Cloudcuckoolander/Music

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
< Cloudcuckoolander
Revision as of 01:54, 31 December 2014 by Dai-Guard (talk | contribs) (update links)


Comedy

"I [asked for a Kinder Surprise in third person] the other day and it answered me back, and he said to me: "No, I am Bill Bailey. You are not Bill Bailey, you are just a mere doppelgänger. I am the true Bill Bailey, in Another Dimension." And I went, "Oh, I hadn't planned on that." Then I thought the only way to solve this, I have to run at my doppelgänger, then we will be fused forever. So I ran full-tilt at it, and just before I got there I realised it was the highly polished side of the cheese counter."

  • Gilbert Gottfried
  • Bobcat Goldthwait
  • Emo Philips. He deserves to be here more than twice, but two will have to do.
  • Norm MacDonald
  • The Firesign Theatre
  • Mitch Hedberg
  • Noel Fielding His hat's made out of skin! his paper is made out of skin! everything is made out of skin! So I got freaked out and ran home, and it took me an hour, and when I got there some bracken had put my window through
  • Demitri Martin

"I have less focus than squirrels!"

(The answer is "15") "Is it... how many magic biscuits are there in the magic biscuit tree?"

  • Reggie Watts

Fan Works and Fanfiction

Marik: By the way, Bakura, your costume could use some work.
Bakura: ... what?
Marik: I mean, I don't like to criticize, but it looks like your mother made that for you!
Bakura: Marik, this isn't a costume. It's my clothes.
Marik: Well, you could have done a better job is all I'm saying!
Bakura: A better job of WHAT?

Jamma-P: HEY, I DIDN'T WRITE THIS SCRIPT SO DON'T COMPLAIN TO ME!!!!!
Yuri: Wow, someone needs a nap.
Momoko: Is it me?
Yuri: No. No, it's not Momoko.

Vegeta: Nappa! No! It's a trick!
Nappa: But Vegeta! Trix are for kids...

  • Major Raikov in the Metal Gear Solid fanfic Stray is "always the type who took sanity more as a suggestion," to the extent that Ocelot considers Raikov's Psycho Electro boyfriend to be the stabilizing influence in the relationship.
  • Raocow takes on a persona like this in his Let's Play entries. See: his Kamek's Revenge Let's Play, where he declares a fear of circles and refers to a flower that spits items when fed an egg or enemy to be "an altar to our dark flesh god".
    • He has weird names for the characters of Super Mario World. He calls Yoshi "stupid horse" even though he is a dinosaur. He calls the Charging Chuck "Football Charlie" because they are in football player uniforms.
    • To quote Raocow himself: "I'M SO GODDAMN WACKY"
  • Demykins from the Kingdom Hearts fanfic Those Lacking Spines behaves in this manner, with a multitude of his lines as shoutouts to other media; when he doesn't quote from various works, he ignores the situation altogether.
    • Which is also the common fanfiction depiction of regular old Demyx, because 90% of the people who write fanfiction have absolutely no concept of what makes Demyx Demyx. Or any other character, themselves.
  • Farfalla The Butterfly Kitten, a prolific Fan-Fic author and creator of the All-Ages Kirk/Spock Archive, is clearly one of these. Just look at her name. Also, only a Cloudcuckoolander could write This. Or This.

Farfalla's note before one Fan Fic Header: I sometimes refer to slashy bits in canon as 'sardines', because they're thrown like little rewarding treats to us little loyal dolphin-like fans... but that has nothing to do with this story.

Music

"Tonight I bought a suitcase for my candy, I drank with Ernest Hemingway, I watched a crazy man dance alone on water under a single star, a very talented musician graciously played the faucet for me...and I played along. I sang to a tuna in the brine. And finally, I stole a pink porcelain icicle and gave it to a superhero. Hmmmm. So sleepy now....Ps. I know EXACTLY why a raven is like a writing desk!"

  • Nicki Minaj
  • Andrew W. K.
  • Believe it or not, Justin Bieber revealed himself to be this on Ellen: I blow dry my hair like whoosh! whooosh!
  • Michael Jackson
  • Peter Gabriel once crossdressed as a fox in a long red dress and it was awesome.
  • David Byrne
  • Brian Wilson
  • Adam Young. Listen to his lyrics.
  • Matt Bellamy. Firstly, it seems to be In the Blood, since he grew up in a superstitious family who made frequent use of an Ouija board. He's obsessed with conspiracy theories. He's claimed to believe that humans evolved from spiders that float around in space, and he's also said that he wishes the gravity on Earth was lighter so that spiders would die. He likes dressing up in costumes, drawing veins on his arms, and trees. Unsurprisingly, he's used shrooms in the past.
  • Japanese rocker Gackt is well-known for his odd behavior, particularly in interviews: Instead of answering questions in a straight-forward manner, he instead says things that are deliberately absurd, nonsensical, or lewd, but always with a straight face, making it difficult to tell if he is joking or being serious.
    • Those infamous Utaban interviews ("The Pork Belly blocks...get them for me. They are back there. I know they are." / "Well I'm [referring to his penis] a Magnum." / "I haven't felt like being naked much lately.")
    • One of his most well-known jokes has led some fans to think that he seriously believes he's a 496 year old vampire. Even after he revealed his true age, there were still fans who still believed the vampire shtick.
    • But for most fans, it's all part of his charm.
  • Peter Wolf of The J. Geils Band, if getting kicked out by one-time roommate David Lynch for being too weird is anything to go by.
  • Michael Stipe
  • Nick Carter embodies this trope, especially as of late. Check out his Twitter.
  • Rudy "?" Martinez of ? and the Mysterians says that he has travelled time and seen dinosaurs.
  • Jazz bandleader Sun Ra kept his past shrouded in mystery, claimed to be from outer space, and created a Myth Arc surrounding this.
  • Tommy Scott, formerly of Space. He's heavily inspired by films - which he wanted his songs to sound like - and cartoons, rather than music, and has pretended to be various personalities when singing, such as Speedy Gonzales and Marlene Dietrich. And then there's the 'Suburban Rock 'n' Roll' video, where he's dressed up as a lion. Yeah.
  • Captain Beefheart. Captain Beefheart for the win. He seems to have lived on a plane so different from the rest of us, it's a wonder that he was able to survive as long as he did.
  • Paul McCartney. In addition to coming up with some truly baffling lyrics on occasion, he's prone to rambling and non sequitur in interviews, notwithstanding his reputation as a savvy PR man. For instance, Paul on painting:

"I have millions of little ways to get over blocks because for me-- because I don't do it for a living-- it's important I enjoy it. But every artist that I've ever talked to gets a moment in a painting of what the fuck am I doing? What the hell is this? You get that scary feeling I used to get at school just doing anything virtually: you suddenly think, Oh my god! This could go horribly wrong at any second-- you get actually scared. So I developed tricks. In my mind I have a friend who is Luigi. Luigi owns a restaurant and he's got an alcove rather like this, and he always needs a painting for it. So whatever I'm doing, if ever I get that terrifying moment I say it's for Luigi's alcove, Luigi will like this. And he just lets me off-- it frees my head for two seconds and then I'm over the hurdle and I can carry on. So Luigi's alcove is one of my huge saviours. And then I like blending paint, so I have an alter ego called Mr. Blendini. He often paints for Luigi."

  • The Rev.
  • Bob Dylan. Along with drawing moustaches on himself, carrying huge lightbulbs and wooden puppets, he was known for giving hilariously nonsensical interviews to reporters in the mid 60s, with gems such as:

"There's a glass in the back of my head. I'm a very sick person. I can't see too well on Thursdays. And another thing, my toenails don't fit."

  • FULL (Furukawa Tomo) of Guniw Tools fame, judging by any of his lyrics, interviews and art.
  • Tyler, The Creator, of hip-hop collective OFWGKTA, though it's unclear how much of it is an act. He's referred to himself as a unicorn, a table, and a purse.

"I AM STILL THE MOST SWAGGED OUT UNICORN IN THE FUCKING EXISTENCE OF FUCKING UNICORNS NIGGA. FUCK PEGASUS, HE'S A FUCKING FAGGOT. OFUGKTA"

  • Any of The Protomen to one degree or another, between the rambling non-sequiturs that make up their "press releases", the insistence on codenames and general mystery about the band itself, half the things they've ever said (including the claim that their bus was destroyed by a vengeance-crazed rodent) and it takes a certain type of person to make a Rock Opera about Mega Man in the first place. The craziness is a big part of their appeal, though.
  • Keith Moon
  • Ian Anderson, on stage at least.
  • Damo Suzuki of Can. Just read the guy's interviews. His predecessor, Malcolm Mooney, also qualifies.

Professional Wrestling

  • WWE wrestler Al Snow became most famous as a Cloudcuckoolander who has "HELP ME!" inexplicably written backwards across his head and gets advice from a mannequin head (appropriately named "Head"). One particularly memorable storyline had him thinking that Head betrayed him and stole the Hardcore Championship from him, so he started using Pierre, a taxidermied deer head, to substitute for Head. Another had Al winning the European Championship, and deciding that, in order to better represent "the citizens of Europea", he would dress in the traditional garb (and come out to the national anthem of) a different country each week (including, inexplicably, a '50s style greaser outfit for Greece). And then there was his tag team with Steve Blackman, WWE's resident Comically Serious, in which he insisted that Blackman wear a hat shaped like a wedge of cheese so they could call themselves "Head Cheese", and that they make their entrance surrounded by midgets holding sparklers... and his infamous hardcore match with himself... yeah, Al Snow was one weird dude.
    • The explicability is obvious! Where else would greasers come from?
  • Jeff Hardy, full stop. Doubly so because it's not just his TV character. His TV character is in fact considerably more normal than he is in real life. His closest friends claim that one of his favorite activities outside of wrestling is "digging holes and filling them back in." His sculpting material of choice is aluminum foil. Also, there's his alter-ego Itchweeed. Sadly, much of this seems to stem from his personal habits
  • Colonel Cossack of the TWF.
  • Haaghiuaheydtrihaoivuhyarwehtoiuhadvhaiherr--Deliroius.
  • The Ultimate Warrior.
  • The Brian Kendrick's move to TNA gave him a gimmick that seems to be the Karate Kid on acid.
  • Raven. Genius-level IQ + years of hardcore wrestling and drug use = very odd, hyper personality. Just watch his vlogs.
  • R-Truth following his heel turn in 2011. He turned face a few months later, but still maintain this trait.


Puppet Shows

  • Most of the Muppet characters on Sesame Street would qualify. Yes, even Straight Man Bert, who has an unusual obsession with bottle caps and paper clips. Being a Nerd doesn't mean you're sane.
    • Sometime around 1988-92 was Ruby, a furry yellow monster who would often do things like wear a blindfold to see what it would be like to be blind or pretending she's a kangaroo after having her hair done up in a ponytail. She really makes Big Bird look sane.
  • Most of The Muppet Show cast would qualify, but Gonzo is the Poster Boy for this trope. Very much so. The word "Muppet", as used in Ireland, means what "Cloudcuckoolander" does here. It can be used as an insult, or a term of endearment, or both at once.
  • The entire cast of the highly surreal Norwegian puppet show Reparat ørene Kommer (The Repairmen are Coming), later renamed Pompel & Pilt after the two main characters. If Cloud Cuckooland is an actual land, this show takes place in it. Pompel & Pilt is Norwegian television's most beloved Nightmare Fuel.

Radio

  • The Goon Show has several, perhaps the entire cast at times. Eccles is the most obvious through:

Eccles: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, Eccles!! Shut up, Eccles!! Oh, that's me!

    • The Goon Show has Eccles first and foremost, and the SCRIPT as well. Characters like Grytpype Thynne and Moriarty exemplify the latter. Other Goons such as Bluebottle are more like a Chew Toy.
      • Ned Seagoon and Henery Crun are full-bore Cloudcuckoolanders too. Bluebottle and Minnie Bannister aren't quite full Cloudcuckoolanders, but are fairly close (and don't try to say Bluebottle is sane, he was found at one point singing a map.)
      • He also pronounces all his stage directions (All of them. Including "Thinks." And "Unthinks.")
  • A great many of the characters portrayed by Bob and Ray would qualify.
  • Private-Eye Harlow Doyle from Adventures in Odyssey. If anything, he's worse than his spiritual predecessor, the bumbling Officer David Harley, who hadn't gone over well.
    • As a member of the main cast, Wooton Bassett seems to be required to spend a little more time on Earth, but he still has his moments. Oh, does he have his moments.
  • If Radio of the Golden Witch is any indication, Yuu Kobayashi is one.
  • Mister Phillips in The Navy Lark, his navigation manual is "Sinbad the Sailor's Big Book of the Sea.
  • Tenor Boy Dennis Day on The Jack Benny Program.

Jack: Dennis, I didn't know you had relatives in New York.
Dennis: No, my family lives in Jersey. I had to drive under the Hudson River to visit them, and gee was it damp! Boy, did I get wet!
Jack: Was there a leak in the tunnel?
Dennis: Ohhhhh, tunnel!

  • Lonesome Cowboy Dave, whenever he gets free rein on the Church of the SubGenius Hour Of Slack. His influence tends to rub off on Wei R. Doe.

Religion and Mythology

  • Jesus. When a group of Smug Snakes brought an adulteress to Him, telling Him that she should be stoned for committing the sin of adultery, He answered by writing something in the sand. And don't even get started on the parables. Justified, however, in that He wasn't actually weird or insane, he was just a Cloud Cuckoo Lander in that He had a "non-standard perspective on life", as the "Playing With" page for this trope says. He is believed by many to be God in Human Form, so the things he said and did would seem odd to us humans.
  • This trope dates back as far as Brother Juniper, a 13th-century friar and one of Saint Francis of Assisi's companions. According to legend, Brother Juniper was once caring for a sick man and learned that the sick man had a craving for pig's feet. So Brother Juniper found a herd of pigs, cut a foot off of one of them, and carried it back to the sick man. When the pigs' owner confronted Brother Juniper about the incident, the friar couldn't understand why anyone would object to such a charitable act. He patiently explained his reason for cutting off the pig's foot, although this only seemed to make the pig owner angrier. Finally, he hugged the pig owner, who had a change of heart and donated all his pigs to the friars. Upon receiving the donation, St. Francis praised Brother Juniper, saying, "Would to God, my brethren, that I had a forest of such Junipers!"
  • Zen calls for its followers to be this. "What is Buddha?" "Three pounds of flax."

Sequential Art

  • The Englishman Mister "Pief" (Peeve?) from a story by Wilhelm Busch who walks around while always looking through a telescope.

Tabletop Games

  • Foxbat from the Champions setting is completely convinced that he is a great, powerful comic book Super Villain.
  • Some of the Malkavians from Vampire: The Masquerade could get this way. They tended to be really scary at the same time if they're played well.
  • "Mad" Jack O'Bannon, king of Inismore, from Seventh Sea.
  • House Criamon of Ars Magica. They view the physical world as a series of metaphors and symbols and spend their entire lives trying to interpret everything around them the way literary scholars interpret novels, so getting a Criamon to express her thoughts on anything is a little bit like communicating across a language barrier via Babelfish translations.
  • Magic: The Gathering: the Ravnica block gives us the Izzet. Red/blue, it turns out, isn't quite right in the head, considering their hobbies include routing magic through the heads of goblins with an interesting variety of psychological conditions. (The goblins, that is, not the magic. Until the magic has gone through the goblin, that is.)
  • The Mystara D&D setting is home to the d'Ambreville family of wizards, who seem susceptible to an hereditary strain of this trope. As any d'Ambreville who isn't a Cloudcuckoolander is usually a freakin' trigger-happy psycho, siding with the loony ones is usually the best bet.

Theater

  • Rosencrantz from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an excellent example, though he's also more canny than he lets on. Probably. (Guildenstern also has his moments.)
    • For that matter, Hamlet himself is frequently considered to only be pretending at insanity; that he is "not in madness/ but mad in craft", i.e. not insane, but angry.
  • Harper the Valium-addicted Mormon housewife from Angels in America, who has various interesting hallucinations, several of which include her imaginary travel agent, Mr. Lies.
  • Quite a few of William Shakespeare's characters qualify.

I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog...Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so--it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog--O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so.

  • The point of a Blue Man Group show is that the Blue Men are not of this world, and frequently express amazement and surprise over such things as cell phones, watches, and eating Twinkies with utensils.

Toys


New Media


Loopy loopy loopy

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Cloudcuckoolander/Music?oldid=1215219"