Dallas-Fort Worth television station WOAI reports about an entire family (including two small girls) shoplifting from a Wal-Mart.
And because one of the girls is pushing the cart out the door, she would be the one arrested. I don't think you can go any lower than stealing in front of your kid and then having her take the blame if something goes wrong.
Here's a warm-hearted tale of neighbors helping neighbors -- to rob a bank.
Masked gunmen break in to the establishment but have some trouble with the ATMs. Next thing, the bandits have got more accomplices than they know what to do with.
Breaking News! Reporter learns not to stand in a random field.
KOMU-TV8 reporter Brandon Lewis got a little bit of a surprise when he was doing his live report on gas prices. He's a real pro--forging ahead with his report despite a good soaking.
Thanks to Watch This Now friend Rafael Olmeda for finding this clip.
Apparently, it's not just Florida getting hit by heavy rain. A Hong Kong property developer this week opened the world's only full-scale replica of Noah's Ark.
The developer says it was built following the description in the Bible.
When a suicidal man tied up traffic around a busy bridge in China for five hours, a passer-by took matters into his own hands -- and pushed him off.
Chen Fuchao, 26, was squatting on the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou, threatening to leap. Lai Jiansheng, 66, climbed the bridge, shook Chen's hand and gave him a heavy shove.
Chen plummeted onto a partially inflated air cushion, suffering spine and elbow injuries. Lai, who was taken away by cops, said, "I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interes. They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals."
How close would you get to a fire at a gas station? The correct answer is, Not very.
That didn't stop an amateur videographer in Perth, Western Australia, who kept filming even after the place went up like a nuke (around the minute mark of this video).
The inferno began after a tanker caught fire as it refueled. When it blew, firefighters ran for their lives. There were still 12,000 gallons of gas in the tanker second compartment, so people living nearby were evacuated.
If that had exploded, or if the station's underground tanks had gone up, all hell would have let loose.
Auto-tuning has been all the rage with Kanye West and T-Pain. What song hasn't been retouched with auto-tuning? Now, here's a pretty great usage for auto-tuning, put the daily news through it! The Katie Couric duet in the middle of the clip is the best:
Flying instructor Kyle Davis gave a student a real-life lesson in emergency landing a few minutes after taking off from Winter Haven on Sunday. After the engine shut out for the third time, Davis, who shows nerves of steel, made a split-second decision to put the plane down on Havendale Boulevard, normally one of Winter Haven's busiest streets. Fortunately, there was no traffic. Davis's passenger, a professional videographer, caught the short flight and its amazing climax with a cockpit-mounted camera. The only things missing are the bleeped-out words.
CNN Reporter at Chicago Tea Party: Bully or Victim
Lots of chatter on the Internet about CNN reporter Susan Roesgen's live shot at the Tea Party in Chicago. Some say she's harassing the dude with the kid and demonstrating a clear bias. Others say she's being bullied.
What do you think?
My thought: The real star is the two-year-old. He's just chilling out with his binky. He's probably wondering, "Pops, can you take me to the zoo next time? I'd even prefer staring at a ceiling fan."
This freaky-looking new two-wheeled car from Segway and GM was unveiled April 7. It's supposed to provide safe, inexpensive and eco-friendly transport at speeds of up to 35mph.
Auto giants General Motors and electric scooter makers Segway say the Project PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility) car is impossible to crash.
Birthday Wishes Gone Wrong: Epic Local News Blunder
This clip made me laugh so hard that my co-workers were giving me funny looks. It's from KTVO-3 in Missouri. The anchors are wishing people happy birthday when...things go awry about a minute into the segment. Listen to the names closely.
Whoever did this would make Bart Simpson proud.
And Lou Briccant, I hope your big party went smoothly.
Falling prices make land a bargain ... on the moon
This looks like an April Fool's joke, but it's real. Apparently, there are 18 agencies around the world selling real estate on the moon. And the global recession has now spread into space.
Tough times mean sales are tumbling, and prices at this agency in Prague, Czech Republic, have droppped to about $40 an acre.
In case you're wondering who on earth buys lunar land, this British report names three people you might have heard of: Mick Jagger, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Cruise.
Holy smoke! A volcano erupts under the sea off the coast of Tonga, sending amazing clouds of smoke, steam and debris into the sky. And these daring souls sailed out close to the eruption to capture some of the awesome power of nature..
Video minutes after the Clarence Center plane crash
Just minutes after Thursday evening's deadly plane crash in New York, YouTube user SpikeTheCowboy711 picked up his video camera and headed to the crash site.
A Michigan military mom surprised her 8-year-old son with her early return home from Iraq, just in time for Christmas. Just grab the tissues right now.
The election may be over, but Sarah Palin is still a viral video sensation.
She went to an Alaska turkey farm to pardon a turkey- a time-honored tradition. But apparently no one told the guy behind her to take a break from killing turkeys.
This clip has received more than 200,000 hits in less than 14 hours.
Warning: This is not a gruesome clip, but it may upset turkey lovers.
Carly Fiorina, McCain advisor and former Hewlett Packard CEO, did not like the skit. Whatever. I haven't seen an SNL skit forwarded around the Internet so much like this since SNL's "Lazy Sunday."
It's informative and slightly subversive! And fairly accurate.
If you aren't familiar with Uncle Jay, he's got a new segment on the Web every Monday. If you want to see more Uncle Jay, go to his website. But don't go too often, because it could put me out of a job.
It's becoming clear that people are actually reading this blog.
Watch This Now got a call this afternoon from a spokeswoman for "The Morning Show with Mike and Juilet"--a chatfest broadcast across the country. She wanted to explain the mystery of spaghetti cat.
First, here's the clip:
She wanted to clarify that the show intentionally put up the photo of the pasta-eating feline. Apparently it is known in the biz as a "bleep photo." When someone says a dirty word on the show, we can now expect to be treated to the cat's photo.
The photo apparently came from a pet segment the show is putting together.
I guess coffee stands with female employees in bikinis are popular in Washington state.
A few questions:
1) Why do the baristas keep going to the window when they see the car?
2) Why didn't anyone on the road notice this guy's license plate was covered up with women's underwear?
3) Did he secretly want boiling water poured on him?
A serious topic doesn't show up often here. But I think this video released Wednesday along with a Vanity Fair article is going to spark some pretty interesting debate. Is waterboarding torture? Is there a difference between simulated drowning and drowning? I offer no opinion here. Just this video with Christopher Hitchins:
Miracle fruit tasting by Gordon Ramsey and Juliette Binoche
Maybe you've seen the video with me taste-tasting berries.
And while that's all well and good, here's a video with far more interesting people trying out the berries on the Graham Norton show in the UK. Juliette Binoche seemed to like it, but Gordon Ramsey, sort of predictably, does not.
That's kind of been my experience with other people, too. Some friends will get a kick out of it, some won't taste much difference at all, and some even get personally offended: "You've made my burger taste like a doughnut!" or "You've ruined my alcohol-drinking experience!"
Just goes to show that taste is, well, up to one's individual taste.
Last December, some Italian artist apparently decided to dump thousands of plastic balls to protest the end of garbage pick-up in Naples. Thankfully for YouTubers everywhere, this protest was caught on film.
At the end of the clip you see the sanitation workers cleaning up the mess (and honestly, if I were an Italian sanitation worker, I'd track this artist down and whack him with my shovel). But I think they're missing a real opportunity here -- just turn the plaza into a giant ball pit, like at the mall or Chuck E. Cheese's.
The military has released gripping video footage of a February B-2 bomber crash in Guam that the Air Force has concluded was caused by moisture.
The crash was caused by distorted data in the aircraft's flight control computers, according to a report released Thursday. Air Force investigators blame the distortion on moisture in the system, which caused the computers to calculate the wrong airspeed.
Here at WTN headquarters, we're always mulling over how to better get the word out about the blog. Most of our ideas are a bust, probably because we're not thinking big enough.
Take, for instance, this Indonesian writer marketing his new book, called "Marketing Revolution." The revolution apparently involves flying several times over poor Indonesians and dumping money on them.
Maybe we'll try this at the beach on Saturday:
Sameer Mishra of West Lafayette, Indiana is about to become an internet superstar. The 8th grader was a hit at -- and won -- the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee. In the video below he misheard the word "numnah" as "numb nut."
So Kim Kardashian, one of those famous people who is famous for being famous, is trying on clothes at a Los Angeles boutique with her sisters while discussing the plight of Burma.
This being the United States, with its insular culture, dying old media, and third-rate education system, it's vital for our celebrities (and Wikipedia) to step up and educate us about far-flung places like Burma, Tibet, Darfur, etc. since our politicians, teachers and journalists have failed so thoroughly.
Burma, now officially called Myanmar, is getting some of the usual press a remote nation gets after a catastrophe. At least 10,000 people are dead because of a cyclone that hit the country over the weekend.
But for the next 30 days, an unlikely group of celebrities like Will Ferrell and Sarah Silverman are heading a web campaign to bring attention to the decades-long struggle for democracy in Burma. It may sound silly, but Ferrell and Silverman strike just the right notes in these kickoff videos.
They're comedians first, and they never lose sight of that:
Now, how about this: The Webby Awards were announced Tuesday, and while we here at Watch This Now didn't win anything, it turns out we've featured many of the winners on this very site.
Which doesn't exactly make us winners-by-association, but we feel very cutting-edge right now.
Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report" is the Webby Person of the Year. Hopefully this will dull the pain of finishing third in the "100 Most Influential People of the Year."
The Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am got a special Webby nod for his pro-Obama "Yes We Can" clip, which Tim Collie posted here back in February. Here's the link to that one.
And finally, director Michel Gondry got props for encouraging people to remake their favorite films and post them online -- also known as "sweding." You can check out all of Andrew Tran's "swede" posts in the "swede" section here, or just click on the category link on the right side of the blog.
As the mother of an 11-month-old, let me say for the record that I would not engage in this particular activity.
That said, knowing what I know about my own son, I would strongly advise those spectators on the ground to wear some sort of plastic sheeting, or at least carry an umbrella. I can't imagine a naked baby wouldn't have some sort of accident while being tossed from a tower onto a sheet.
The instant I saw TV interviews with the 7-year-old joyrider from Palm Beach Gardens I knew he was going to be a viral sensation. Sure enough, a WPBF-Channel 25 clip of the young fellow already has more than 700,000 hits on the Internet.
His declaration "I like doing bad things" is going to be with him for awhile.
But it seems everyone has overlooked the interview done by our news partner, WPTV-Channel 5. Kelley Dunn interviews the young fellow as he makes ice and talks about wanting to go on a high-speed chase. Once you get to the site, click on the Video Player on the right.
This entry from the Orlando Sentinel's "What the Blog?" confirms my ill feelings about elevators might not be so irrational after all. It also confirms that smoking really is bad for you.
Can you imagine 41 hours in an elevator? I think after about 30 minutes I'd start yelling for someone to come get me, right now.
Anyway, here's the link to the Orlando Sentinel entry, and tell them Watch This Now sent you.
This video of a robotic dog from a company called Boston Dynamics is creepy. At first, I thought it was a real dog that someone had rigged to look like a robot. Then I realized this is a robot. But this thing climbs hills, and slips on ice and recovers!
The Internet has spawned a universe of renegade video: an outpouring of parody, celebrity, sci-fi, bloopers, undiscovered talent and weirdness that defies category. We're in an age where homemade clips flare into worldwide phenomena.
We like this stuff. We think about it. And we show you our favorites.
JON BURSTEIN
Burstein watches anything on television and spends too much time looking for stupid viral videos, according to his wife...
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KATHY BUSHOUSE
Someday, if she's lucky, Bushouse will get to appear on VH1's "The World Series of Pop Culture" and finally use her ability...
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BRIAN HAAS
A crime reporter at the Sun Sentinel, he’s a dork among dorks with interests in video games, Lost, Heroes and science...
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