In these videos by 80-year-old geriatric1927 we once again get to listen to stories about his childhood. And the specific subject matter is fathers, and in his case, grandfathers.
But Peter -- geriatric1927 -- presents some philosophy on families, his ideas on independence within families, and he gives a loving tribute to his father with some lovely, detailed descriptions of his good times during childhood spent with his dad, a hard-working adventurous man who was willing to try most anything.
As always in his blog postings, Peter paints a really nice picture of his own personal history and about his father and who the man was -- and he sprinkles in some general history. Again, we're not only entertained with Peter's stories but we learn a little world history too.
If one is to relate seemingly banal information on one's family background and historical stories in a fairly plain, narrative form, you risk boring your audience. But Peter always makes history come alive. He always has something very interesting to impart to his (now huge) worldwide audience and always with detailed facts and anecdotes in a voice that makes you want to tune him in and tune out all your other ambient noise.
(Speaking of ambient noise, geriatric1927's videos have picked up an annoying high pitched background noise. Ouch! It is the video. Do not adjust your set.)
Now this is what the "worldwide web" and "community" is all about: Bringing people together from around the world, all connected only via their individual Internet connections for the purpose of creating something meaningful and to share in a cause in the spirit of the Christmas. Hokey? Maybe. Successful? Incredibly.
The cause was a simple one: to bring together voices from the YouTube vlogging community in a choir of sorts to present The 12 Days of Christmas. A simple cause but no small undertaking. But if the definition of a successful cause, by YouTube standards, is a high number of views, then this one is a smashing success. This entertaining video (as of Dec. 17) has surpassed 1.24 million views. (And they received 3288 comments.)
In early November Matt5413 posted a video request asking others to send in their renditions of the traditional Christmas song. After all the entries were received Matt5413, SilentWhistle and Zipster08 went to work creating this very creative piece of living art that wove together not only the many varied voices, but also the lively images and personalities of each of the 'choir' members.
Kudos go to the flawless editing by SilentWhistle, with production help from Zipster08. (I'm still trying to figure out how he kept everyone's singing in time with the musical track that carries the song throughout the video.)
What makes this piece more layered and interesting and infinitely more watchable is the homespun nature of it. Some of collaborators have, um, well, shall we say less than professional sounding voices, while a few of the voices are very impressive. The backgrounds, lighting and sound quality are all varied and most are imperfect. And again that's what brings the community feel to this and makes you want to stay for every verse.
I apologize for sounding like a cliche, but successful efforts like these that obviously involve many hours of tedious work without the thought of monetary reward are what Christmas is all about. Excellent work.
It’s no shocker that if you’re stuck at your computer all day without moving you start to feel really sluggish. So why not join the Zipster and other YouTube fanatics in a dance-marathon started by Tubegranny? This video features Zip dancing to “I Like the Way (You Move)” by the BodyRockers. He’s not going to be on Dancing With the Stars any time soon, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just fun and carefree dancing to beat the doldrums. So pick out your own booty shaking music and rock out.
Well the Zipster is going to quit smoking; starting November 20th that is. He’s also inviting everyone else on YouTube to join him in his quest to give up cigarettes. There’s no easy way to quit, but announcing your intentions to thousands of people sure ups the pressure. Let’s hope it works out for ya Zip and everyone else that joins in.