ continues,

The setup is simple. Guy sits in an office break room eating a pudding cup. Eddie Pepitone enters, or is already there. He does something. You react by laughing, wincing, asking for your 20 seconds back, or watching over and over. Easy.

Puddin’ is most obviously a showcase for Eddie Pepitone, at least at first glance. I first discovered Pepitone’s brand of New York-tinged comic umbrage on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, where he is regularly featured as the closing guest on live-audience episodes recorded in Los Angeles.

The auteur of Puddin’, however, is Matt Oswalt, a.k.a. the guy sitting in the break room eating the pudding cup. He writes all the material, and in every episode performs the silent “slow burn” in response to Pepitone’s outrageous antics. That’s no easy feat; as you may have noticed in the video above, Oswalt appears to just barely maintain a straight face.

Recent episodes of Puddin’ have featured various others as third (or fourth) occupants of the break room, including Andy Richter, Laura Silverman, James Urbaniak, and the creator’s brother Patton Oswalt. The only comment by Matt Oswalt I have seen on the subject of his increasingly famous brother was this:

Does anyone ever look at the “Favorite” tweets on other people’s Twitter profiles? Until that question occurred to me the other day, I don’t know if I ever had done so. Admittedly, the “Favorites” feature on Twitter is one I tend to forget about periodically. If my hunch is correct and people seldom look at each other’s favorite tweets, then what good is this collection of favorites that I’ve been compiling in fits and starts?

So hear this: I have some favorite tweets — and damn it, attention must be paid. I am boldly risking my reputation by giving the following tweets the imprimatur of my favor. ¹ Lastly, I should mention that the embedding code for these tweets was generated by socialditto.com; I tweaked the CSS format a little to blend with the design of this blog.

As you may already know, in my previous post I reacted to a tweet I’d noticed, which said

A 15 year old girl who has terminal cancer wants to trend on twitter, let’s make that wish come true!! #alicebucketlist Pls RT

…leading to my statement that we have failed as a society. I intended this partly as comic hyperbole, but not entirely.

It simply struck me as silly that being a trending topic on twitter would be a worthwhile aspiration. Is that how low the celebrity status bar has been set? What kind of fulfillment would that provide? Does anybody think that in 30 or 40 years we’ll be sitting around reminiscing about the great twitter memes of yesteryear?

Plus, I figured, it’s probably not even for real. The very mention of a youngster with terminal cancer raised in me a set of red flags normally reserved for chain email hoaxes. I half expected the end of the tweet to tell me to DM all my followers.

Turns out it was even simpler than that — I’m just a cynical asshole:


It’s real, and I’m a huge tool. The Alice’s Bucket List blog is located at http://alicepyne.blogspot.com/, where the cruelly afflicted girl writes touchingly about her situation and her feelings about it.

What really brought the guilt was reading the other items from her bucket list in the right-hand sidebar of her front page. They’re mostly quite simple, modest wishes: to have her hair done (“if they can do anything with it”). Go to Cadbury World and pig out on chocolate. A photo shoot with four of her friends. “Make everyone sign up to be a bone marrow donor.” Design a mug to sell for charity. “A private cinema party for me and my BFFs.” Get a back massage. Have a nice picture taken with her dog.

Damn it — what’s wrong with me? So she wanted to trend on twitter. Why not? What’s the harm? Why didn’t I stop to think for a few seconds, and hopefully realize that there could be a person on the other end of all this? Yep… look at me go, shooting my blogging mouth off without a care in the world.

At least my lack of influence paid off:

What that little graph means is that about 3:30PM Pacific Time, 1.43% of all tweets being written on twitter contained the keyword “alicebucketlist”. So for the purposes of Alice’s list, that’s at least one down and… I can’t tell how many to go.

Alice, if by some chance you end up reading this: I’m sorry. If it makes any difference, I do think I’ve learned something from this… at least, I hope I have.

Or, in tweet-speak: #societyepicfail

I don’t know if he still does, but I remember David Letterman used to do top ten lists where the category would be two different things. The name of the list would be an either/or proposition, something like “Top Ten Weather Man or Dog Breed Names.” Anyway, this format occurred to me when I couldn’t decide which of two recent Twitter memes to post my favorites from.¹

List items not authored by me are indicated by links to their creators. Yes, I did favor my own contributions heavily, and no, it’s not fair. Why? Because it’s my blog. Mine! Minemineminemine-mine! (…Er, not that anyone ever said it wasn’t. In other news, I am a very petty little man.)

Enough Prelude Already — To the List!

1. Seabasscuit
2. Phlegmento (mcquickdraw)
3. She’s Gotta Harelip (wongfilms)
4. Dude, Where’s My Carp? (lbgilbert)
5. Ten Things I Hake About You (stephiemalverns)
6. Charlie’s Angels: Full Glottal (AmoebaStampede)
7. The Name of the Roes (julieankerson)
8. Young Mr. Lingcod
9. Drag Me to Halibut
10. The Filling of a Chinese Bookie
11. Wall-E(ye) (mpthomas1)
12. My Marlin Clementine
13. Mrs. Minnowver (StarSparkle_UK)
14. Lingual White Female (word_czar)
15. Dentl

Yes, they were ranked numerically—but not by me. Since some of them are mine, I thought it only fair to consult the Sequence Generator at random.org. If you disagree with any of the rankings, take it up with the SG.

Whaddya think? Got any good ones of your own?