A Green Screen You Can Believe In

Like Stuff White People Like, Things Younger than McCain is a simple, ongoing, whimsical list of exactly what the name implies: things (ideas, theories, inventions, people, places, etc.) younger than the August 29, 1936-born Arizona senator and Republican Presidential hopeful, John McCain.

Ageism aside it’s a fun site, a silly lens though which to look back on the past 71 years that focuses on random snippets of info you’d otherwise only hear on trivia night. My favorites are zip code, nachos, and penicillin, though Chroma Key should also be added to the list.

It’s a film editing technique first used on Thief of Bagdad in 1940, which mixes two images together by replacing a color in one image with something else. McCain made the gaffe of delivering an enervating speech in front of what I’m sure aides thought was an eco-friendly backdrop, but turned out to be the perfect Green Screen, making it easy for Photoshop- savvy viewers to swap out his “A Leader We Can Believe In” banner for things

Stephen Colbert smelled blood in the water. Following the success of his first Green Screen Challenge – where he solicited fans to submit special effected versions of his Star Wars Kid impression – the tyrannic leader of Colbert Nation asked his rabid following if it was possible to Make McCain Exciting. His people answered.

A few dozen submissions have been uploaded over the past two weeks. There’s the obvious Imperial March theme, the Aaron Carter flashback, and the homemade roller coaster footage that are all easy to like, but the Cavewoman Cat Fight is the most awesome. Like Things Younger than McCain, its sudden, unpredictable, and gives you insight into what life was like when McCain was a kid. Zing!