[via I Watch Stuff]

10. Fatness and arm tattoos are not the true signs of manliness

This man’s belief that he is “more of a man” than our six-packed hero makes us sad. Shame on you and your “seaman” jokes.

9. Unemployed Skeletor

We’re a bit undecided on this one. The arrival of Skeletor makes us laugh every time, but otherwise, it’s undeniably bad. You aren’t going to defeat He-Man with that gut, Skeletor!

8. Old Spice Guy is in the trap

We’d love to see Jay-Z on Ice, but bad animation and mild racism makes this an eye-roll worthy parody.

7. The Old Spice “Baby”

Hasn’t the talking baby joke stayed around far longer than is even remotely acceptable?

6. The Old Spice Alien

We want to like this one for its uniqueness, but it’s pretty bad. Weird for weird’s sake comes across as trying way too hard.

5. The Warcraft Bar Soap Guy

You lost us at “Warcraft Bar Soap.”

4. The Anti iPhone Guy

Randomly attacking the new iPhone through an Old Spice Guy parody makes this confusing and uncomfortable to watch.

3. The Sausage Your Sausage Could Taste Like

This is just gross. Gross animation, gross sausage, and gross misuse of creativity.

2. I’m On A Horse

This is a perfect example of frat kids trying way to hard to create a meme.

1. An Old, Old Spice Parody

Classic!

10. Mario and Luigi Jr.

9. Mortal Kombat Parody

8. Super Mario Kart Parody

7. Stop Motion Pong

6. Post-It Donkey Kong

5. Stop Motion Sticky Note Mario

4. Roomba Pac Man

3. NES Stop Motion

2. Stop Motion Tetris (The one that started it all…)

1. Pixels

A few favorites from the wordsmiths at Unhappy Hipsters:

“It was unclear how her life had become so riddled with obvious metaphors.” (Dwell, July/August 2004)

“Still recovering from broken trust, neither wanted to be the first to try the eggs.” (Dwell, November 2009)

And now… FILL IN THE CAPTION:

(From Opdahl Remastered, July/August 2007 issue)

*Full disclosure: we subscribe.

We think her videos already verge on the parodic and referential, if not on purpose then definitely in practice, but there’s always one more step to take into the depths of the absurd. And remember, imitation is the highest form of flattery. After the jump, peep our guide to creating the perfect Lady Gaga parody video, and watch our favorite spoofs of the moment.

Five steps to a successful Lady Gaga parody:

1. Decide whether you want to comment on Lady Gaga herself or use her melodies to back your own idea, like talking about your favorite typeface.

2. Get some sweet costumes. ‘Sweet’ is highly subjective, but we prefer the elaborate to the dismal.

3. Write a song to go along with the music of your chosen song. Preferably it will rhyme and make sense, though these rules are flexible.

4. Make sure you reference the original video with some visual cues or dance moves. Otherwise you’re just another douchey Young Republican sitting in a tree wearing a wifebeater.

4a. Because it’s best if you’re making fun of her, yourself, or both. Otherwise why do we even care?

5. Get someone patient (maybe your dad?) to shoot your video and post it on the internet! Voila. Lady Gaga will now probably look at your face through her computer screen. We feel you shiver.

Also, if you’re not visually inclined, feel free to use your pen to imagine a perfect world of Gaga  — for inspiration, check out What a Fool Believes‘s proposal for a seasonal TV special entitled A Gaga Xmas. We will be highly impressed if anyone turns this into video for us (READ: Video of the Day, people).

But enough! Behold, our favorite parody videos of the Age of Gaga. You’ve seen some of them before, but we think they’re more powerful when they’re all in one place.

Neutra Face (A Bearded Poker Face Parody)

We love this. A perfect example of making a video about something unrelated to Ms. Gaga but still referencing her. Very well done, except for the unconvincing party scene, and about a typeface, which is about the nerdiest you can get while still being universally charming. Also, it seriously does not hurt this video that it is full of sexy beardy guys in wet t-shirts and that other dude who looks like the lovechild of Chuck Bass and Harry Potter.

Bad Romance by Lady Gaga ft. Lord Gaga

Now this one is definitely our favorite. The writing is great and the jabs spot-on (“Blah blah blah. Hoo hoo hee. Everybody look at me. Random stuff. Random stuff. Tell me have you had enough?”), plus it looks like a whole lot of work went into those costumes. Plus they figured out how to do the thing with the eyes! That is freaking impressive. We’ve always wished we could pair the Queen of Absurdity with some good lyrics, and it looks like this is the closest we’re going to get. Lady Gaga + smart writing = the best thing ever this video.

UCB’s Noteworthy sings ‘Poker Face’

Okay, okay. So this isn’t exactly a parody. It is, however, is the first a cappella song we’ve gotten through smiling since sophomore year of college. A bunch of dudes in shiny vests singing “Poker Face” and gyrating their hips? Irresistible.

Butterface

Oh… burn. This one is topical, if really mean. We don’t think she’s particularly ugly, but the supposed incongruity between face and body has indeed been mentioned more than once — whatever though. We’re thinking, let the homely girls know they can grow up to be psychotic pop stars! It’s the American dream.

Outer Space

This one’s another winner based on making fun of a particular aspect of Lady Gaga’s persona — that fact that she’s so batshit crazy it seems like she’s from another planet. Okay, the vocals aren’t as good as they could be, but this is another video with high effort put in, and oh my is that girl a looker or what? We want to go to her planet.

Rad Bromance

Worth watching if only for the intro. Even with all the Judd Apatow hype, bro love really hasn’t been getting anywhere with the music world (boy bands are never, never coming back. Sorry NKOTB). And we’ve seriously worn out JD and Turk, so we’ve been waiting for a new YouTube bromance staple. Could this be it?

Just Tax

Oh, sigh. This has Michael Steele all over it. The Republican party needs to stop this madness and go back to targeting voters they have something in common with (money?), not GaGa fans. Just a note: we are not holding this up as an example of a good parody video, but we’re definitely laughing. Just maybe not for the reasons they want us to.

Carlo’s Bad Romance Remake

Do we even have to say anything about this? You just gotta love it.

Bonus: These are not quite parodies, but if you really can’t get enough of other people pretending to be Lady Gaga, check out Urlesque’s compilation of mini Gagas singing Poker Face in their bathrooms, ostensibly to put on their MySpace pages. We want to know where their parents are.

“In the great green room
there was a telephone
and a red balloon
and a picture of —
the cow jumping over the Moon” - Goodnight Moon

Well, brace yourself, because comedians Bruce Worden and Clare Cross have parodied the old favorite and the result is warped. Goodnight Keith Moon — not to be confused with the fantastic biography from Moon’s chaffeur, Full Moon — gives us new-found gems to fall asleep to (and have awful, cold-sweat inducing nightmares about, of course). A sampling? “And two broken sticks/and a pile of sick.” Ah, poetry.

But wait, there’s more where that came from.

“In the great green room
there was a telephone
and a dead Keith Moon
and a picture of —
Townsend jumping over the moon” -Goodnight Keith Moon

You can listen them to read the entire macabre tale above.

In a similar vein, we’re sure My First Rave: Fun with “X” would make for a really intimate book report.

The Mysterious Ticking Noise is a guilty pleasure for Harry Potter fans (and haters). This installment in the finger-puppet series ends with a pipe bomb.

Dude, They’re Gonna Chop Your Balls Off! is a special one for Sparky — and an ideal way to start that awkward conversation about where little puppies come from.

5. With Horton Hires a Ho! we’re confident that poor Theodor Seuss Geisel is rolling in his grave. “On the fifteenth of June, in the slums of the Valley/With his dirty coke spoon, in the dark of an alley…”

With that in mind, we decided it was time for another lit quiz: here are some excerpts from the book interspersed with real wedding announcements. Can you separate the real from the fake? Answers below.

1. Lauren Harding D’Elia and Matthew Paul Pressman are to be married Sunday at the Wychmere Harbor Beach and Tennis Club, in Harwich Port, Mass. Rabbi Deborah Pipe Mangan is to officiate.
The bride, 28, will be taking her husband’s name. She is an account executive at Serino Coyne, an advertising agency in New York that specializes in Broadway shows.

2. Regina Harrison and Jimmy Holgren were married Sunday at the Zen Buddhist Peace Center in Carmel, Calif. The ceremony was performed by Buddhist Monk Budiman Prang.
The bride, 26, is studying to be a massage therapist.
The bridegroom, 27, is a yoga instructor and peace activist.

3. The two met using an online dating service known as People-Meeter.com.
“We’re so perfect for each other,” said the bride, a hairdresser from Naples, Florida. “Ron likes books; I like books. I like beaches; he likes beaches. The computer matched us perfectly.”The bridegroom, 27, is a yoga instructor and peace activist.

4. The bride and bridegroom met in 1999 during a five-day hiking trip for members of the incoming freshman class at Dartmouth, from which they both graduated, he magna cum laude. People on those excursions refer to each other as “trippees,” Ms. D’Elia said. “We had 50- to 60-pound backpacks and set up tarps in pouring rain. We hung out and hit it off and started dating a month into school.”
Now Ms. D’Elia loves to tell other Dartmouth alumni, “I’m marrying my trippee.”

5. And on June 27, in the back garden of the Winkler home, Rabbi Kenneth Chasen of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles performed their wedding ceremony before 270 guests.
Mr. Reinis declared the many things he loves about her, including “the way her entire body wiggles when she’s nervous.”

6. The day of the wedding was selected by an astrologer based on its auspiciousness. Before the ceremony, the assembled monks chanted. The guests then said the Vandana, Tisarana, and Pancasila readings, after which the couple lit incense sticks and candles around a Buddha statue. Vows and rings were exchanged using the Sigilovdda Sutta as a guide.
Immediately following the ceremony, the D.J. played “A Whole New World,” from the Aladdin soundtrack and pretty much blasted everyone back to fucking reality again.

Highlight the blocks below to see how you did.
1. Real
2. Fake
3. Fake
4. Real
5. Real
6. Fake

Now we’re hearing that this site is actually a spoof — an incredible hoax mocking some of the more, erm, stringent aspects of Christian fundamentalism. But! That doesn’t mean we can’t still share the glory of these incredible kid-drawn, Jesus-approved artworks. Below are a few of our favorites, with our interpretations. If you’ve got a caption of your own on one of these, drop it in the comments.

Crissy, who is 22 1/2 (really, Crissy? We stopped counting halves when we hit double-digits) thinks heaven = keg-stands, with help from a T-Rex. We’re just thrilled that Lil Jon is in fact saved. YEEAH!

Why is coffee evil, but Lil Jon, purveyor of Crunk Juice, is totally angelic?

We were trying to figure out what kids were finding so damn funny all over this site, and then we realized that they use LOL to stand for Love Our Lord.

Gay for Jesus? This is about where we started thinking that maybe this site was a fake… Too perfect, really.

We wish we could fall back on this explanation for everything we’ve ever failed at.

Note to self: turbans = evil. Mel Gibson = savior.

So… Jesus is weighing you down? Because you can’t go anywhere with the anchor out. Huh.

But, but… ninjas are silent and deadly mercenaries! Our minds are blown.