Pants Paradise

In the spirit of holiday giving, I share this with you, my loyal readers (reader?). These are my celebrity crushes--I only hope they give you as much joy as they give me: Jemaine Clement and Brett McKenzie, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, "New Zealand's Fourth Most Popular Satirical Folk Duo." Sit back and enjoy (click play and make sure your sound is on).

"A Kiss is Not a Contract"

"You can buy me a burrito/And some beans and rice/But that won't get you into pants paradise... Just because I'm in/a two-man novelty band/doesn't mean it's all about poontang!" If Barry White were a part white/part Maori comedian from New Zealand, he would be Jemaine Clement.

"The Tape of Love" (a.k.a. "Pencils in the Wind")

"Another way that love/is similar to tape..." Check out Brett's meaningful facial expressions. I particularly enjoy the end, where he loses it, most soulfully, in an explosion of strangulated singing.

"Think About It" (crazy Kiwi take on Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On"):

"They're turning kids into slaves/just to make cheaper sneakers/but what's the real cost/'cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper... "

"Business Time" (now THIS is what I mean by "Jemaine Clement = Barry White.")


"For the Ladies of the World" http://youtube.com/watch?v=hFjrbmj0CUc ("I don't care if you're ugly, or you're skanky, or you're small/I just want to do something special for y'all")

"Inner City Pressure" http://youtube.com/watch?v=7wqfcwgT0Ds&feature=related (Monty Python meets the Pet Shop Boys in a 21st-century dystopia)

"Motha Uckers" http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y3fD6CYCFV8 (the boys get even more urban, rapping on bicycles as they speed away from the Indian grocer so racist he won't sell apples to New Zealanders)

High Five, Ousmane!

My Senegalese vegetable farmer, Ousmane Ndiaye, has paid back the microloan I helped fund so he and his four buddies could start a farm. I'm just posting this here to plug Kiva.org--now get over there and find a third-world entrepreneur you want to help! You scroll through photos of the entrepreneurs, read descriptions of their projects, and pick which one to loan money to. You can loan as little as $25, and when it's paid back, you can either get the money back or loan it to another third-world entrepreneur. Since the World Bank is somewhere between oblivious and corrupt, it's not going to do the right thing (did you see this New York Times article on Malawi, which ended a huge famine by ignoring the World Bank's pressure to worship at the shrine of the "Free" Market?). So we might as well do the right thing ourselves, $25 at a time...