It was three months ago that my roommate first introduced me to this video. I found it funnier than most, because what I was seeing seemed a bit too familiar to me. Like the opening reference to Mirage, a nightclub in Westbury on my native Long Island. I cracked up at the end when the words "COMING SOON TO A SOUTH SHORE OR QUEENS BAR NEAR YOU" appeared on the screen. As fate would have it, I was on the verge of heading back to my ancestral home, and I wrote then that I hoped to not be confronted with such douchebaggery. Did I manage to avoid it? Not a chance. There were lots of popped collars and new haircuts all over both the bars I went to that weekend.
Here's the original for you:
The force behind this is L2X Productions ( blog | YouTube ), which consists of a couple of mid-twenty-something New York Institute of Technology graduates. They took the act on the road (the "Skanks and Broskis Tour"), which likely resulted in a windfall for both Heineken and Jägermeister. It also produced scenes like this.
If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then these guys are getting flattered like few others. I did a not-very-exhaustive search, and came up with no less than fifteen different spoofs of "My New Haircut." Here they are:
Asian | Jewish | black | Mexican |
redneck | wigger | nerd | janitor |
senior citizen | George W. Bush | Ron Paul | World of Warcraft |
Naval Academy | Russian | Halo 3 |
And then there's this partial remake, which might draw the attention of some town or state's Department of Child Protective Services. Why am I mentioning all these parodies? Because early this week, my co-workers and I thought the same thing all of these guys did at some point - "hey, we can adapt this to our lives!" As such, we've already written a good chunk of "My New Haircut: Submarine Edition." If and when we get it made, you'll see it here first.