It's baseball season, baby, and The Lonely Island is here to celebrate in the best way they know how: singing. This time, they're throwing it back to 1988, just before two of their heroes, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, aka the Bash Brothers, led the Oakland A's to World Series victory over the San Francisco Giants.
Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer play the two athletes in new Netflix special, The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience. The 30-minute special, which is now streaming, is a riff on popular visual albums like Lemonade; except, instead of Beyoncé, viewers get bad haircuts, autotune, and plenty of hilarious '80s references, like Cool Water and Drakkar Noir colognes, NordicTrack exercise machines, and high-waisted thongs. And no, nothing about this visual experience is serious — not even Netflix's press release (which has Samberg written all over it).
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"The Lonely Island, who are best known for their puerile and vulgar comedy music, have turned a new leaf with The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, embracing their inner artists and showing they have super smart brains behind their faces, eyes, and skulls," Netflix's press release reads.
But the short-shorts and silk robes are only part of what makes the bizarre special, which they've dubbed a "visual poem/love letter," noteworthy. Jenny Slate, Hannah Simone, Maya Rudolph, Jim O'Heir, Haim, and Sterling K. Brown, who lip-syncs for Sia, steal the show with their grand-slam acting performances.
In the music video for "Oakland Nights," a song all about the Bash Brothers' failed attempts at wooing women, Slate and Simone play two busy professionals who have zero interest in the guys' performance (both on the field and in the bedroom). Sia also sings on the four-minute track, crooning lines like "I'm a pro when I bone but I do it pro-bono" (yes, really), and Brown kills in a permed white-and-black wig. Plus, all of the gyrating and air humping reminds us of "3-Way (The Golden Rule)" — so you might want to turn down the volume if you're watching in public.
The second video available on YouTube is "Uniform On," a two-minute track which pays homage to The Beastie Boys and Canseco and McGwire's well-documented steroid use. No joke, the guys really sing, "Stab that need in my ass 'til I am rich / Make me a god with the chemical sciences."
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While Mark McGwire hasn't released a public statement, Jose Canseco gave the special his stamp of approval by tweeting: "@TheLonelyIsland just watched the Unauthorized Bash Brothers video! I can't stop laughing. Loved it." That's great news, since getting on Canseco's bad side can result in some awkward public feuding.
This tweet genuinely made our year. We love you. Thank you, sir! https://t.co/FEVIgDp3ML
— The Lonely Island (@thelonelyisland) May 23, 2019
While you'll never get back the 30 minutes you'll spend watching this homage to one of the wildest eras in baseball history, you'll probably get a few laughs. The Lonely Island Presents: The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience is available to stream on Netflix and Spotify and purchase on iTunes.
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