This blog has really just become a back-up for my main blog. Not much happens here - all the action is at http://angryaussie.wordpress.com - - Mr Angry:
Finding something to be angry about every day of the year.
I believe that Melbourne cemented its place as the YouTube capital of Australia this weekend. Popular American YouTuber Davedays is visiting Australia and did a public meet and greet of fans along with some popular local YouTubers. How popular is he? Over 1.3 million subscribers, #12 most subscribed of all time and currently #1 musician worldwide on YouTube and his videos have been viewed over 245 million times in total. THAT popular.
The get together was organised by Daves friend Kimmi who didn't think it would be such a big deal. They organised a similar event in Los Angeles and about 50 people came along. See for yourself what a big deal Melbourne made of the event:
Old Spice meme is Old. We have Young Spice. Allow me to explain.
I do a lot of my video development with my friend Adrian Calear who is very well know in Melbourne comedy circles as both a performer and director. Adrian and I recently met Michael (the young man in the video below) at a mini-gathering in Melbourne. He was here getting some treatment to make sure his body doesn't reject a bone marrow transplant which was itself treatment for a second round of blood cancer. Which is clearly shit-heaps fun.
And yes, I said second round of blood cancer. Michael has previously been treated successfully for leukaemia. So we figured he should have some fun while he's here. We worked on a few ideas and techniques then shot this video. I think he's done a damn fine job for his first time on camera.
After we watched the video, we realised the fact we had used a blue sheet as the backdrop meant we could have some fun with chroma-keying (AKA BlueScreening) and so started messing around. Then we remembered we had a friend who has quite a good studio set up with a green screen so we've come up with a collaboration project that we'll be unveiling soon.
In the eternal quest for internet domination I got together with a few friends to try and come up with a song. Not just any song, mind you. Given the viral nature of cat videos and how songs are always popular we decided to come up with a song for Mistress M's cat, Boo. Here's the result:
There are some very good singers at work here but we may still have a little work to do. And in response to some recurring comments on YouTube, I feel compelled to point out that there was no alcohol or drug consumption involved in the making of this video.
Not that I have anything against that sort of consumption, it's more a case of being surprised that there is a subset of people who seem unable to understand that creativity, fun and/or any behaviour slightly left of centre does not necessarily involve imbibing substances.
And if you liked that video, here is the whole improvisation session, unedited:
I'll be donating the money I earn from the YouTube partner program for the next week so share this video around and you'll also be helping! The more people who know about this, the more we can help.
And regarding the Melbourne YouTube gathering, here is the video from Kimmi:
In short, When: Saturday, January 22nd 2011 Where: Federation Square meet in front of the Giant Screen/Stage. Time: 12pm - 3pm (hopefully it's not too hot!!)
I know this was a little late but I didn't get this on video in time to make it a Christmas video.
Just before Christmas, we adopted a new kitten from the Lort Smith Animal Hospital in Melbourne. Shadow has well and truly made herself at home in our house and it turns out she really likes Christmas trees. As in, really likes to destroy them. Oh well, it was time to take it down anyway.
I don't do new year's resolutions - never have. This is a resolution for other people. I'm allowed to do that - declare resolutions that other people need to follow. It's one of my official powers.
This is a video for sharing with those in need - namely if there's someone you think is being a dick, send them this and they might mend their ways. We can always hope.
The music at the start and end of this video are two different pieces of theme music created for me by YouTubers. That's right, I need more than one theme tune. Deal with it.
For my last video of 2010 I decided to inaugurate the TFU Awards, the first annual awards recognising the most totally fucked up of all the stories I noted for Totally Fucked Up Friday. It certainly wasn't an easy task but I gave awards in four categories:
One of my favourite things that have come out of creating the "Angry Aussie" character is the contributions fans of my work have made. From people who have collaborated in videos to people who have created music especially for me (notably NSG, Vortex and Blordough) to people who have created artworks, I've been continually surprised and delighted by people's contributions. Not least because I've never asked people to do these things for me; they felt inspired to do it themselves.
I am always blown away by the work DrakeMagnum does for me (it features on the backrops I use for videos and several t-shirts) and he's just done this piece which makes for an awesome commemoration of the recent visit to Australia by my friend Cory AKA Mr Safety of SMP Films.
This piece is inspired by this video shot in Adelaide:
And just because I like theme, here are a few more DrakeMagnum designs:
In many and indeed most cultures, the killing or assassination of enemies is sanctioned and sometimes even encouraged in their warrior traditions.
For example, the Bushido holds that the warrior is as a cherry blossom - brief and beautiful and doomed. Comparable to the beliefs of the Amerindians whose mantra of "Today is a good day to die" propelled the warrior into a state of selfless focus and allowed him to kill guiltlessly without fear of death.
Consider the desert assassins from Arabia and Africa - their technique was to become the wind and the sand, assuming an elemental aspect similar to the Shaolin monks whose reverence for life is suspended while they were a force of nature.
Of course, in a lot of cases, such as the Incas and Aztecs, killing became ordained. Made holy by sacrifice and sacred duty. As with the chivalric knights Templar, a vigil or prayer and fasting is observed before the killing, making it a de facto church execution thus guaranteeing absolution from sin.
Thinking I could make a living by making online content, specifically YouTube videos, was not a terrible idea. I may have jumped the gun with giving up a regular day job as the revenue growth from YouTube has so far been less than stellar. Good, but not enough to support me full time. So I'll probably have to go back to a day job after Christmas.
That's a real middle class white man's problem, isn't it? Complaining that I might have to work for a living like everyone else. Ignoring the huge number of people who don't even have that as an option, who face a real struggle when they look for employment.
But that's my problem so sod it.
And I'm a little more frustrated than usual because of system failures tonight. Sat down to edit a video and the software keeps crashing before I can start. Windows does this shit. This problem usually happens straight after a Windows "update" but the glitch usually works itself out after a few restarts. Or in a day or so.
It's kind of tragic that in this modern age one of the most common technical fixes is still "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" So until that works, no new videos. In lieu of a video, here's a photo:
I thought I'd see how many Three Letter Acronyms I could squeeze into the title. For my Weekly TFU (Totally Fucked Up) Friday video, the central story I commented on was the new invasive "security" procedures being put in place at airports in the USA by the TSA. There are many reasons this is TFU - itdoesn't work, it's being abused and there are much less invasive options that would work better.
What interests me is that the TSA may have finally pushed things too far. All of their bullshit procedures have been more about theatre than effectiveness - it seems the appearance of doing something is more important than actually doing something effective. But this seems to be the tipping point. I've never seen so much negative press and threats of public revolt at any of their other ridiculous charades. All of which is leading up to a proposed Opt Out Day. And some truly inventive suggestions for revenge.
An unexpected bonus was when an excerpt from this video was used to illustrate a story on CNN. Seeing as that is unlikely to be a permanent link, plus my appearance is so brief you might miss it if you blink, here's a screen grab to prove I was there:
This is about the fourth time this presenter, Jeanne Moos, has used one of my videos to illustrate one of her stories (she does the "off beat" stories). I should make friends with her - maybe I can get a whole video on CNN one day.
Monday, November 15, 2010
I went to Adelaide recently - my first visit to the city and now I can finally say I've been to every state and territory capital city in Australia. Go me! There were two puposes to the trip. One was to go to the wedding of these fine people:
The second was to meet up with my long time YouTube friend, Cory Williams AKA Mr Safety of SMP Films. We saw dolphins:
We also collaborated on quite a few videos which will be appearing soon. I think we both agreed that in a perfect world I'd travel to the states once a year and he'd travel here once a year so we could work together every six months. But to make that work I need to either earn a lot more or get a wealthy benefactor. In the meantime, here's an emu!
This is the first HD video from my recent trip to the UK. It's the start of my road trip Steve AKA EvilB which eventually headed north the Edinburgh then back down to London. We started off going on a drive with Pete AKA Pazvibes to meet up with Nathan AKA Paradigma and Steffi AKA DeliriumReal/SaraParker in Weston Super Mare (North Somerset). They took us up to Banwell Castle for cream tea - you can't really get much more English than that.
The music is by Pete's band The Martin Harley Band from their album "Drumrolls for Somersaults".
Having kids who are deeply into online games like Farmville can be a bit weird. The insistence of "I can't let my crops wither" seems a little disconnected from reality from time to time.
Now, I get computer games. I enjoy them. So I'm not about to go on a "you kids need to get outside into the real world" rant. Although that's not a bad idea. Just stay off my lawn. Farmville I avoid - I'm more of a Zombie Farm kind of guy:
Double Rainbow - so intense!
My recent trip to the UK with my partner had many high points but one of the fun surprises was seeing a play set of hers from about 40 years ago that showed the more things change, the more they stay the same. This play set involves dozens of tiny plastic pieces that you put together to make and decorate a farm - Farmville before the internet or home computers!
Just like Farmville, with this toy you got a basic set that is designed to get you hooked so you spend money upgrading to more features and pretty things. You can move the components around as much as you like for many different looks.
They even provide a custom tool for inserting the flowers and other decorative items into position.
After playing with it for a few minutes we both wished you could still buy this in shops. I guess the addictive nature of this and its similarities to Farmville shows the more things change, the more they stay the same.
And just for a sense of perspective and scale, here's my massive head next to the farm:
That's some shameless linkbait in that heading. It ought to attract gay anglophiles, moronic homophobes, anti-England bigots and gay rights activists looking for something to be outraged over.
And it's simply a photo of me with some faggots I found in an English supermarket.
The real question is who is this Mr Brain and why does he like his faggots with more sauce?
Well, we had a Federal Election in Australia this weekend and the voice of the Australian people has sounded a resounding "meh". We have a hung parliament, meaning neither major party won enough seats to claim an outright majority - the usual way a government is formed. However this ends up (and it could take quite a while to resolve) who ever forms government will be a minority dependent on independents and Green or two to continue in government.
Besides making politics in this country a bit more interesting, the resolution might make a few people a bit more aware of the some facts about the constitution. Because it seems like a significant chunk of this country is completely oblivious to how things actually work in this country.
I got so sick of people saying during this campaign that they didn't vote for Julia Gillard as Prime Minister. First, because the fucking morons saying they were concerned about Kevin Rudd getting knocked off by his own party were Liberal voters anyway and they hated Rudd. I am not a huge fan of lying hypocritical scumbags who refuse to admit to their true motivations.
Second, the public NEVER votes for the Prime Minister. The public votes for their local member of parliament. The leader of the party that forms government is automatically the PM and they are voted leader by their own party, not the public. And even more important, the PM is NOT the head of state in Australia. They run the government of the day but they are not the head of state.
We are a constitutional monarchy and our head of state is the Monarch of England, currently Queen Elizabeth II. On a day to day basis she is represented by the Governor General who is appointed by the Australian government (i.e our head of state is elected by nobody). Look upNovember 11th 1975 if you can't see any problems with that. So the Governor General has to agree with whoever declares they should head up the forthcoming minority government.
Here's what's likely to happen:
* Prime Minister Julia Gillard constitutionally has the first opportunity to form a new government, regardless of whether her Labor party has won more seats than the conservative opposition.
* Gillard would meet Governor-General Quentin Bryce and advise her of Labor's intention to form a new government.
* Once a new government is sworn in, a parliamentary sitting would be held as soon as possible to determine whether Gillard's new administration had a workable majority in the lower house.
* The opposition would then call a no-confidence motion to test her minority government's support in parliament.
* In order to survive that censure motion, Gillard would have needed to reach an agreement with enough independent MPs and/or Greens to form a government, including guarantees from them on the passage of annual budgets.
* Legal experts say this process could take several weeks to play out, with Labor and the Liberal-National opposition likely to engage the independents and Greens in behind-the-scenes negotiations to see which major party can win them over.
* There is another, more unlikely scenario in the event that the opposition forges a quick alliance with independents before Gillard has a chance to consult the governor-general.
* In this case, Gillard could in theory advise the governor-general to initially swear in a Liberal-National minority government. But this is unlikely because there's nothing in the constitution that would force her to do so - which will drive Liberal supporters crazy.
So, in short, nobody knows exactly what's going to happen. And whatever happens, it's almost certain that the side that finds themselves in opposition won't stop complaining until after the next federal election. Whenever that is.
Inspiration for videos comes from the weirdest places. Browsing through the iTunes store I saw what looked like a cute kid's book. It was free so I thought what the heck, I'll download it.
It turned out to have a few unexpected quirks. Machine translation tends to give some pretty weird results. At least, I hope it was machine translation. I'd hate to think someone translated it this way on purpose.
Quite a few viewers called this one of the funniest things I've done which is always nice to hear. Not least because I wasn't assuming I'd get that response. This was one of those videos where I'm quite unsure of how people will react. I certainly thought it was funny (or I wouldn't have posted it) but I didn't bank on it being regarded as "funniest ever".
On one level I'm not a very good judge of what my audience will really like. Every now and then I'm surprised by how strongly people react to a video. I'm surprised how often a video I'm really not sure of ends up being really popular with my audience. More than once I've almost decided against uploading a video and it turned out to be really popular once it was up.
So I've learned to simply do my best with videos and not second guess myself. If I think the video is worth making the audience usually thinks it's worth watching.
I've been my own boss for about two weeks now and people want to know how it's going. Well, you know the old saying about working for yourself - the boss is crazy and you can't get away from him.
I do find myself putting a lot of thought into what I should be doing with my time - what can I do now to build my audience? So far, I haven't really been doing anything different but I will be expanding over the next couple of weeks. I might even get a bit organised and put a big to-do list on my wall to remind me of what I should be doing.
So I've made a momentous decision to stop messing about with this online stuff and do it for real. Namely, I am going to spend the next six months focusing primarily on YouTube as my source of revenue. I'll be increasing my activity in other online arenas as well, like this blog and Facebook. But given that YouTube is already a revenue stream for me, that's where most of my energy will be going.
The YouTube Partner Program is not the most secure way to earn an income. YouTube would be well within their rights to alter the deal or to revoke the Partner Program altogether any time they felt like it. This isn't something I think is going to happen but it would be stupid to think it's impossible. So while my initial goal is to raise my profile on YouTube, it isn't the only part of my strategy.
I will be working with a friend who is a well known comedy director to write some scripts that we will develop into videos. While these will go onto YouTube, they are also being developed with an eye to other possible revenue streams: DVDs, iTunes and selling them to TV stations are all options. In short, I'm going to be busy. And I plan to be dragging quite a few other people in to make them busy as well.
Ahhhh, Internet. You never cease to provide me with immature things to enjoy. Tonight while I was doing a live BlogTV show and the subject turned to fapping (as it so often does). Specifically, we were talking talking about this video and the line "are you fapping?"
Then I'm pretty sure I traumatised someone by telling them to search on Google images for "fapping" which turned up the "must not fap" meme. Then to humour people I posed for a "must not fap" image so people could screen cap it and make fun of me.
Then things kind of took off. One of the viewers posted a pic to 4Chan and the rest piled on. I'm informed that these threads don't stay up long so there's no point in posting a link here, but I did save a lot of the images.
Enjoy these few. I will be using all the images I saved in the remix video.
