I’m a fan of homemade music videos for ridiculous songs.

Not the influencer-quality videos you can make today, with a fancy iPhone and great editing apps. Nah, I prefer the ones from yesteryear where the tools had no auto mode and people weren’t routinely filming themselves for Reels or Tiktok.

I came across a great one yesterday when I went searching for a song I like that occasionally pops up on an Irish drinking sing-along Pandora station we enjoy. It’s a short but catchy song called The Gates by Da Vinci’s Notebook1, which details an IT disaster via “comedic a cappella” (is that a thing? I guess it’s a thing).

So I went on Youtube, searched for the song, and a high school student’s class project from 12 years ago came up. It’s hilarious in all the right ways, including easter eggs in the credits.

🎥 If you have 2 minutes, have ever lost data while using a Windows computer, and want a few laughs, click this link.

That kid seems fun, doesn’t he?

The video has probably overtaken my previous favorite: a much more poorly produced family tribute video for Weird Al’s song “Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota."

As an official twine ball aficionado—yes, I’ve visited all four of them (each of which involves a fun story2), and even owned BallsOfTwine.com for a while (a never-quite-launched project dedicated to fun Roadside Oddities)—I really loved that video.

It’s extremely amateurish, which is a critical component of its charm. The camera work is terrible, the “actors” aren’t exactly hitting their lines, and the husband clearly owes his wife immensely for putting up with the whole thing.

And of course, it’s an entire damn song, a seven-plus minute song, dedicated to a Twine Ball, so of course I’m in. Did I mention that it seemingly wasn’t even produced for distribution? Nope, this was a passion project, pure and simple. A “Great Family Adventure,” as they called it in the opening title. The only way we can watch it is because the sister of the protagonist3 uploaded it to her own Youtube account.

It reminds me a lot of the personal websites many of us built before social media platforms took over personal expression online (then enshittified themselves).

I hope we don’t lose dare I say triumphs like this. But I suspect that we have, as modern apps + our cultural fascination with publishing highlight videos of our lives + the casino of virality + side hustle culture probably dustbins most uniquely pure hobbyist efforts like this.

I mean, it’s sorta like the whole endeavor of making a twine ball, as I mentioned in an article written about the song (Medium link):

Jones felt this too, especially compared to the heavily advertised presence of other roadside attractions. As he explains, “That’s got to be a hobby of love to start that. You don’t start wrapping a twine ball thinking you’re on to a million-dollar business venture. That’s not how that starts. I really appreciate, especially in today’s side hustle culture, that there are big endeavors people do just because it’s a fun hobby to them, it’s something that they just enjoy doing.” Just like the video that inspired him to go in the first place, the important element of the twine ball is the passion, not the product.

If you’re pursuing a similar hobby of love, really anything of that sort—and especially if it’s some wacky shit like a twine ball—I’d enjoy hearing about it!

  1. If you enjoyed The Gates, you might also like two of their other songs: the also catchy Another Irish Drinking Song, and perhaps Enormous Penis, their “hit.” ↩︎

  2. Ok, it just occurred to me that my twine ball quest is literally briefly mentioned enshrined in the US Congressional Record, which is absolutely fucking hilarious. Also, damn I need to write a blog post on each of those first Twine Ball visits… ↩︎

  3. That makes the video sound way fancier than it is. ↩︎