The first mobile call was made 40 years ago today, on a device based on the communicators used in the original "Star Trek," and the iPad was apparently introduced in 2001: A Space Odyssey, released 45 years ago this week. It's a good thing that show business invented the future for us so long ago, because god knows we can't come up with anything on our own.
Finally, one of the millions of video-equipped smart phones in Brooklyn have caught an unidentified flying object hovering over some of the world's priciest real estate. Why do the alien monsters want to live where everyone else wants to live?
It is not a coincidence that similar formations of eerie lights are also being seen (and video recorded) over the Mission District in San Francisco. And there's video of that, too.
After reading the New Yorker piece on YouTube's plans for channelization (is that a word? Sure), I was worried about the big leg up that all the big boys were getting in the "YouTube Original Channels." YouTube started acting as a producer and a promoter for 100 or so companies, and it seemed like the dreary end of the Internet—that GoogleTube's ambitions were, essentially, "to bridge Silicon Valley and Hollywood." Just what we needed: low-end NBC sitcoms on YouTube. (And a skateboard channel from Tony Hawk! And four channels from HuffPo/Buzzfeed's Ken Lerer and pals.) So here's a slightly misguided and delightfully premature look at how some [...]
Oh, it's been a while since we last checked in on America's Zero Tolerance For Violence and Bullying Public Schools. I would say they are pretty much still hotbeds of people beating each other up and other people filming them on their phones.
"When is it going to be enough stuff? When are we going to have enough?" -Vancouver hairdresser and "haul video" star Teresa Ulrich, one of the women profiled in Tricia Romano's look at the economics behind the improbably popular clips that detail recent shopping binges and other fashion acquisitions by young women all over the globe. You may not be surprised to learn that some of the featured companies sweeten the pot of "free stuff" with cash donations, some of which are under the table! Which would seem to make the answer to Ms. Ulrich's question "never, or at least until the marketing budgets of every company in the [...]
"In a child's hands, YouTube is like a long hallway, with doors leading to ever stranger and more inexplicable places. You click on a Wiggles video, you find a link to a homemade video of an animated dinosaur lighting his own farts, which leads you to a link to a crude drawing of a volcanic ass, which leads you to news footage of Mount St. Helen's blowing up, which leads you to a clip of Helen Keller in 'The Miracle Worker' dubbed in Korean. It's like Six Degrees Of Fuckedupness."
In the nights before the promised Mayan Apocalypse, mysterious configurations of bright lights hovered over Brooklyn and San Francisco's Mission District. The first commenter here made the reasonable assumption that it was all some kind of viral marketing aimed at overpaid young urbanites.
But the product of such clever, vague and expensive advertising has yet to appear. And the silent, terrifying craft are now being seen over far less desirable urban areas including Detroit, Indianapolis and the Gulf Coast of Florida. What could it mean? Is Detroit poised for a comeback? And why are they also appearing in Poughkeepsie?
The serial grifter behind the notorious anti-Islam YouTube video The Innocence of Muslims goes to court today in Los Angeles. Mark Basseley Youssef, which is kind of a Muslim-sounding name, is accused of violating his parole for something or other. (Inciting global riots that led to many deaths, including the death of a brave U.S. ambassador in Libya? No, not for that.) Anyway, you will be surprised not at all to learn that this sketchy character looks exactly like you'd expect! (A serious role for Danny DeVito, perhaps, to constructively use the anger from his marriage troubles?) The same courtroom artist also did some amazing portraits of [...]
I would say that the Denny's Brawl Video just beginning to make the rounds is rather a 6 on the scale of the genre, where the 63 Wall Street Fight is a 4 and the Pedicab-Taxi Street Fight is a 5.5, the Muni Fight is an 8, and the Tranny Taco Brawl is a 9. (The Gay Hipster Fight is a 9.8.) Who's inured to violence thanks to the Internet? Who is?
Look, the fact is that you're going to see this video somewhere in the next day or so, so it may as well be here. I'm not sure what gay hipster fight, "filmed outside of a club called rhondas at el cid in los angeles (silverlake) around 4am," says about the ever-expanding nature of the YouTube fight video genre, but I would like to point out that the comment, "I used to have this fight on vinyl," represents YouTube fight video criticism at its most elegant and succinct. Please enjoy. Or recoil, that's also an option.
"I am really glad that digital video cameras and file sharing didn't exist in 1985."
Like everybody else, this was my initial reaction the first time I watched the Star Wars Kid video, those 108 cringe-worthy seconds of 14-year-old Canadian student Ghyslain Raza wielding a golf ball retriever as though it were a double-sided lightsaber, which gets my unsolicited vote as the definitive pop-culture moment of the 2000s.
Will YouTube ruin British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's chances of remaining in office for another term? Well, it'll either be YouTube or the fact that there's a worldwide economic crisis going on and the incompetent Brown has shown no ability to connect with an electorate that is growing increasingly tired of the Labour party's 11+ years in power. One or the other.
Zooey Deschanel, when she was blonde and kind of snarly! Will Ferrell in barely controlled hyper-idiotic hilarity. Bob Newhart! Christmas in New York City. An inexplicable subplot involving an independent publishing house specializing in children's board books. This movie has everything good about the holidays. A little entertainment enhancement goes a long way, too.
• ahhh 1968..the 'good innocent part' I was 10 years old, and when me and my friends heard it for the first time, we cried…her going 'away' meant she was dying
• I loved this song when ot firtlst came out. I've lovedbit ever since. I could never list er n to it WI Rt hout balling befote it was half through. Apparently I still cant. thank you
• the first time i heard this song, my cat had just died and it came on the tv and just shook me. i love this song. i cry everytime
On May 29, 2008, summmer138 joined YouTube. Now she has 593 YouTube subscribers. Her real name is Monica, she lives in Denver, and she grew up in Dillingham, Alaska, which she refers to as "DillingHOLE," population roughly 2,500. She is 22 years old, a high-school graduate with a bit of college education, and a fan of "True Blood," in both book and television form. Her only love is filming and editing videos, which she does through her production company, depRAVEd wONderland productions. I have no reason to believe that her production company involves anything more than-until recently-a video camera, laptop computer, and pink-themed YouTube account with a black-and-white [...]
