The Lonely Island - I'm On a Boat/Jizz In My Pants

Jerry Portwood of the New York press derided "Jizz In My Pants" while praising the work of "Weird Al" Yankovic, but he's missing the point. Yankovic is hardly the contemporary satirist Portwood would have you believe he is; more often than not, he either uses the song he's supposedly parodying to parody something else entirely (I love "Fat" as much as the next guy, but I must have missed Michael Jackson's obese period) or as a launching pad into the kind of absudist humour that he does better in originals such as "You Make Me" ("I Got the Wrong Foot Amputated", for example, is his "parody" of The Offspring's "Come Out and Play", having been told by the band that "Laundry Day" simply didn't cut it).

The Lonely Island's parodies, however, are focused and alarmingly accurate. "I'm On a Boat" is a hip hop tune that is inextricably tied to its accompanying video, set on that most hackneyed of locations. Throughout the song's entire length, two thirds of the group assure us boastfully that they are, in fact, on a boat, whilst simultaneously lampooning present day rappers' reliance on autotune by having guest T-Pain sing backing vocals so drenched in the effect as to make Kanye West's latest album sound like a Leadbelly a capella tune.

"Jizz in My Pants" targets metrosexual Eurotrash and renders them inert by removing their sexual prowess and leaving them as nothing but Zoolanderesque caricatures. By the end of the song, these guys can't even feel a cool breeze - or finish a lyric - without spontaneously ejaculating.

an oldie, but a goodie

The effervescent and highly personable Bjork extends a friendly greeting to a Thai reporter.