The Internet Is a Series of Tubes
By Jim Washburn
Did you catch Oprah’s recent day devoted to YouTube? She had the two little billionaires who started it, along with some of the site’s most watched faces as her guests, from Britain’s opera-singing cell-phone salesman to the happiest dog you’ve ever seen on a skateboard. And if you’ll all look under your seats, you’ll find – that’s right – dog poop!
I watch Oprah. I watch The View. Need I say that I’m married?
YouTube has become such an ingrained daily thing in so many of our lives it’s hard to believe it’s only been around for three years. Nearly every day friends e-mail me links to new wonders and I try to do the same. They’re the new emoticons: Why tell someone you’re hung over when you can e-mail them a link to the whiskey-scented ’50s kids show Andy’s Gang that gets the mood across so much better? Lacking digital special effects, it’s impressive what they were able to accomplish solely via the magic of animal cruelty: CLICK HERE . (What are you, a stenographer? Just go to our website, www.lacitybeat.com, and click on it.)
YouTube is changing things. You plus a video camera might add up to fame or infamy. You needn’t even have anything to do with YouTube for it to affect you. My friend Jonathan Richman has never used a cell phone or computer in his life, and says he never will. But fans record his shows on their cell phone cameras, upload them on YouTube, and folks who do use computers see the clips, get interested and now have swelled Jonathan’s audiences some 30 percent. If you missed him at the Mint a couple of weeks ago, here he is: CLICK HERE.
Oprah means well, but I get the impression we don’t move in the same circles. It was nice that she brought on a couple whose Dirty Dancing wedding dance had been YouTubed, and that she had Patrick Swayze pop out and surprise them (and surprised me, too: On recent tabloid covers he looked like he’d banged his head on death’s doorjamb a few times.) But I’d rather have seen Oprah get Dick Cheney on, play this clip: CLICK HERE, and then surprise him by bringing out the remains of American servicemen.
With millions of videos to choose from, you can go from Cheney to a vicious Hillary-ized adaptation of Downfall: CLICK HERE or cleanse the palate with a couple of hookers tussling outside a 7-Eleven: CLICK HERE. With the 382,000 viewings it’s had at press time, you’d think 7-Eleven would be sponsoring these things.
I love the time machine aspect of YouTube. Just this morning my friend Diane in Omaha sent me a 1944 clip of a contortionist outfit called the Ross Sisters doing the most improbable things with their bodies while singing a song called “Solid Potato Salad.” Who needs crunking?: CLICK HERE.
What’s missing from today’s music? Most everything that’s there in this clip of James Burton doing a fuzz bass intro to Brenda Holloway singing a Zombies song: CLICK HERE
You’ll find stuff from this morning, and from 90 years ago, goofy stuff, profound stuff, stuff you never knew existed, and some that shouldn’t, but it’s all there on the human pageant that is YouTube. And sometimes you’ll meet a friendly ghost that’ll make you cry: CLICK HERE.
The Coolest Thing Ever? I dimly recall a friend telling me about a sci-fi writer whose protagonist traveled back in time just so he could slip into recording studios and remix his favorite albums to his standards. Anyone care to enlighten me on who this is? I tend to forget the names of writers whose ideas I envy so.
I’ve been thinking about it because another friend turned me on to a site full of something that isn’t supposed to be out in the world: CLICK HERE. There you’ll find posted mp3s of each separate track of four Sgt. Pepper songs, the actual out-of-the-can master tracks, that you can download and remix to your lonely heart’s content. Try it. It’s like playing God.
Published: 07/02/2008
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