Weekly World News

Weekly World News is a tabloid newspaper that you often find near the checkout stand at a supermarket. The headline usually has some doctored picture and a headline written in all caps with an exclamation point to show how amazing it is. And, for the most part, all the stories are fake. I say for the most part because I can't be 100% sure they've never run something truthful.

But regardless of that we have the 1996 "news show" featuring famed newsman Edwin Newman as the host showing you stories that have appeared in the pages of the tabloid.

The whole thing is a set up from the start and they're playing it tongue in cheek. Edwin brings the gravitas to it, reading each news article and commenting on it in that newscaster way of his. And this would be inter cut with interviews and videos of the amazing people in the story.

Like in one there was a ballerina who supposedly could defy gravity and said there was an angel named "Paloma" that would support her as she leaped through the air. And they demonstrated this showing she could. That is if you ignored the slight jump in the frame when they photoshopped her "floating". Or when they had the infamous "Bat Boy" which was obviously a baby in a rubber mask. Or a man who had caught a computer virus and now was constantly speaking in binary and trying to call long distance which is what some viruses used to do.

They couldn't keep it up because honestly it was just too silly to continue.

I really liked this show because frankly it was so weird. Like the newspaper it is obviously farce, but done with a straight face. Let's see we saw footage of bat boy who obviously was an infant with a rubber mask on em. There were many other things that I don't recall offhand but I will describe a really funny one. On one episode kids return home to visit Ma and Pa and find that they and the whole town are gone. The swings are still swinging on the swing set. The coffee is still being made and all the daughter can do is walk around the house going "maaaaaaa". It was really hysterical though it doesn't sound all the funny unless you had seen it. I was really mad that it was taken off so fast, but since nobody else seems to remember it, I will.