I realized over the weekend that I had failed to give proper attention to this, which is a shame, considering it is not just impossible but that orv kindly went to effort to make it available on the web.
This is a video which cannot possibly exist. It cannot have been done on purpose: there is no logical way that any people would say what the world needs is someone in a Spider-Man costume leading a pack of indifferent children in horribly dull fitness exercises which the kids do exactly when one of the production assistants is threatening them off-camera, or to go into the parking lot of the Edmonton video-production facility this was clearly filmed at to spastically interact with green screens, clown mimes, nearly half as much music as the average Filmation cartoon series, and hackey sack players. (The hackey sack players are called ``footbaggers'' here, so as to make sure they haven't got the dignity level inherent to the squad of hackey sack players infesting your community college campus [1].) And yet it cannot have been done by accident, either: the chance of these elements coming together is zero, especially with Sid and Marty Krofft not making television shows anymore.
But there it is: The Spider-Man Super-Fit Video, a spastic hour of crushing youthful interest in fitness in four parts. (Part Two, and Part Three, and Part Four are linked from the original naturally, but there are the links regardless.) This is possibly the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. When my brother first brought the videotape to me I tried to take notes, so as to summarize the experience here, and I was unable to. It would keep reaching what seemed to be the terra ultima of all ridiculousness, and then, the next scene would come along.
Watch it, and try to explain the world which created it.
Trivia: The Rocky and Bullwinkle comic strip began syndication with the McClure-Bell syndicate, and moved to the New York Times syndicate before the end of its three-year run. Source: The Moose That Roared: The Story Of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, A Flying Squirrel, And A Talking Moose, Keith Scott.
Currently Reading: How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II To Hip-Hop, Dave Thompkins. This is a frustrating book: bunches of interesting stuff about the invention's creation and historically significant roles, and then bits about its music use that I don't have the context for because I recognize maybe one mentioned song in twenty. Lots of neat pictures but when you add in the chronological scattering I can't quite hold on to the narrative.
[1] Also, as Cheap Seats pointed out, ``footbagger'' is really the perfect word to use for the broadcast-TV-version of movies, where you can't use the actual F-word. ``You mother-footbagging footbaggers went footbagging with the abso-footbag-lutely wrong footbaggers'', you could say, and collapse in giggles. So the video is ridiculous on that count too.