Category Archives: sharing from YouTube

January 15, 2017 · 4:35 pm

The Nerdwriter

Evan Puschak is a genius and a masterful artist working in the medium of the video blog.  He educated himself with intentions of working in the film industry, but he has found his niche by posting on YouTube a long series of insightful, in-depth video essays on what it means to be an artist, how an artist does what he does, and even theories about how the world of art works.  And not just for the sake of movie reviews, though he does some of the best of that kind of work that I have ever seen.  He knows about painting, television, speech making, essay writing… in fact, everything it takes to be a really great essayist in the manner of  Michel de Montaigne who created the form in the 1500’s.

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Find Evan here on Twitter

Of course, I can’t make you understand the true scope of his essay-making powers without showing you some of his work.  So let me give you a heads up on some of his many wonderful creations and insights;

Here he examines the phenomenon of Trump speaking;

His insights and analysis inspire me to always dig deeper and look for the patterns that underlie the way things occur.  He is a master explainer who can connect ideas and facts together for you seamlessly.  And it is not only the art of speaking and essay-writing that he knows in depth.  He understands all sorts of art.

Here is his take on a single painting by Picasso;

Interpreting things is a matter of opinion, but he breaks down his opinions point by point and uses the evidence he is pointing out to you to help you follow how he reaches his conclusions.  He talks about 5 ways you can look at Picasso’s painting and gain a deeper understanding, not only of this one painting, but of all paintings.

I deeply love the films of Guillermo del Toro, and none more than his masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth.  It is a weird and horrifyingly wonderful fairy tale of people, politics, and surreal juxtapositions of fantasy used to cope with people and politics.  But the Nerdwriter’s analysis not only helps me understand del Toro’s creation better, it makes me love it more.

And I can’t help but notice how Evan uses his film-maker talent and understanding of film to craft videos that flawlessly weave narration, idea, video clips, and music together in a way that even Frank Capra or Alfred Hitchcock or Martin Scorsese could learn from.  Witness this from his take on Pixar’s Inside Out.

There is such a pleasing power in the art-appreciation engines of this man’s video blogs that I could go on gushing about it and linking more videos here all day long.  Believe me, I have lost whole days of work to binging on his videos.  But I have to draw the conclusions sooner rather than later.  I don’t want to waste your time reading this humble blog when you could be sending your mind soaring with these Nerdwriter videos.  So, please, explore them and tempt fate to start you on a new addiction.

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Filed under art criticism, education, humor, insight, movie review, review of music, sharing from YouTube, strange and wonderful ideas about life

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January 11, 2017 · 4:14 pm

The Sweet Part of Bittersweet

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I needed to add this after posting a double-dark downer like my last political post.  There is much to savor in life while we wait for the inevitable end.  Here’s a YouTube diamond that you need to watch to feel better about everything.  Some things even Donald Trump can’t take away from us.

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Filed under inspiration, kids, sharing from YouTube

August 8, 2016 · 3:56 pm

Happy Belated Birthday, Lucille Ball

Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri speaks to journalists as he arrives at the Imam Khomini Airport in Tehran

On Lucy’s birthday the “Scary Lucy” statue of her in her hometown of Celeron, New York was finally replaced with one that actually looks like her.

Carolyn Palmer

In this Wednesday, July 20, 2016 photo, artist Carolyn Palmer prepares to apply a cold patina to her bronze statue of Lucille Ball in Saddle River, N.J. The sculptor was chosen to create a replacement statue for one dubbed “Scary Lucy,” in the late actress Ball’s hometown. The much-maligned statue of Ball will be replaced after it drew worldwide attention as “Scary Lucy,” according to the mayor of the western New York village where the 1950s sitcom actress and comedian grew up and her life-size bronze has stood since 2009. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

On Saturday, August 6th, Lucille Ball turned 105.  While it is true that she has also been dead since 1989, we never-the-less must acknowledge the fact that this comedienne and her singular body of work have been influencing life on Earth for over a century.  Perhaps we could even use more like her.

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She has been subtly guiding my own life since the days of black-and-white television and the genre-establishing sitcom, “I Love Lucy”, where she has been advocating for a woman’s right to work and have a career of her own by making us laugh at the situation over and over until it becomes a mirth-filled, easy-to-swallow fact-of-life.  She was the first female film producer to run her own production company, Desilu Productions.  She is the producer behind such television milestones as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.  Being a child of the 60’s, raised by television almost as much as by my parents, she is a big part of who I am as a person.  To this day she still influences how I feel about things.  She is one of the primary reasons I can laugh at life’s troubles and, by laughing, overcome them.

So, I want to wish Lucy a happy 105th birthday.  And I find it amusing and ironic that “Scary Lucy”, the bronze golem of Celeron, New York, has finally been replaced on her birthday with a statue that pictures her more accurately.  We all need to see Lucy more accurately.  We all need to laugh more and love more and live better lives.  It was the “Golden Age” of television not because of the technology and the craft, but because of the essential goodness we can still get from it, that has stood the test of time for a century.

And I don’t think that I am merely looking at the whole thing through the colored lenses of my own affection for things in the past.  I think more modern and definitely younger people than I can benefit from getting to know Lucy too.  Lasting  105 years is a pretty big thing, even if you are dead when you do it.

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Filed under artists I admire, clowns, comedians, goofy thoughts, humor, review of television, sharing from YouTube, TV as literature, TV review

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May 6, 2016 · 3:53 pm

Wisdom From the Bob Ross Bible

If there is a Church of Sacred Landscapes then Bob Ross is its Jesus Christ.  That is not a sacrilegious statement of bizarre cult-mindedness.  Painting is a religion that has its tenets.  And Bob Ross explained to us the will of God on his painting show on PBS.  All the illustrations used in this post come from the Facebook page Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. All the wisdom comes from things the Master said on the show.

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Bob Ross was the prophet of the paintbrush.  He would present us with a lightly prepared canvas at the beginning of the show and then proceed on camera to take his brush and palette knife, and all his paints, and create a piece of the world before our very eyes.  And he was not Picasso or Van Gogh or even Norman Rockwell.  He was not a talented artist, but rather a very practiced one who knew all the tricks and shortcuts to sofa painting, the art of knocking out scene after scene after scene.  He could make his little piece of the world in only half an hour, and he made it obvious how we could do the same.  His work was not gallery quality… but his teachings were Jesus-worthy.1918971_1025737477472968_4026443126606690255_n

His work was natural, flowing, and realistic in the random complexity it presented.  He took standard paintbrush strokes and pallet knife tricks and made them dance across the canvas to make happy little trees.

His painting methods presented us with a philosophy of life and a method of dealing with whatever mistakes we might make.

And of course, any good religion must take into account the existence of evil.

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Bob Ross tells us that evil is necessary as a contrast to what is good and what is true.  We need the dark.  But we don’t have to embrace it.  Bob’s paintings were never about the dark bits.  He always gravitated towards the light.

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Of course, sometimes you have to beat back the darkness.  A good artist takes care of his tools.

Bob Ross admonishes us to look and to learn and love what we see.  The man radiated a calm, gentle nature that makes him a natural leader.  His simple, countrified wisdom resonates because we need calm and pastoral peace in our lives.  It is one of the main reasons mankind needs religion.

So I definitely think we ought to consider building a Bob-Rossian Church of the Sacred Landscapes.  We have our prophet.  The man has passed away, yet he is risen to paint again endlessly on YouTube.

And if you are willing to try… Bob Ross will smile upon you.

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Filed under artists I admire, artwork, humor, insight, inspiration, religion, sharing from YouTube, strange and wonderful ideas about life

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April 18, 2016 · 3:31 pm

Mr. Bean

Rowan Atkinson is a genius comedian, and the character of Mr. Bean is the greatest work he has done, the best proof of his genius.  As someone who works at humor and tries to get it right, I have to analyze and carefully study the work of the master.  How does he do it?  What does it all mean?  And what can I learn from it?

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Atkinson not only created the character, he co-wrote the entire television series and controls every aspect of the performance as the central character.  Mr. Bean is the bumbling every-man, going through horrific troubles because of the cascade effect of simple little errors.  We laugh at him because we have all been there.  Tasting the hot sauce leads to a meltdown that causes chaos and disaster for the entire store.  Overcoming fear of heights makes him the center of attention for the entire pool-house when can’t overcome the urge to use the diving board, and yet, can’t make himself jump off.  We have all lived the nightmare of being trapped naked in the hotel hallway, locked out of our room, just when the hallway becomes crowded.

There is a certain charm to Mr. Bean.  He is a childlike character, blissfully unaware of how much he doesn’t know about the complex society around him.  He has a teddy bear that sleeps with him and comforts him.  He lays out his supplies for the big exam, and he’s thought of practically everything he will possibly need, but basic physics fails him and makes the pencils keep rolling out of place.

 

Rowan Atkinson is a master of the art form because he has such tremendous control of his rubberized goofy face and manic body.  He can drive his goofy little yellow car from a sofa mounted on top.  He can change clothes while driving.  Just watching him shave with an electric razor is a total hoot.

This is a picture of Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. It is NOT a picture of me.

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It is mostly physical comedy, almost slapstick, and yet it is not the broad unfeeling poke-in-the-eye you get with the Three Stooges.  Most of the real damage is done to himself, though pompous and deserving people are often near enough to get a helping of it smack in the face.  A lot of it is practically pantomime, with hardly any real dialogue.  Much of it, like the sword fight with the bumblebee using a butter knife, is simply silly.

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The movie, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, extends the character by making him actually interact with other characters, though in his own inimitable Mr. Bean way.  The limited dialogue thing is amplified by the fact that he is traveling in France and does not speak French.  Still, he interacts with the boy he accidentally kidnaps, the girl who wants to be a movie star whom he helps in her quest by an accident at the Cannes Film Festival, and the movie director whom he almost kills but ends up saving his career with a hit home movie.

Mr. Bean makes the ridiculous an art form by helping us to laugh at ourselves as we are beset by all the little troubles of life that Bean magically floats through.

So, now I have told you why I love Rowan Atkinson as a comedian.  He is a comedic genius.  Of course, you knew that already, right?

 

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November 22, 2015 · 8:09 pm

Just In Case You Haven’t Seen It…

My sisters and I as kids loved old movie musicals with dancing in them probably as much as any genre.  This video making the rounds on Facebook is something I have seen posted and re-posted and have personally watched at least five times already.  I have shared it twice on Facebook, and it continually gets re-shared, especially by friends my age or older.  Why does something like this go viral?  Well, Bruno Mars is a popular young Michael Jackson clone with an amazing musicality that appeals to all ages.  And the video is beautifully edited so that all the dancers from old movie musicals are actually in sync and appear to be dancing to the beat.  But the game-breaker for me is the fact that the dancers are all the old stars that used to fascinate me with their dance moves on PBS back in the 1970’s when old movie musicals got played on Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday evenings.  I recognize Fred Astair, Gene Kelly, Buddy Ebsen, Donald O’Connor, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Mickey Rooney, Groucho Marx, the Ritz Brothers, and many more from the movies I loved like Anchors Away, Singing in the Rain, New York New York, and so many others I can’t even begin to name them all.  This mash-up brings back a whole lost world for me and gives me joy.  It connects the past with the energy of the present.  It gives me something to long for, to sigh for, and to fondly recall.  I want to see all those movies again.  But it wouldn’t be the same without my sisters there.

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One has to wonder if all the time we spent on entertainment during our lifetime was a lost cause or not.  I have a rich tapestry of memories of other people’s lives, gained through movies, television, and books.  But has that enhanced my life?  Or has it taken away from my life’s work?  I know work puts food on the table and makes continued life possible.  But it also has to define the value of our lives.  I have never, though, lived a moment as a teacher when something I learned from movies or a book has actually interfered with delivering instruction.  And I can name innumerable times, looking back, when being able to recall entertainment experiences led to a unique teachable moment.  Those things can actually be the most important things we teach.  And what an entertainer in any medium manages to communicate to me validates their life’s work.

This flash mob concert makes me weep for joy every time I watch it.  It makes me realize what marvelous fulfillment there is in the act of committing a work of art.  How must poor demented and deaf Beethoven be soaring in spirit to have his work take so many people by surprise like this?  It gives me chills to think about that kind of immortality even though the composer is long since dead.  He is still giving astonishing gifts to little girls who put a coin in a hat.

You don’t even have to be Beethoven-levels of famous to create moments that will live forever in the memory of the universe.  I have watched this video of street performers across the world so many times I have it memorized and can sing along.  I have shared this video so many times that I expect others to tell me, “Just stop it already!”  But they never do.  We learn the value of art by being an audience… by being consumers of art.  And it gives me hope as well for my own artistic endeavors.  Making money is not the point.  Sharing my work with others… even long after my own personal time on earth is up… is the precious thing.  I am reminded of the culmination of the long and glorious career of Charlie Chaplin.  And the movie clip that gets circulated so often now after another tragedy like the one in Paris.  I dare you to listen to this speech and not be moved… to hear it out and not learn something important.

Thank you for letting me waste your time today.  I intended to commit no further evil in the world today, than to let you share a few of the things that everybody seems to be finding beautiful and worth the effort of sharing.

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