For better or worse, that doesn't leave a hell of a lot left. Some tornado videos, a train video here or there (a sure sign I'm getting old...), fishing video now and then, a half court trick shot, and lots of old news footage and commercials because I find that kind of stuff fascinating...but that's really all YouTube has to offer the likes of me.
Never has anyone who is actually attempting to entertain me with a 'channel' kept my attention beyond a half-baked and mostly skeptical chuckle. It's no secret that YouTube is largely responsible for turning the Internet into a lamentable place, where random people do something merely because they can, giving little or no thought to whether they should, or, as my brother has observed, whether they really can. People have an unprecedented opportunity to find a world-wide audience, grab for that fame they so covet and view as a birthright, and usually manage to score at least a smattering of 'likes' and other forms of approval merely for their effort, or for one creatively lucid moment that went viral - but then rarely possess the inclination, resources, drive or raw talent to keep it going, to legitimize themselves.
Worse than that even, is the Internet's 'open source' crowd, the tired and creatively barren people plagiarizing copyrighted works in the name of 'fandom', posting their GIF mash-ups or animated interpretations, or re-posting them, because they 'can.'...calling it 'creativity' under the auspices of the personal empowerment Apple and Microsoft enjoy dangling in front of our faces like a carrot. For these people, authorship means nothing.
An especially offensive example of this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/02/calvin-and-hobbes-animated-short-video_n_4193957.html
On the subject of the former, I don't know what's worse: the lame animation itself, or The Huffington Post's predictably irresponsible approval. But put bluntly, if I were Bill Watterson, I would be off my fucking rocker to put a stop to it, even knowing it's ultimately a futile fight.
But I digress.
The Internet sensation Epic Rap Battles of History has in the last three years proven that there is talent - real, legitimate talent (not just someone taking advantage of the creative blank check technology now provides) - to be found in 'You'.
I first discovered it about two years ago, when I typed 'Bill O'Reilly' into the search window. I was looking for two things in particular: his meltdown as anchor of Inside Edition from the early 1990s, and his inflamed argument with Geraldo Rivera over immigration, which happened on his current show a while back.
What I found instead was someone impersonating O'Reilly, pitted against someone else impersonating John Lennon. The two 'celebrities' were slinging insults at one another in musical verse, and doing so in both a compelling and funny way. Over in the search list, I discovered there were more of these: Abe Lincoln versus Chuck Norris; Lady Gaga versus Sarah Palin; Justin Bieber versus Beethoven, where Beethoven becomes hilariously enraged. In the two minutes and thirty seconds it took to watch that one, I became a devoted fan.
Since then, Epic Rap Battles of History has not only never disappointed, but gotten steadily better. Its creators and primary performers (the Lennon and O'Reilly I initially stumbled across) are YouTube stars Nice Peter and Epic Lloyd. Unknown to me before this, it's become apparent, and in no uncertain terms, these two have the chops to make use of this new medium in the way Microsoft and Apple like to tell us is possible, and in the process, have created something completely original, their own unique brand.
ERB is the perfect assemblage of razor-edged satire and silliness for the sake of silliness. It's politically incorrect and raunchy, but never loses a certain childish joie de vivre, which enables it to get away with just about anything. And it does. The visuals are relatively simple (sometimes just clip art floating in a green screen background) but sport an attention to detail that requires numerous viewings to fully appreciate, to catch everything going on.
The songs themselves are as catchy as anything on the radio. Never exceeding two or three minutes in length, just enough time to build tension, their arrangements are usually designed to reflect something about the combatants (Beethoven's Fur Elise embedded in the beat; a watery descent of violins, a la Mozart; a squealing digitally-woven rhythm as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates square off), and tightly meshed with remarkably smart lyrics:
'I'm on the leader of your limp-dicked Luftwaffe!' Darth Vader growls in his (second) battle against Adolph Hitler. If you know Star Wars at all, and have some knowledge of World War II, you'll know why that's exceptionally clever. And the ERB song book is full of such gems:
'I'm more powerful than you when I'm wearing women's pants!' - Freddie Mercury bellows.
"I didn't lose any chocolate, I just added vanilla!' - Michael Jackson cries with a grab of his crotch.
"You'll be nothing but a skeleton messing with the fellow in yellow who will be pedaling like hell up in the peloton!" - Lance Armstrong
''You'll find that the ex-KGB is the best MC in the ex-CCCP!" - Vladmir Putin.
It helps that Epic Lloyd and Nice Peter are both strong impersonators, drawing from the art of body language, facial expressions and voice modulation (in tandem with make-up/costume) to wholly transform themselves. And when they can't do it, they bring in people who can. Usually other YouTube stars (Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, Marilyn Monroe, among others, have all been represented with startling accuracy), but actual celebrities have begun showing up as well. Snoop Lion's appearance as Moses (versus Santa Claus) was significant on numerous levels, and Dubstep maestro Skrillex stepped up to take on Mozart at the end of last season.
Most impressive, and memorable, has been their foray into historically significant (but still outrageously funny) battles: Thomas Edison versus Nikola Tesla, Babe Ruth versus Lance Armstrong, Ghandi versus Martin Luther King Jr. Each retains that charming 'silliness for the sake of silliness', but with unmistakable intelligence, a 'knowing things' at play at the same time.
'How many dictators does it take, to turn an empire into a union of ruinous states?!' Rasputin snarls to Joseph Stalin.
You have to 'know things' to come up with a line like that.
Pitting luminaries past and present against one another in something so ridiculous as a 'rap battle', and somehow getting it to work time and time again, is not an easy task. Often these things become a group effort, with lots of people contributing ideas and talents, and I'd be surprised to learn that's not the case here. But if Epic Lloyd and Nice Peter have at all remained a consistent factor in the creative and conceptual force behind ERB (and there's no reason to think they haven't), they're pretty damn inspired, and if the tens of millions of views that each new installment receives is any indication, we can rest assured that there are lots of people who are not content with regurgitated GIF mash-ups and the tired, loud and witless filling our dead air; plenty who still expect to be truly entertained by our entertainers.
All this being said, I would hate for the franchise to take things to the next level, become too mainstream, too many celebrities involved, picked up by E! or Comedy Central, for instance, sponsored by Pepsi and generating six-figure pay days. That might be precisely what Nice Peter and Epic Lloyd want (it's what I would want, surely...), but I think if that happened, its rawness would have to be reined in, or more carefully (too carefully) thought out. Hipness, rather than cleverness, would eventually overshadow all other considerations, were it brought to a 'national' audience. It happened to Saturday Night Live a long time ago, was the reason why Mad TV, which concerned itself primarily with being funny, became vastly more so in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
With the launch of Season 3 on October 7 (notable amidst this new round of brilliance is 'Pablo Picasso versus Bob Ross'...) ERB is right where it should be - with hundreds of millions of viewers, but still the Internet's best kept secret.
