The Joy of YouTube

(From the Janesville Messenger, 11-19-06)
(Please forgive me for being too lazy to create hyperlinks to the clips listed in the article.)


A great thing about America is that we can never find enough ways to enjoyably waste time. I now find myself completely hooked on the latest, an Internet site called YouTube.com.

For the uninitiated, YouTube is a site devoted to video sharing. You or I can post our homemade films on the site for the entire world to see, in hopes of garnering 15 minutes of fame.

Sounds like a simple idea, right? That simple idea has exploded in popularity, attracting millions every day to view the over 100 million videos on the site. And its two young creators recently sold that simple idea to Google for $1.65 billion. Not a bad return on investment, considering that the site was launched last year.

Its popularity is partly due to the fact that what started as a way for people to share their home videos has turned into a warehouse of pop culture.

For example, YouTube is a bonanza for music lovers. People have posted all the classic music videos I loved from the early days of MTV but hadn’t seen in 20 years. My kids now know who Huey Lewis and the News, Devo, the Talking Heads and the B-52’s are. They’ve also become big fans of Weird Al Yankovic’s parodies. Like classic jazz instead of the ‘80s? Here’s a video clip of Miles Davis and John Coltrane performing together in 1958.

But it’s not just about music. Betty Boop’s very first cartoon from 1930, when she was drawn with dog ears? It’s there. A clip of Brett Favre’s playoff-winning touchdown pass to Sterling Sharpe in 1994? Ditto. YouTube is also the place to see the infamous Bill Clinton interview with Chris Wallace, or Stephen Colbert’s hysterical roast of President Bush.

Many of the homemade videos are worth watching as well. Their quality ranges from someone pointing a camcorder at himself to professional-looking studio productions, like a hilarious re-cutting of the trailer to the Jack Nicholson movie, “The Shining,” making this horror classic appear to be a warm family drama. Another creative clip features TV broadcast audio from the Boston Red Sox’s infamous loss to the New York Mets in the 1986 World Series, while the accompanying video is a reenactment of the action on a vintage 1980’s Nintendo video baseball game.

YouTube is also the place where I first saw what happens when you drop a roll of Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke. Try this at home, kids....outside.

Alas, many of the videos I enjoyed watching were posted in violation of copyright laws. Since the sale to Google, scores of these have been removed.

But while I still can, I’ll celebrate Thanksgiving by watching the classic “Turkey Drop” episode from “WKRP In Cincinnati.” I love this site.