Just came across this, thanks to a Twitter post from Jason Calacanis: it’s a hilarious parody of the Tom Cruise video from a week or two ago, the one in which he was selling Scientology as the cure for all of mankind’s ills — the video that Scientology has been trying to get Gawker (among others) to remove, which I wrote about here. Actor Jerry O’Connell does a pretty good job of channeling Cruise, complete with slicked-back hair and a black turtleneck. The hand movements are right on, and the maniacal laughter is probably the best part. Be sure to check out the out-takes as well.

Last time I checked, the video -had been viewed about 1.7 million times. Not bad, considering it’s only been up there for a week.

Virtually everyone thinks they’re funny — and the ones who think they’re the funniest are the ones who aren’t funny at all. Into that latter category, I would have to put the new “media satire” site 23/6 (which is apparently a play on the term 24/7 — but like the site itself, the name isn’t funny either). As Chris Albrecht points out at NewTeeVee, the unfunnyness of the site is more than a little sad, considering that News Corp. and HuffingtonPost have apparently been working on this thing for more than a year now.

For some reason, everyone thinks that satire — particularly political or news-driven satire — is really easy to do. After all, that guy Jon Stewart just sits there and reads the headlines and makes faces, and people think it’s hilarious, right? And The Onion gets away with murder too, just by writing takeoffs of popular news stories. How hard could that be?

Well, guess what. It’s really hard. It’s not that hard to do — it’s just really hard to do it well. After all, even The Onion misses from time to time. Maybe 23/6 can get into the swing eventually, but you have to wonder why they even bothered. It’s not like the political or news-driven satire game doesn’t already have a bunch of players. Portfolio’s media blogger doesn’t think much of it either.

This video (hat tip to Valleywag) made me laugh out loud. If you’ve ever been in Second Life and tried to move around or engage in pretty much any kind of behaviour requiring fine motor skills, you’ll know what I mean.

I seem to be in a video-posting kind of mood today. If you haven’t seen this one, it’s well worth watching — and it’s only five seconds long. For some reason, that’s all it takes to get a laugh out of this particular rodent (which isn’t actually a chipmunk, but rather some kind of gopher or prairie dog).

Never one to leave an Internet meme alone, Nick Douglas at Look Shiny (ex of Valleywag) has his own version, and so does iJustine, and Veronica Belmont, and Drew Olanoff of Scriggity. Thanks to Jackson West of NewTeeVee for those links. And for some reason, that surprised gopher reminds me of the guy in the David Blaine parody videos.