Well That’s A Pleasant Surprise…

Finding a new Twitter widget in your WordPress dashboard that you didn’t know was there is pretty cool for a Friday the 13th.

Wonder how long that thing’s been there without me noticing…

Confessions of an Aging Beach Bunny

When most people think of the beach, they think of sunny Southern California, or Florida or other Gulf Coast beaches, and the like. When I say I grew up on the beach, people sometimes raise an eyebrow in response (whether literally or through the monitor).

This is not unlike the time Prince Charming made the mistake of calling me a “country girl”. I’ve never lived more than a half a mile outside of any city limits in my life, but my insistence at the time that I was a town girl elicited guffaws and floor-rolling paroxysms of laughter, and still to this day there will be the occasional side remark - “Oh, that’s right, you’re a town girl“ – followed by the kind of barely muffled snickers and chuckles that just make you want to kick the living daylights out of someone sometimes, just because they grew up in Knoxville (oh please, Knoxville is a small town disguised as a big city) and Columbus, Ohio and think that makes one ohhhh so worldly and metropolitan, hmpfh.

But truly I did spend most of my teenage years on the beach, and it maybe wasn’t as beach-y as the beaches of Southern California and Florida and the Gulf Coast, but it was a beach, no less. I spent a fair amount of my earlier childhood just a few miles up the river, where the occasional catfish would graze my ankles (Newscoma just died reading that) while I waded around searching for shells. I spent the teenage years as a beach bum at all hours of the day and night and in all four seasons (please don’t ask me what we did down there on dark winter nights, heh) – especially summers, of course, when I spent a good bit of that time perpetually failing to ever learn how to water ski despite about a hundred people’s attempts to successfully see that I did. I blame this on the same reasons I never successfully learned to roller skate or ice skate. My ankles couldn’t deal.

But ah, the beach.

And now that I’ve been out of high school 25 years, I can own up to the fact that yes indeed, Michelle and I absolutely did skip out of school almost every day of sixth period in the 11th grade to go to the beach – because we were teacher’s aides that period anyway, which basically that was the whole plan of snagging the teacher’s aide gig that year, of course. Senior year it didn’t matter ‘cos I got out of school at 1:00 anyway – presumably for work, but I didn’t have to go to work until 5:00.

Sweet? You bet.

The State of Volunteer State Dudeblogging

I had had this rather damning post on the backburner in draft for some time where I was going to cry and whine and moan about the fact that “most” of my fave Tennessee dude bloggers that I’ve been reading for years had pretty much hung up the keyboard.

But then since I originally started that post and left it sitting in my drafts eight or ten months ago, two things have happened. First, two of the ones I was going to pout about most  – CeeElCee and FreakyWeasel – showed up again. Yay! (Well, actually FreakyWeasel never left, just nobody told me he’d relocated. I went to his old blog one day and was shocked to find him gone, and when I asked about it, everyone was all quiet about it like it was some big conspiracy so I didn’t ask again.)

And though it’s been a while now since his return, Roger also came back, which made me and a large portion of the regional blogosphere all happy and stuff.

Anyway, then there my other discovery, when I got to looking at my blogroll – I discovered less of the dude contingent had dropped out than I’d really realized, which I suppose part of the reason it seemed to be like “all” the men had quit was because so many of the ones that went MIA were just huge favorites. Still, there are loads of dudes I like to read still out there – Mike, Michael, Christian, Joe, Jack, Jackson, Kleinheider, Jon, Michael Silence, Chris, Jeffraham, Sean, Wally, Mack, Frank, Rob, and Ron (who’s not a Tennessean but we kinda adopted him), to name a few. And a few more I’ve picked up along the way, like Steve and Steve.

And then there are some that aren’t writing much lately, but still show up from time to time and I’m thankful for that – LeBlanc, Jon, Slarti, and the very much missed (and not Tweeting lately either!!) Hutchmo. I’m glad you guys are still around, I wish we’d see more of you though. And these two, too.

So I guess my originally months ago intended post about how the blogger women were kicking the men’s butts bigtime by still going at it when all the dudes had quit is unwarranted and unnecessary now.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the heck out of reading Sarcastro, Knuck, Rex, and Kerry Woo any less, even though three of the four still entertain me on Twitter regularly. (ADDED: I knew I’d forget someone here – Russ. Who also still entertains me on Twitter regularly, but still, dang it.)

If somebody misses reading you, I bet you’ve still got something to say. Sigh.

Music Education 101: Open Letter to NBC Universal

(NOTE: Not the usual case, but this post is being posted on both blogs since the series that is the subject of this post resides on both blogs…)

So, based on a glance at my Tweets on Twitter that night, I noted that I spent approximately nine hours replacing YouTube videos that have been removed since the last time I looked at my (so far) four-part Music Education 101 series of posts. If you missed that before (or just want to check them out again), all the video links except maybe one are working now, although I’ve had to replace several with “alternate” versions (some I’m not too thrilled about), but also added some extras that weren’t there before.

The series lives in my Music Education 101 category on both blogs, or here are the links:

• Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts – The Beginning
• Coming Into My Own – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts
• No Turning Back Now – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts
• Postscript – Lynnster’s Musical Education, Now In Four Posts

I can’t even begin to illustrate what a painfully tedious process it was, searching for and updating all those video links – made even worse by the fact this series is on both my blogs, since it was begun before I added the music blog, so that doubled the work. But of all the posts on either of my blogs – spanning back nearly 13 years on the main blog – those four are probably the most important to me, so whatever.

What pains me, really, is the number of them removed because so-and-so company/organization has declared their ownership/copyright. Fine.

Do these people not understand the power of YouTube these days and the potential for financial gain in a YouTube partnership? When there are everyday people uploading their own videos – be it comedy, commentary, their own music, or what amounts to the video version of a traditional blog (i.e., vlogs) – and making better money doing that than they would with the salary of many very good full time jobs – is the potential financial gain of allowing music and video to be heard and seen on YouTube completely beyond the comprehension of the music and visual media companies?

If Joe Blow next door is able to make a living wage off of YouTube these days, just think how much cash these record companies and other media companies could be raking in by putting up their own partnered YouTube channel. Some have, yes (mainly individual artists/bands though) – but not nearly enough.

There’s one case in particular that gripes me the most – some of what are undeniably the most important performances – American debut and otherwise – of many artists’ careers are their first appearances on Saturday Night Live. These are almost impossible to find – if they get uploaded, it doesn’t take long before they get pulled. Replacing some of those (like Elvis Costello’s famous show-stopping appearance from 1977) is what took me so darned long the other night, and it just irritated the crap out of me.

So here’s my open letter to NBC Universal:

Get your heads out of your collective asses and put up your own YouTube partner channel with these fantastic performances so that they’ll be back in public view where they SHOULD be, for people to enjoy these fabulous pieces of music history – instead of repeatedly blocking them and keeping them hidden from public view.

In this day and age when almost anything can be instantly viewed on the Internet in all kinds of different venues, it’s a doggoned shame that some of the finest musical performances in rock & roll history are being withheld like this. You have the potential to make far, far more profit on those clips as a YouTube partner than you likely ever will recoup in DVD or video sales.

I guess there’s a DVD or music video out there on the market already – point being, I don’t care, and they probably don’t contain the clips I want to see most anyway. How many DVDs have I bought in the past three or four years? Less than ten, and virtually all are feature films.

That said, I’m your target audience with those SNL music clips, NBC Universal – listen to me. Do the right thing and get those clips up on YouTube under your own account so those precious pieces of musical performance history are out there for the public to enjoy (and for those young musically-minded kids, like I once was myself, to learn from) – and make money off of me and everyone else who will watch, rate, and favorite those clips time and time again.

You have nothing to lose – except for the profit you’re not making by withholding them for DVD or whatever purposes, in which case you’re never likely going to profit nearly as much as you would have as a YouTube partner – and instead, the whole world is losing out by not being able to easily access and view these like you now can most anything else on YouTube. I know a big music fan – and Elvis Costello fan – in his twenties who has never even seen that priceless infamous clip. It’s a danged shame.

C’mon, NBC Universal. The solution’s so simple, and everybody wins. You line your pockets probably a lot more than you would have counting on DVD sales – and that music’s back out there where it belongs, for folks to dig. Simple.

Seeing Justice Served: Let’s Do the Right Things on BOTH Sides of the Mississippi

Here when, in a few hours, a Knoxville jury will begin deliberations on the sentence for convicted murderer, torturer, and rapist Lemaricus Davidson, I’m reminded of some rather interesting new info I came across while browsing around the ‘Net a few weeks ago regarding a very, very old case that’s still sorta in limbo to this day.

More than likely, unless you’re from around here, you probably didn’t hear about the West Memphis Three case until the documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills was first aired on HBO in 1996, a broadcast that kickstarted a wave of national attention like a snowball rolling downhill that still kinda continues to roll and grow as time goes on.

I was right here in Memphis in 1993, in my late twenties and working down in the Medical Center, and remember very well the morning I sat down at my desk and flipped open The Commercial Appeal to do my usual quick morning skim of the news to find that they had discovered the mutilated bodies of three young boys across the river in West Memphis. I was usually the last one into the office every day, as most everyone else came in before I did, so the rest of them already knew and had already talked about it, so after a couple of “Yeah, I know”s and a little small talk, I was pretty much left alone with the horror of it all the rest of the morning. Nobody really knew what to say anyway.

Then there was the shock of the arrest of three other West Memphis boys – teenagers – and nobody really knew what to think. I’d never in a million years say Memphis and the Metro Memphis area in general was a place of “innocence” – probably not ever, really – I think probably throughout history it’s always pretty much been the “harder, tougher, meaner sister” to its three other large siblings in the Volunteer State. But back then things were not quite what they are these days, we weren’t quite as overrun and (sadly) numb to crime here as now – I seem to recall it was not all that long before this incident that some official was claiming publicly that there wasn’t a gang problem in Memphis. In short, people as a whole could still get really shocked here as one big group and community. Maybe not so much now.

So as I said, nobody really knew what to think – and therefore, I think probably a whole lot of us at the time just let the media do the thinking for us. I pretty much thought they were probably guilty – these kids, these teenagers – because the local media (all outlets) pretty much said so. And they were mainly publishing what they were given, what they were told – you can’t blame them all that much, really. Especially since as time went on, things got more and more convoluted – documents went missing, potential suspects inexplicably never followed up on – that case was a great big mess, but most of us who were just occasionally following it on the TV news and in the paper weren’t all that aware of that either – how messed up it was – until much, much later.

So from 1993 to 1996, I really never once thought to question it, what I and everyone else was told. They said the teenage boys were guilty, and pretty much everything we in the general public had been exposed to up to that point in the papers, on TV – they looked pretty guilty. Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley got sent away to the penitentiary, and Damien Echols landed on Arkansas’ Death Row, and that seemed to be pretty much that.

And then Paradise Lost aired for the first time, and sometimes I wonder just how many people besides me in the Mid-South were sitting in their living rooms shaking their heads and going, “Waaaaaaait a minute…”

Mara Leveritt’s book about the case, Devil’s Knot, as well as other books and articles, just added to the mix of questions and doubts. Leveritt was one of the local media on the case in Arkansas at the time. By the time I got around to reading her book, I had seen the documentary and had read more and more convoluted stuff about the case coming out of the local media, so a lot of the things in her book weren’t a surprise or anything new, but the book certainly further outlined just how screwed up the whole case was. (Not to mention this one simple fact – how many people end up on Death Row or incarcerated for life with NO physical evidence linking them to the case?)

I’ve been blogging since February 1997 and I could be wrong, but I think today is the first time I’ve ever written anything about this case. For a long time still after the documentary aired – well, those boys from West Memphis just weren’t a real popular topic around these parts, or maybe I should say there was still a lot of intensity on both sides of opinion when it came to the West Memphis Three. I remember witnessing a debate on the subject among a group of people downtown that nearly dissolved into a fistfight, years after those kids were dead and years after the others were sent up to do time.

It’s kind of funny now, as times have changed – really now the thought of mass public hysteria about Satanism and sacrifices seems as dated to me now as ’80s Brat Pack movies and big hair and mullets. But this case hadn’t been the first in this area to get all that mass hysteria and suspicion flowing – it was one of three or four big ones all around the same time, if I recall right – it was kind of a big deal, back then. I don’t think I ever felt like I was afraid, per se, to say, “You know, this stuff is starting to sound like maybe it didn’t really go down like they told us it did in the beginning.” But still, given what is somewhat of a Southern trait and tendency to just keep your mouth shut when things are intense or inflamed – sometimes it just seems best to do just that, and I think probably a lot of folks around here did that for a lot of  years, after that documentary started putting questions in people’s heads.

And I’m sure there’s still some out there that think the boys – all grown men now – were guilty as hell and are right where they should be. But I just can’t imagine there’s a whole lot of people, other than those that were very close to the case and relatives, that didn’t start to question and wonder about it all after Paradise Lost.

Or at the very least – and this has really been my own personal feeling all along – I can’t imagine that most weren’t convinced that they deserved another trial, a fair one. That’s what I’ve said, in private company among family and close friends, all these years. Maybe they are guilty – I don’t think they are, but maybe they are – but the trial and investigation that sent them up was rather abominable, a great big giant convoluted mess. They deserved another, better, and more fair trial, at the very least. Especially since it put one of them on Death Row.

And I guess that’s one of the reasons the West Memphis Three case came to mind this week, while I’ve been closely following the trial of the ringleader in the Christian-Newsom murders in Knoxville. There’s been no big major-release documentary (yet) of this particular case like in the West Memphis one, but the Knoxville News-Sentinel put together a small one that was excellent, Death on Chipman Street, and there’s loads of video, transcripts, articles and all kinds of other stuff to be found among the Knoxville media. Between reading and viewing a lot of that, and now having watched the majority of Davidson’s trial and most of his brother’s trial -

Well, it’s rather stunning when you compare the two cases, the two trials. I’m sure they’ve had their fair share of problems up in Knox County with that whole thing, but just comparing them on the surface, from the point of view of the general public, a bystander looking on – that Knoxville case is running like this fantastically organized, well-oiled machine in comparison to the disorganized and dysfunctional mess that investigation and trial in the West Memphis case was years ago.

What kind of nudged my interest into seeing what was new with the WM3 case recently was a sort of accidental discovery of something I wasn’t really looking for at the time. If you watched Paradise Lost and/or the sequel, no doubt you remember John Mark Byers, stepfather of one of the victims, the “crazy wild man” from the documentary who was once himself a prominent suspect in the case, even after the West Memphis Three were convicted. His enormously angry and enraged presence fairly dominated both films, especially the first one. A great big and imposing guy, he repeatedly and very loudly and vehemently called for the deaths of the accused. His rage was so visibly huge, you didn’t have to use your imagination much to figure what would happen if he could get his hands on any of the three, and get away with it.

When I rather accidentally came across this site and this blog a month or so ago and learned that even Mark Byers – of all people!!!! – now thinks that Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were convicted by mistake and should be set free or at least get another and more fair trial, I was just blown away. Who would have ever, ever thought that this man, who ranted and raved on camera at great length and in very great detail about his hatred for the three convicted and the horrendous ends he wished upon that time, would do a complete, 100% turnaround and now be in support of seeing them freed?!?!?!

That’s when I knew the doubt that had been nagging at me in the back of my head ever since the documentary aired in 1996 was there for a reason and rightfully so.

I should pause here and add that I mean no disrespect to Mark Byers here by bringing up his past behavior. Quite the opposite, in fact. At the time, way back when, I felt so sorry and such sympathy for all of the parents, including Byers, but anyone who saw the documentaries witnessed how over the top he was at the time; and then when there were several turns of events that pointed the finger in his direction over possible guilt, I thought that was credible at the time (and one of my relatives was convinced upon seeing the first film that Byers did it, not the teenagers). The fact that he’s made it through many difficult years and hurdles, mostly all the while with thousands of people suspicious of his own innocence in the case, and not only past all the rage towards the convicted but this 100% turnaround supporting them in their quest for a new trial – sheesh, my respect for Byers has increased immensely.

In any case, so many lives have been lost needlessly here. Stevie Branch, Chris Byers, and Michael Moore – the “real” West Memphis Three – should have never had to die as they did. They should be young men in their mid-twenties now, but nothing’s ever going to bring them back and they are forever eight years old. Melissa Byers has passed away since, never knowing (if I’m not incorrect here) that new information was going to surface that would point guilt in a completely other direction from the three convicted in the deaths of her son and his friends.

And then you have Damien, Jason, and Jessie – now all in their thirties – locked up over 16 years now with 16 years of their lives gone for all practical purposes. And Damien’s physical life hanging in the balance on Death Row.

Here in a few hours, we in Tennessee are going to find out what’s going to happen to Lemaricus Davidson, whether it’s life with parole possible (51 years minimum due to his convictions, so it might as well be life without parole, really), life without parole, or death. I don’t really think, especially after this week, that there are any lingering doubts or questions in anyone’s mind that the right person’s been convicted in this case. People may continue to argue the outcome of today’s (hopefully it will be today) sentencing, but the Christian and Newsom families feel justice has been served, and one way or the other – one of those three ways – Davidson will be off the streets forever, whether totally or theoretically.

I’m okay with that. I’m all for it, really.

But the West Memphis Three case – there’s too much doubt and too many questions in this other one, here to the west. Not only that, but new doubts and new questions – and new evidence – that have yet to be followed up on fully and followed through. If Damien, Jason, and Jessie were to win their freedom with a new trial – or if the new leads and evidence don’t out the real killer or killers – that would mean the killer’s still out there. I’m not really okay with that – who would be?

And you know, even still – maybe they did do it, the teenagers, when they were teenagers. Sure, I don’t think so, obviously, but that possibility is still out there.

But I think we should find out. And do it right this time. Give those men a fair trial this time – one that’s not an unholy mess and circus of disorganization and dysfunction and mishaps that get pushed aside just for the sake of convicting somebody - and go from there. Wrap up this case for once and for all, as cleanly as the Knox County folks just did with theirs this week, and see what the outcome is this time.

What a horrific mistake it would be to execute the wrong man for this awful, horrible, tragic and terrible crime. It would be equally awful and horrible and tragic and terrible as the little boys’ murders themselves, as would letting two other men sit there for the rest of their lives if they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s already been almost 17 years, almost 14 of which have now been shrouded in an incredible amount of doubt and unanswered questions.

Without another trial, and a fair and better one this time – or without seeking out the answers to the questions all the new evidence has brought up – if Damien Echols is put to death without any of that happening, none of us may ever find out in our lifetimes here on earth whether the wrong person was executed or not.

I’m not okay with that. We might all be dead and gone eventually without ever knowing the truth, if that happens.

But that doesn’t make it all right to just go ahead and do it right now. I’m not okay with that at all.

(I’m posting this without proofreading it, but then again this post has been simmering in the back of my head for about a decade now, so hopefully I got it sorta right.)

Temporarily Seeing Red

I’ve changed the color theme of my blogs and the sidebar of my Twitter profile this week to red in support of the families of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom, who were brutally tortured and murdered in Knoxville in January 2007. The trial of ringleader Lemaricus Davidson is going on this week in Knox County, Tennessee. Davidson was convicted by a jury on Wednesday of 35 of 38 counts, including several counts of felony first degree murder (and convicted guilty of facilitation on the three other counts).

The penalty phase of the trial is ongoing today and I expect sentencing will come tomorrow (on Friday).

Davidson is known to hate the color red, and the families and other supporters in court this week have worn red in the courtroom this week. Hundreds of followers on Twitter following the trial thanks to Tweeting Knoxville media folks have changed their sidebars to red in support; I’ve done this and taken it one step further on both blogs today.

For more information on this terrible case:

Knoxville News-Sentinel’s continuing coverage of the Christian-Newsom murders

WBIR.com – live trial coverage when court is in session

You can also follow the trial goings-on up to the minute on Twitter:

Twitter: #cntrial

Ask Swifty: HACKED

Remember the other day when I told you guys about a couple of really hilarious YouTubers you should all be checking out and subscribing to? SwiftKarateChop’s latest episode of “Ask Swifty” features a whole bunch of some of the funniest of the YouTube bunch, so check it out, this one is great:

Also just a reminder to please (if you don’t mind) change any bookmarks and blog links to the Zone to the default WordPress URL of http://thelynnsterzone.wordpress.com/ (and for the music blog, http://lynnstersmusiczone.wordpress.com) – I think the feeds are pointing correctly (but if you’re not finding my new posts in your feed reader, please let me know so I can see what’s up with the feed). I really don’t know when I’m going to be able to get this situation resolved with my domain host and get thelynnsterzone.com pointing back here (donations welcome, LOL) but you can always find me at the default URL anyway. Thanks!

Stuff You Just Wish You Could Take Back Sometimes

I’m sure there’s lots (LOTS) more than just this one, but I was thinking the other day about an unfortunate and awkward incident that’s been bugging me for a few years now, among the many other things I wish I could just hit a “restart” button on sometimes.

Prince Charming (the boyfriend) and I have this acquaintance who is a musician in a VERY famous band. In all actuality, I am only acquainted with this person via e-mail (as in the unfortunate and awkward incident mentioned above), but these two used to be very good friends. They grew up in the same neighborhood, went to school together, hung out in the same bunch as teenagers – etc. As time went on and as people do, they fell out of touch, though PC would sometimes hear stuff about his friend through the grapevine, as it were. Well, that and the fact you can pick up pretty much any music magazine or website and there’s this person – the band’s been around a long time at this point, but still hugely, hugely popular.

About, oh, I don’t know, six or so years ago when PC was going through a tough spell, I took it upon myself to get in touch with this person, with no other intention other than hoping maybe this person would be willing to send along a surprise postcard or something like that to PC – at that point, anything that might be a cheerer-upper of sorts. Things were pretty bleak and grim and I was just really grasping at straws for anything that might help and pull PC out of that depression a little.

The personal e-mail address for this person had just kinda landed in my lap, so I just thought I’d give it a shot. Since I’ve been acquainted over my years bumming around the music scene with various folks both famous and semi-famous, I knew how probably most contact from unknown people often comes across and didn’t really want to, you know, come across like some crazed fan – which I’m not really of this band anyway, I like ‘em just fine but they’re not one of my big favorites – I think I might have told this person that to begin with (heh), just for the sake of not appearing like some lunatic.

And the response was perfectly pleasant in the beginning. This person was, like, “hey, good to hear from you, what’s going on with (PC), if there’s something I can do to help, just let me know”.  So I did. Even though PC’s folks had moved out of the neighborhood where they all grew up and down the road a little ways, this person’s mom had remained friendly with PC’s mom, they’d run into each other at the grocery and such lots of times over the years, yada yada yada, so I knew this person wasn’t completely oblivious to some of the struggles there’d been over the years for PC, so I was pretty upfront about it all and was just like, you know, “any little thing, even just a postcard or something would be a big pick-me-up here”, and thanked this person, and left it at that.

Then nothing. I know people get busy, I know people mean to do something or other and then time just passes and passes and they never get around to doing whatever it is – I’m one of the world’s worst when it comes to things like that – but it was something small that would have meant so much at the time, and it just bugged me, still does. I didn’t tell PC what I’d done for about three years, and when I finally did, he wasn’t really bothered about the fact that this person had never responded past the first time, said I was sweet to have done what I did but to not let it bother me that there’d been no further response.

But it still does – bug me, that is. And maybe dude just got busy and forgot about it, or maybe I did come off looking like some crazed lunatic after all. I dunno.

Thing is I know one of these days, we’ll run into this person somewhere or another, and I’m sure it will be fine and all that. And PC will introduce us and I just hope dude doesn’t say something like, “Oh… YOU’RE the one who…”, ‘cos then I’ll have to bite my tongue to keep from saying “Yeah, and YOU never…”

Or maybe I’ll just say, “Yeah. Yep, I did,” and leave it at that. I just wish I had never done or said anything in the first place. How awkward.

And in truth, he probably had good intentions at the time and just forgot, but that one stupid moment really just broke my heart a little and shook up my faith in humanity a bit.

Who Needs TV When You Have YouTube?

Some probably recall that I deep-sixed cable TV a few years ago. It wasn’t for financial reasons at the time, really, since I was still working a traditional job at the time with a steady paycheck; it was just simply because I was hardly watching any TV at all – cable or network – and most of what I did watch was available to watch online, albeit often a few hours or days after the initial broadcast, but I could always catch up. I just couldn’t justify paying what had grown to nearly $100 a month anymore when I never watched it, and even downgrading to a lesser package was still an expense I couldn’t justify, as little as I watched. Plus I had a Netflix account, so movie and even series watching was just more convenient that way anyway, for the most part.

So I cut cable and pretty much stopped watching TV, and haven’t regretted it since except for once, and that was Internet-related, not TV-related. When I got to the point where I’d just about had it with my increasing frustrations with AT&T and was fed up and thought about switching to Comcast, I discovered that even though it hadn’t been all that long since I’d turned off cable, I wasn’t eligible for the self-installation and Comcast was insisting on sending someone out to install it AND charge me an installation fee, so there went that idea out the window.

So anyway, yeah, I don’t watch TV. Really I don’t even watch TV online anymore, except occasionally. Time that would have in the now-distant past been spent watching some TV, like when I remember to eat dinner every two or three days (yep, I still forget to eat all the time) – instead I read blogs, or (more and more recently) look for interesting stuff on YouTube.

That in itself has its pros and cons. The best part is I have found some really amazing, fun stuff on YouTube in the past year or so. Some really funny, brilliant stuff.

The other side of the coin is that once you start watching one thing, it inevitably leads to a dozen more videos or a dozen other YouTube peeps. This is especially true if you’re a music junkie – you could easily get stuck there for DAYS – but also true of a lot of the comedy/sketch performers, and also just the plain old personal “vloggers” there are these days on the site.

The funny/comedy stuff is really, really great though, and while a lot of it is still pretty raw and rough (which is not a bad thing in itself by any means), a good bit of it’s very nicely professionally done these days as well. For me, the more immature and juvenile the humor, the better, since my sense of humor is pretty twisted and about on the level of a 12 year old boy (LOL), but there’s plenty of more sophisticated fare to be found on YouTube as well.

YouTube humor is cool in the way once upon a time way back in the dark ages, Saturday Night Live (which I haven’t really laughed at in 13 or 14 years) and Fridays (remember Fridays??) used to be cool. Or Fox in the early days, especially when Fox only broadcast a couple of nights a week (jeez, I’m old), and back when Sunday nights meant The Simpsons, Married With Children, In Living Color, and all the other hilarious shows that came and went. Sunday nights on Fox used to be the best.

I like a whole lot of different YouTubers, but the two that make me laugh the most are Matt Brown, better known as SwiftKarateChop, and Shane Dawson of ShaneDawsonTV. Both have become extremely popular on the Internet thanks to YouTube and appear to have a pretty broad following, heavy on the teenage fan side (especially girls), but many others too.

Shane (Twitter bio: “That guy from YouTube that wears his mom’s clothes…”) is an aspiring actor/comic from L.A. and is currently YouTube’s fifth most subscribed, and has a larger Twitter following than most of the verified celebs on Twitter. His YouTube channel is a mix of sketch comedy and personal commentary/vlogging. Just a really talented kid. (Following video NSFW):

Swifty is my favorite, though – (AskSwifty Twitter bio: “I talk funny”) – and I’ve spent countless hours cracking up over his videos. Fellow Nashville/Memphis/Knoxville/Tennessee/etc. bloggers will probably identify a good bit with Matt, who’s a neighbor just across the state line in North Alabama, and is just insanely hilarious and twisted, but in a really good and fun way. Between his commentary vids & collaborations with his friend and fellow Alabamian and YouTuber ChanceXplosion and Matt’s “Ask Swifty” series, I’ve just laughed until my sides ache. (Following video is most definitely NSFW):

So be sure to check out Matt’s & Shane’s YouTube channels, there’s hours and hours of hilarity there to take up all your spare time. They both also have alternate channels you can find linked from their main channels with a bit more personal vlogging-type stuff, and in Shane’s case, some pretty hilarious outtakes and bloopers.

And honestly, if they’re not your style and don’t make you laugh, both have several links to other friends and colleagues among the YouTube set that are equally funny as well and fun to watch. There’s definitely something for everyone around the YouTube humor set.

One thing that occurred to me recently, after having watched videos from those two and many other popular YouTubers for a while, is how awesome it is that all this stuff’s doable and available nowadays – but on the other hand, I’m kind of sorry this medium wasn’t around 20 or 25 years ago or so – just like I wish I’d had the kind of computer access kids do now for high school and college. We had a computer in my home, which not many did at the time, but we mostly used it to play games (heh) and not much else.

I was particularly thinking of my friend Travis Harmon of The Travis and Jonathan Show and Red State Update, who went to school with my ex and we ran around in the same crew in Middle Tennessee in my early college days. I glance now over at my bookshelf and see a VHS tape made back in 1986 and 1987 that I’ve had nearly as long, a copy of one of the first video ventures Travis filmed back starting when he was still in high school. It’s raw and rough and absolutely, utterly hilarious, and I think wow, what things might have been like had YouTube been around back then. I have another old acquaintance who did a lot of early video humor with his friends from college days and beyond – same thing for them. If YouTube had been around in the ’80s and early ’90s, what a big difference that would have made for many.

Certainly Travis has had some nice success in his career, but it’s been a long time coming and he’s worked hard for it. If he’d been able to start out on YouTube like guys like Matt and Shane are doing nowadays, that probably would have shaved several years off his work towards success. Consequently, Travis and Jonathan have a pretty nice following on YouTube now, of course.

And I hope many of these YouTubers see some great success out of their efforts – many are getting a pretty fair amount of attention just by their YouTube activity, but many of them deserve a lot more attention than they’re getting now. So go give ‘em some, subscribe to their channels, and try not to crack a rib laughing.

Faking It Like It’s Real

Sometimes I forget that not everyone who stops by here is in the mix with the Nashville blogging crew (and by Nashville I actually mean mostly Nashville but some Memphis and some Knoxville and lots of other parts of Tennessee and also some non-Tennessee cities like Louisville and well, you get the idea). I probably should have posted this closer to the beginning of the month but ah well, it’s still early October.

Over at Tiny Cat Pants, Aunt B. created this really super cool little project for October that you should go check out. She’s posting one ghost story a day, every day in October.

The thing is – they’re all fake. But the other thing is, they’re all based around facts and known legends in Nashville, Davidson County, Middle Tennessee in general.

She has just done an absolutely outstanding job weaving together these legends and historical facts in with spooky hooey – so much so that I keep forgetting the stories aren’t real.

A fine time’s to be had this haunted season over there, so go check ‘em out every day, there’s a new one up every evening. They’re easy to spot among the rest of the blog posts because there’s a nifty interactive map on each one, and they’re numbered. (But heck, read the rest of the blog while you’re there, too – that’s one I read religiously daily).

I can’t decide which one’s my favorite so far – this one or this one – but I’m sure that’s going to change again as the month progresses.