Rock The Boat

WARNING: THE VIDEO THAT APPEARS BELOW CONTAINS A LOT OF (HUMOROUS) OBSCENE LANGUAGE. DON'T CLICK ON IT UNLESS YOUR BOSS HAS A GREAT SENSE OF HUMOR, YOU HAVE HEADPHONES, OR YOU'VE GOT AN OFFICE WITH A DOOR THAT CLOSES.

All right, warning out of the way. A group of young Naval officers recently produced a fairly uproarious parody of "I'm On A Boat," a sort of humor-rap video by the group The Lonely Island (original video here), which includes Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg. The video is a shot-by-shot recreation of the original, and it makes pretty witty use of Navy imagery:

To me, the video's the best, funniest recruiting ad for the Navy possible. The guys in the video are pretty amazing lip synchers, they're funny and loose, and the song turns into a defacto endorsement of Naval service. That said, it's solidly in the viral universe, it's decidedly NOT the sober advertisements a lot of the service branches uses to recruit. And over at the blog of the U.S. Naval Institute, there's a vigorous debate going on as to whether the video is appropriate.