Tag: Random Videos

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How to Not Freeze to Death

I don’t remember when the YouTube algorithm started serving these up to me, but over the last year I’ve started seeing “Survival” videos, in which an intrepid creator will purposely venture out into a difficult situation to see if they can survive. They’ll have titles like “30 below in a snowstorm with NO SLEEPING BAG and NO TENT!!!”…but when you watch a few, a lot of them turn out to be surprisingly watchable as relaxing nature videos. And you learn a few things along the way.

Here’s one of my favorites, by a channel called “Outdoor Boys”, which is apparently one of the biggest and most prolific producers of this sort of thing. This kind of survival is fascinating to watch, and I like this particular video because a lot of what our hero does here is not what I’d expected. He does not find a nice large fallen tree against which he makes a lean-to out of branches, and while he does make a fire, it’s not just a little campfire which he uses for warmth and for cooking food. He uses the fire as a tool, and how he does it is really fascinating. Have you watched any survival videos? Do you find them as interesting as I do?

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A vicarious adventure

The Wife and I honeymooned around New England: a couple of days on Cape Cod, a couple of days in Boston, and then we road-tripped through New Hampshire and Vermont on our way home. One thing I wish we’d had time for was a drive up to the top of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.

Thanks to my favorite YouTuber, Post 10, I can at least see what the entirety of that drive is like. I wonder how many motorists every year don’t take sufficient care to cool their brakes on the way back down….

(Put that on fullscreen and watch it in the highest def your connection can manage. It gets more and more eye-popping as you go.)

 

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Parroting

Parrots being trained to say naughty words is an underused comedy bit, I think.

From NYPD Blue: the squad is now under the command of Sergeant Gibson, who is a pretty annoying dude who think he’ll keep his parrot at work. Detective Andy Sipowicz has other plans.

 

From Shoresy: Shoresy has brought in new talent for the hockey team he plays for, but it’s a sudden thing so he’s housing them himself, in his apartment. In showing them the place he introduces them to his pet parrot, who has picked up one of Shoresy’s favorite profane insults.

Now back to trying to dispel my DST-induced brain fog with enough coffee to drown an ox….

 

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A random country song for a Wednesday evening

I had a long day at work today (not a bad day at all, but we had a big project today for which I had to be at work a bit early) and my brain is doing its impression of tapioca, so here’s a song that’s been showing up in my YouTube recommendations of late. I’ve featured it before, but not in a little over seven years, so here it is again! This was a huge country hit forty years or so ago. I’m not sure, but this performance must have been before the song became as big as it did, because eventually the bass singer’s “Papa-ooo-mow-mow” bit became so popular that whenever it got to that part in any live performance, it would be greeted with massive cheers.

Anyway, here are the Oak Ridge Boys with “Elvira”. (Note the guitar player, behind the lead singer, really getting into it about thirty seconds in! Cracks me up every time I see this.)

 

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Also, this.

Here’s something in the “You learn something new every day!” Department: there is a Chinese reed instrument called the Sheng, which involves several upright pipes in a nifty kind of cross between an oboe and a calliope.

Here a sheng player sets up camp in a public place and plays music from the Mario Bros. videogames. The video includes nifty added animations based on gameplay, and it helps that our performer is dressed appropriately for playing Mario music.

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