Fugdale’s Funhouse

About: A guy sings a very popular tune backwards and then reverses the video so you can hear the song forward. Most people should be able to guess the song at some point during the first half of the video. This technique harkens back to David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks”, where all the spirits in the red room would talk with a backwards tracking effect. The actors all had to learn their lines phonetically backwards and then the film was reversed to create an erie effect. In this much more upbeat video you get to see the same results, but also get to see how bizarre it must be for someone to memorize a song or speech backwards.

Nutshell: Send a holiday greeting to friends and family with you as the star.

Review: Office Max generally wouldn’t be the name you think of first for holiday humor, but they have developed a really neat holiday web application that allows you to upload up to 4 different face photos of yourself or others and create a little animated musical greeting with them. The greeting consists of 1-4 dancing elves and some lively music. If you upload photos with interesting facial expressions, the results are hilarious.

You can also use your cell phone and the instructions provided to record a holiday greeting which will play during the animation. Your voice will get transformed into a high pitched elf voice along with an animated moving mouth which will make your recall Saddam Hussein from South Park.

After you’ve scaled and edited your photos with the intuitive online tools and completed your animation, you can send it along to your friends and family. The one downside is the somewhat long load time, but it’s worth the wait. If you enjoy the concept, but not the holidays, you also have the option of creating a “Scrooge Yourself” animation.

About: A brilliantly talented young man plays George Harrison’s song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on his Ukulele. This isn’t just any performance, either. This guy really knows how to play and I’m amazed at how much sound and passion he can get out of a simple four-stringed instrument.