Monday, April 27, 2009

Bottled Water

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Return of the Blazers

Alright, they're back! After a decade and a half, the Portland Trailblazers are back! Now, for those of you who aren't from Portland Oregon, which I assume accounts for the majority of this planets population, we're not talking about merely ending a losing streak here. We're talking about something much bigger.

Let's go back a ways...

When I was a kid, the Blazers were fun. They were a good team, and they were fun. The community loved them. The Blazers made the finals in 1990 and 1992, and made the playoffs in between. During this time, they recorded songs such as "Rip City Rhapsody," "Bust a Bucket," and "Blazers are in the House" (hey, it was the 90's).

The team, coached by Rick Adelman, consisted of hall of fame player Clyde Drexler, as well as many other superstars such as Terry Porter, Cliff Robinson, and the late Kevin Duckworth.

The news station which aired the games would go to different houses around the Portland area and interview local families during commercial breaks. One time, it turned out to be the house of my paraplegic next door neighbor, as he partied with his family.

During NBA season, Portland and her outskirts gushed with white, black, and red in support of her only pro sports team.

Then, after having lost the finals twice in 90 and 92; in the 1993-94 season, the Blazers failed to advance toward the first round. This lead to coach Rick Adelman being fired. Keep in mind now, the team had just made it to the finals twice, something which only two teams in the NBA can do. And in between those two years they made the playoffs. Hell, one of these times they lost to legendary Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. But, because Adelman hadn't won a title, they fired him. This was the beginning of the downward spiral.

Shortly after, Bob Whitsett came onto the team as the new manager. As his first order of business, he completely dismantled the old team. In my book, this was the death of the Blazers. After this, I just lost interest. And I wasn't alone.

People just didn't care about the new players who were chosen. They had no charisma. Fans began to drop like flies, and ticket sales declined. The Blazers went from a fun community oriented team, to a team full of drama and discontent.

In 99, I went into the military, and the Blazers went off my radar for awhile. I came back in 2003 to find that the Blazers were a joke to the bulk of the community. Not only were they a shitty team, they had been nicknamed the "Jailblazers" due the the players uncanny knack for getting into trouble with the law; from dogfighting to sexual assault charges. To admit to being a Blazer fan was an open invitation to derision and ridicule.

Enter the present. Just this year, rather recently infact, I began noticing a sudden uprise in Blazer fans. In the beginning, I laughed at them. But then I found out that the Blazers are virtually a whole new team now. Under new management, the team now has a roster of fresh players, including Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge. Not only are fans showing support, but in turn, this team is showing support for the community, as per the Blazers of yore.

Now this new Blazer team is in the playoffs against the Houstin Rockets. The first game was a bust. But last night, from the Mission Theatre and Pub, I witnessed a heart wrenchingly close game which ended in a victory for the Blazers.

Portlanders once again have hope for their team. This includes myself, after never having bothered to watch a Blazer game for a decade and a half.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Nalts 100,000 Subscriber Collab

Check this out. I just participated in a collab video to celebrate Nalts reaching 100,000 subscribers. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Michael Buckley from "What the Buck" as well as Barats and Bereta also contributed to this collab.

Congratulations on 100k Subscribers Nalts! Congratulations!


This video was put together by Scott Campbell of NetNewsDaily.

Also appearing in this video are:

What the Buck

Big White Seth

J-Dubb's Theatre

Nathan Adam

JawHarp1992

Daan Berg

Barats and Bereta

Matt Koval

Friday, April 17, 2009

Y-Tube-K: The YouTube Redesign Crisis has Passed

The "HuluTube" Crisis

So, yesterday I logged onto the web to find a lot of people panicking about a crises that was supposed to take place that day. Apparently, a big redesign was scheduled for YouTube, which would basically change YouTube into a second Hulu and throw all of it's user content, including it's promoted partners, into the back seat. This past week, many irate VLOGs have sprang up on YouTube in lieu of this redesign.

According to the rumor, YouTube was going to remove the existing tabs from it's home page and replace them with tabs which only lead you to "premium content", meaning studio generated content. There would only be one tab on the site's navigation bar which would lead visitors to user content.

Turns out that these claims were exagerated. There was a change, but the change involved adding a new tab labeled, "shows". This tab leads you to a HULU-like portion of YouTube. The rest of YouTube, however, is just the same. Nothing has been omitted. Basically, we've had a mini YouTube version of the Y2K scare.

I had started a blog post on the subject, which I scrapped once I found out that the whole thing may be exagerated. But what if the whole thing were true? Would that really be the death of the YouTube community? See, successful people seem to talk a lot about turning the bad into the good. One thing I wanted to mention was that there was actually some good potential for the YouTube community.

See, for quite a while now, YouTube's moves have been a hinderance to the community. It's basically become watered down and obscure. There's become a big divide between those who YouTube promotes, and the little guy trying to be seen. Basically, it's an age old conflict. But what if YouTube were to separate the paid studio content from the user generated content? Wouldn't it pretty much set the user generated portion of YouTube back to square one; back to how it was in the beginning? I say let YouTube promote it's paid studio content. Then maybe we can have the community back. Or, as Blunty3000 has just pointed out, isn't this separation pretty much what the YouTube community's been asking for anyway?

And what if YouTube stops promoting us? If we want to be promoted, we can do it the old fashion way; do it ourselves. Or do we need mommy(YouTube) to hold our hand and do it for us? Are we all that dependent on the YouTube corporation? Pull your pants up and have some self respect. As YouTube becomes more Network-ised, why not start our own websites geared toward promoting who we choose to promote. No point sitting around whining, right? So bring on Y-Tube-K!

Here's a video which I just ran into, while looking for links. This has become my favorite video on the subject:

"HULU-TUBE the death of YouTube" Blunty Rants again!


And here's some more video links:

"It didn't happen" videos:
HuluTube never happened YTA 20.8
After the Apocalypse

Y-Tube-K panic videos:
(Title has been changed) I got it wrong YTA 20.6
The Day the YouTubes Died?! (YouTube redesign)The Death of Youtube?? Redesign Coming(also) The Death of Youtube?? Redesign ComingHulu Monster? Epic Fail.I'm not disappointed, just angry

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Starwars with a Twist

Attention all nerds from the 80's

If you've watched a lot of online videos like me, you probably don't expect much from mash-up videos, but these are great. Check 'em out.

Starwars Macguyver


Starwars Dallas

Friday, April 10, 2009

Time For a Change

No, this isn't a post about Obama.

Well, I've decided the time is over due to change the banner at the top of this blog. But I thought I should pay homage to the old banner. After all, the old banner is what inspired the pipe as the J-Dubb's Theatre icon. If it weren't for the old banner; there would be no marketable Nike-esque logo, and no iconic pipe to give J-Dubb's Theatre videos their own signature.

I decided to create the old banner for my blog, back in 2006, as a play on the whole J-Dubb's Theatre/Masterpiece Theatre parody. In fact, the J-Dubb's Theatre title in this picture was actually an image I found that said "Masterpiece Theatre". So I edited out the "Masterpiece" and replaced it with "J-Dubb's" in as similar a font as I could find.

I put on a coat and borrowed my dad's pipe that he hadn't used for years. I didn't have a sport coat at the time, so I put on my old Airforce service dress coat and edited out the Senior Airman stripes. I then Photoshopped myself into a chair and Photoshopped the chair into a den with a fireplace. Here is the original blog post from the event.

Sometime later on, I decided to replace the little arrow thingies, which were to the left of my post titles, with the little green pipe icon as you see it now. That was the beginning of the pipe as the J-Dubb's Theatre icon. After I started making videos, I asked my dad if I could just keep the frakin pipe.

I'm also holding a copy of Homer's "The Odyssey and the Iliad" in that picture. The book is less iconic than the pipe, but I have alluded to it now and then in my videos, such as in "The Network," when I hit myself over the head... erm... when I hit Belphegor over the head with it. I think it's a bit confusing though, as it looks like I'm holding a Bible. I was always concerned that people might either take this for a religious blog, or a religious satire blog, which it is neither.

I also created the old banner before I studied graphic design. It was a fun picture, but I always felt it made the overall design of the blog too busy. The new one is nice and simple and plays into the visual hierarchy a lot better. Plus, this one has the rounded corners which mirror the rest of the blog.

Also, I thought it would be fitting, in the new banner, to have the pipe resting on my keyboard with my modem in the background, seeing how J-Dubb's Theatre is an internet based... whatever it is.

I want to keep the image from the old banner around somewhere, though. Maybe I'll do an "About" page for this blog and use that image. After all, the videos; "J-Dubb's Theatre", and "Choose J-Dubb's Theatre" both have the live action recreations of that image, which don't necessarily make sense without that image to make reference to.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

How I Nearly Ruined Nalts


Wow, I made a mistake that was a near disaster for Nalts. Luckily, I was able to avert the problem.

Friday, April 03, 2009

My First Online Video

Tribute to the Number Five

Looky what I found today.

Before there was a J-Dubb's Theatre YouTube channel, there was Tribute to the Number Five on Google Video. This was a video I made several years ago which features several instances of the number five. Basically, it's an inside joke between me and a friend of mine. I don't know how or why it started, but we basically have this tag game that's been going on for around seven years now. It started out where he'd tag me, saying "no", so I'd tag him back saying "five." It probably began with me saying "yes" and then I changed it to "five" just to be random. However it happened, it happened.

After I moved back up to Oregon from Pheonix, the tag game became long distance via phone, text, and e-mail. So I eventually made this video, which features the number five, as the ultimate pwn in our "no/five" tag game, and e-mailed it to him. Now days, it could serve as a parody of all the stupid tribute videos that people seem to like to post on YouTube.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

J-Dubb's Theatre: Technorati Bloggers Choice Award Winner!!

I won a Technorati Bloggers Choice Award!!

Apparently I have been selected as number 16 of the top 50 most unique blogs.

According to Technorati, "J-Dubb's Theatre is original and surprising. I always look forward to seeing what J-Dubb's next post will be, whether it be satire, one of his comedy sketches, or something completely off the wall. Overall, J-Dubb's Theatre is just a fun experience."

So, I guess this means I'm in the big times now. This will really drive up my blog's traffic, so I'm gonna have to really commit to blogging now. No more long periods in between posts.

So anyways, click here for the full story.