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I recently came across the fantastic parody videos done by Jank Media, which represent a great combination of science sass and silliness. I love how our primadonna character walks the subtle line between making fun of herself and being serious about delivering her scientific lyrics. Their first video 'Astrobiology' is a parody of Ke$ha's 'We R Who We R', you've simply got to appreciate the way they've stayed true to the elements of the original video while making a successful stab at creating a science version. Now, you're all going to cringe when she gets to the part about "bacteria thriving on arsenic", so let me point out that they've received some slack for this already from Eliza Strickland over at Discover Magazine's Discoblog. Here is their response:
"We’d like to defend our honor just a little bit in regards to the arsenic debate. Certainly, we know it is a very contentious subject, but we felt we couldn’t really do the whole controversy justice in the context of this parody, so we went with the brief mention."
I'd have loved to have seen them tweak this lyric - but at least it's been mentioned...and indeed they have a point, a parody video is perhaps not the best place to conduct the the arsenic debate. Now on with this otherwise highly entertaining presentation!
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Their next video is a parody of Ke$sha's 'Take it Off', and is called 'Space Rocks Rock'. Another video with an astrobiological theme, with some great lyrics and a fabulous main character. Jank's videos are full of style and sass, with some seriously scientific substance as well.