This Week in YouTube

Hello again, Gasmii! And welcome back. After last week’s assortment of WTFery, this week was kind of a watershed in videos that are kind of amazing. Either through animation, humor, wonder or the exuberance of the participants, this week’s collection are all just a little, or a lot, amazing.

By now Tim Burton has a well-established reputation of having an affinity for the macabre and life’s oddballs. Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks! even Beetlejuice and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure to an extent focused on the plight of the loner or freak in a more and more homogenized culture. Hell his own marriage is a tribute to the triumph of the weirdo. But he had to start somewhere. I bring to you Vincent, an animated short paying homage to, and featuring, Vincent Price that he did for Disney back in the 80s.

Sure he’s become a hack in later years, pretty much I blame Johnny Depp, but I will always love Tim Burton’s early work because of the sensitivity and empathy he has for people who could be seen as society’s outcasts.

If that was a bit of a downer and you want to pump up your energy, you probably need a Sugar Rush.

Awake yet? Nauseated yet? Ready to get back in the gym? Or were you as fond of the bright, loud colors and tormenting vending machine as I was? FYI this was done as a school project. I hope he got an A.

I’ll just come out and say, I truly, madly deeply HATE the show Girls. Like I hate it so much I might be allergic to it. I get it. It’s supposed to be the unvarnished story about being young, white and feckless in Brooklyn and just how awful that entitles you to be. Great, awesome. Congrats, Lena Dunham, on convincing people that needed to be a show and riding the zeitgeist wave. I don’t hate the player, I hate the show.

But what I do love, is the song “Girls” by Santigold, and I especially love this video.

Oh hey look! Non-white women in NYC? Who knew? Someone tell Lena Dunham, quick. But seriously, how great was that video? It’s the best girl-centric video based in NYC since “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Aw, I might not totally hate the show as much as I thought. Wait, no, I still hate the show.

 If you are one of the billions of people on this planet who don’t actually live in SoCal, even though half the time on my drive home from work I doubt THAT, and wanted to just feel like you do here’s a video for you:

Ah, isn’t that lovely? And not a starlet/model/writer/actor/director/douchebag producer in sight. Because, for real, most of Los Angeles isn’t Hollywood. Okay, well maybe a LOT of LA is Hollywood, but don’t tell them they aren’t the sun and the moon. It hurts their feelings and they’re very sensitive .