Taekwondo Master: Ryan earns his red belt!

Ryan aces it, nails it, bam! He's the Taekwondo Kid, earning his red belt with moves that are well-practiced and confident. He had to miss his group test due to an injury, but the advantage is this unobstructed video that reminds me of the Karate Kid working out with that guy, you know, Pat Morita? Oh well. It's cool! Way to go, Ryan.

Wax on, wax off.

Taekwondo Master: Ryan breaks that board!

The final step in Ryan's red belt test for Taekwondo. This little guy really takes it seriously, and as you can see, he aces it. He was unable to take part in the group test due to a hand injury, but there was an advantage in the delay: Mom was able to take this awesome video (and I never use the term unless it is absolutely warranted!)

I was delighted to get a comment from a reader in Tanzania telling me they couldn't view the original video (which was in the wrong format - I YouTubed it to make it easier to post). I don't always know who my readers are, or where they are. I try not to be too obsessive about this, afraid I'll lose the purpose of the blog (the satisfaction of writing and putting it out there). I've had a lot more views lately, inexplicably, and I'm happy about it, but I will keep going even if I don't. I recently passed three thousand posts, and though I was going to celebrate it, I decided not to. Just a signpost along the way.

Yaaaay, Ryan!

Scary Santas

Some of these Santas aren't even human. I am not sure what they are. Many should not still be at large. And why is it we ask our children to go sit on the lap of a man they don't even know, a big obnoxious man covered in fur who keeps going "ho, ho, ho"? The rest of the time we tell them not to even TALK to strangers. No wonder so many of the little kids in these pictures are screaming with terror.

A scary litttle Christmas

W'all, w'all, w'all (Jimmy Stewart festive stammer), usually this time of year I make gifs of weird, creepy or disturbing Christmas videos. Just the good bits. But not everyone likes gifs, and they don't always even run smoothly. They're being replaced by mp3 videos which are infinitely more sophisticated. But from the format of this blog, I think you can gather that I hate infinitely more sophisticated.

This year I'm posting whole videos. There's always the risk my zillions of readers won't bother to watch them (and with gifs, they don't have much choice: there they are, repeating, and repeating, and repeating). But some of these things cry out for context.

This is a harmless enough stop-motion video from the 1950s, and it used to run every year on public television. Kids looked forward to seeing it. The elves are cute enough, though Hardrock seems oddly named. Is there a cafe named after him, I wonder, or is he a hard rock musician, or what? The mystery is never solved.

But the reason I'm posting it under this Festival of Creepy Christmas Videos is that the Santa in this thing WON the First Annual Creepy Santa Smackdown in 2014 (which included gifs from all sorts of bizarre old cartoons and puppet shows from the '50s). That is, he won it in the first year. In the second year (link below), I found a whole bunch of new shit. I might re-run the whole post, which I don't like to do, but Lord-oh-Lord did it take a long time to make all those gifs!

(I just went back and looked at the actual post. He won in the second year, too.)

You're not going to believe or even comprehend the Santa in this thing. Why were so many children's programs so creepy back then, or were they maybe not creepy at all and our standards have changed?

You decide.
 

Second Annual Creepy Santa Smackdown!

(Read at your own risk.)