Saturday, October 30, 2010

Nosferatu VI













The first few Nosferatu Halloween posts dealt with things which drain ones energy, such as Banks with all their fees; things that suck blood in a metaphorical sense. The last couple were about fictional creatures that actually do drink blood, such as El Chupacabra and even Nosferatu themselves. Today, I'm going to talk about a real-life blood drinker.

The lamprey is an evil evil evil creature. Now, they don't typically drink human blood, they drink the blood of aquatic creatures. But still, look at that picture at the top of this post. What a horrible creature. Something that looks like this exists, but it shouldn't. There should not be anything that looks like that, which latches onto other creatures. It's just wrong.

We need to rid the world of this vile creature and we need to do it now! Remember the days when we used to gather in mobs with torches and pitchforks? Well, we need to do that again until all the lampreys are gone.

"But what about the ecological effects involved in the extinction of an entire species," you might be asking. My answer to this is that you need to look at the larger picture. No more lampreys! This is more important than any possible ecological side-effects.

Now, let me point out that not all lamprey species drink blood. In fact, only a few species do. The ones that don't are fine. Leave them be and just focus on the blood sucking ones.

Once the blood sucking lampreys are gone we will all sleep better at night. Let's make this happen people!

Thank you for taking the time to read this important message. Stay tuned for next year's edition of Nosferatu.


Note from the future: There will not be a "next year's" edition of Nosferatu. Stay tuned in ten years, for the next edition of Nosferatu. In the meantime, enjoy the yearly Halloween videos, until 2017

Friday, October 29, 2010

Send in the Clowns

This is my third Halloween special as well as the final week of the Don Vantel Challenge. This video deals with a specific phobia.


Music by Kevin MacLown

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Absolutely True Fact of the Week

A vampire bat is a type of bird known for preying on human blood.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Superstar of the Week is Pennywise

"Creepy clowns" seems to be the theme lately. But I figured while were on the topic, why not feature Pennywise for this year's Halloween Superstar of the Week. After all, he did a great job of scaring the $#*! out of me as a kid.

Once a year for a few years, when I was a kid, Steven King's "It" would air as a two part mini series. After watching the first half, I would go to bed completely creeped out. Funny thing is, I wasn't really creeped out by clowns, or necessarily even Pennywise. The movie itself just had a creepy feel. It was definitely one of the better of Steven King's made for TV movies.

The second night, after having seen the characters topple the monster which was behind Pennywise the Clown, I would always go to bed feeling refreshed.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Superstar of the Year is Keith Urban

So, this Year I decided to make Keith Urban the Superstar. Now, I'm not necessarily a fan of Country music and I wouldn't recognize one of his songs if I heard it. There's a story behind my selection for the Superstar of the Year.

The other day, I was talking to someone who had already mentioned a dislike for Keith Urban in the past. When this person brought up Keith Urban in conversation that day, they basically said that Urban, as an Australian, has no business singing country music. He then made the comment "Why can't he sing Australian music?"

Therefore, I've decided to feature Keith Urban as the Superstar of the Year in honor of walking your own path despite those who would try to bring you down. There are a lot of people out there who get a thrill out of playing the authority on how others should live their lives. You could try to please them. But what you'll find is a lot of different people giving you a lot of conflicting directions on how you should be living. Who do you listen to? If you try to please them, you'll find yourself with no direction.

Keith Urban, who happened to be born in Australia instead of the United States, found that he had a passion for country music. He decided to sing country and has made a successful career out of it. He decided to follow his dream despite anybody who would tell him that he couldn't because he was born in the wrong place.

So hats off to Keith Urban in honor of everybody who has followed their dream. Also, let this be an inspiration to all who are still trying to find the courage.

Past Superstar of the Year Awards:

2009 - William Shatner
2008 - Alizee Jacotey
2007 - Peyton Manning
2006 - Chuck Norris

Friday, October 22, 2010

Our Political Candidates

It's election time, YAY! Funny how people who want to hold government offices act like school kids at recess.


Music by Kevin MacLeod

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Choose YouTube

Week number 2 of the Don Vantel Challenge: An advertisement for YouTube. Does this commercial make you want to use YouTube?


Music by Kevin MacLeod

Monday, October 11, 2010

Five Years of J-Dubb's Theatre!!











Well, looks like it's October 11th again, marking the fifth year of the web phenomenon known as J-Dubb's Theatre. This year's recap will be a little different. Instead of recounting just the previous year as usual, I'm going to write out a summary of each of the last five years.

Also, normally I post the Superstar of the Year on the Monday of anniversary week, but since today happens to be Monday I'll post that tomorrow instead.

And so without further adieu, I give you the past five years of J-Dubb's Theatre:


2005

One day, in October of 2005, a young 25 year old had a dream to do something or other on the internet. He happened upon a website called blogger.com, which allowed him to publish his own blog.

This young man used the name "J-Dubb" as a login for various forums and websites around the internet. This was a nickname he had received while in the United States Air Force. Since "J-Dubb" had pretty much become his online identity, he decided to name his blog, "J-Dubb's Blog." At the time, it looked something like this:


A little later, he decided to rename his blog, "J-Dubb's Theatre," as a play on the title, "Masterpiece Threatre." This was well before J-Dubb knew that J-Dubb's Theatre would actually be involved in theatrics later on down the road.

Five years later, J-Dubb would write a blog post where he would switch from third person perspective to first person perspective. This is that very blog post and this is the point where I switch to first person perspective...

So, one thing I have to say about 2005 is that I'm glad it's buried deep within the history of this blog. I've gone over my blog posts from 2005 and I find the writing to be embarrassing. The posts are rife with misspellings, strange uses of commas, and things that just don't make sense. At the time, I was still in young party-boy mode and it would be a few years before I would go into educated-professional thinking mode. I also tried to imitate the tone of a local radio personality named Tim Savage in my writing.

At the time, I worked swing shift and weekends as a Security Officer at a call center and went to school during the day. That Fall, however, I became stressed, so I decided to put school on hiatus until the next term. This blog was one of the things that filled in that extra time during the day.

The first blog post was titled "Happy Anniversary" to denote the first anniversary of this blog, even though it was actually the zeroth anniversary. I used the same configuration of fireworksy pictures that I use at the top of this and every consecutive anniversary blog post.

The next day, I posted the first ever Superstar of the Week. At the time, Superstar of the Week was merely a picture of some random person, usually a celebrity, and nothing else. The first Superstar of the Week was Alan Alda. I also included an Animal of the Week and This Weeks Moment in Evolution, which lasted for two weeks.

For Halloween, I wrote the first Nosferatu blog post.

In December, I quit my job so I could concentrate on school full time the following term.

I ended the year by declaring war on Bill O'Reilly and Christmas.


2006


2006 started off slow. There were two posts for January, one being a Superstar of the Week, and the other being a link to a video. The sole blog post for February consisted of a picture. There was no post for April. In May and June, I posted some writing assignments from school, and links to a comic strip I was working on called Crack Kills, which was basically a comic strip from high school that I had re-rendered in MS Paint.

In July, this blog really picked up. I began by creating a banner for this blog.



This banner is the reason why I have a pipe in every single one of my videos today... now you know. Basically, I decided to further play on the Masterpiece Theatre theme. Not that the picture necessarily has anything to do with Masterpiece Theatre. It's basically a parody of sophistication as represented by Masterpiece Theatre.

So I took a picture of myself with a pipe and a publication of The Odyssey and the Illiad in order to portray my parody of sophistication. I included the Masterpiece Theatre logo, only I replaced the word "Masterpiece" with "J-Dubb's."

Eventually, I created a smoking pipe icon which I placed next to my blog post titles, replacing the arrow icon which came with the template. This smoking pipe picture stuck as the J-Dubb's Theatre logo.

Trivia: The Odyssey and the Illiad has made several cameo appearances in my videos, including the most recent one.

Also that month, I brought back Superstar of the Week, as well as introduced "J-Dubb's Moral of the Week," and "This Weeks Moment of Natural Selection." Natural Selection was a retry at what "This Week's Moment in Evolution" was intended to be, and was eventually replaced by "Blooper of the Week."

That summer, my posts took on kind of a picture blog format. These posts consisted of commentaries on a series of pictures.

The month of August saw 27 blog posts, which is the current record for this blog.

In September, after watching Snakes on a Plane at the Baghdad Theater, I began a new school year. I had changed my major that year to graphic design.

In October, I featured the first Superstar of the Year, which was Chuck Norris. You know, that was the year of the Chuck Norris facts and all. For Halloween, I wrote my second Nosferatu post.

In November, I featured Gerald Ford as Superstar of the Week, eerily close to his death.


2007

So, in 2007, Burger King and X-Box were evil and the Colts won the Superbowl. At this time I was into watching YouTube videos. It started with Smosh, The Winekone, and Barats and Bereta. Then, I began to notice that YouTube had it's own community of video makers, and I wanted in.

I created my JDubbsTheatre YouTube channel in January. This was actually my second user name. I had another user name for commenting on videos called "theactualjdubb," you know, because the name JDubb was already taken. But then I deleted that account and created a director account under the JDubbsTheatre name.

In February, I posted my first video. It was basically an introduction video in which I recreated the scene from my blog banner, but in real life.

The first part of the year was mostly all YouTube videos. The Latest Rage was the video where I really started to get a feel for my own style.

That summer, just like the previous year, the written blog posts began to pick back up again. This included the reemergence of Superstar of the Week and the introduction of "Factoid of the Week," where I would take an urban legend from Snopes and reveal whether it were true or false.

Another Hallmark of that year was The Network series. This began with LisaNova's video, LisaNova does YouTube, where she kidnapped several YouTube celebrities of the time including TheWinekone, Smosh, TheHill88, and DaxFlame, and forced them to spam peoples YouTube accounts under her name. This video was preceded by her actually spamming hundreds of YouTube accounts in real life, a controversial event which angered a lot of YouTubers.

LisaNova does YouTube was probably the first major video collaboration between front page YouTubers, following a lesser known collaboration event between Nicky Nik, Boh3m3, Charles Trippy, and Corey Williams/ Mr. Safety.

In response to LisaNova Does YouTube, I posted J-Dubb Does LisaNova Does YouTube, in which I reveal myself to have actually observed the events of LNDYT behind the scenes. I ended this video by my encountering The Order from the Lonelygirl15 series. (an easter egg clip after the credits.)

In the following video, The Order has kidnapped me to turn me into a super soldier to do their bidding. Things don't go according to plan, however, and I make my escape. Following this video, I posted a series of blog posts chronicling
the search for myself. This lead up to my next video, The Network.

The Network had to be split into two parts due to it's length. In this video, I have escaped from The Order only to find even bigger problems. I decided to drop the LG15 connection for this video. The organization which controls the television networks has taken over YouTube and YouTubers are disappearing only to be replaced. I have to save the day in a confrontation with "The Executive," who is named later on in the continuation of the series.

In October, Superstar of the Year was Peyton Manning, and I posted my first Halloween video. In November, Oprah started a YouTube channel and it caused an uproar. In December, I hit 100 subscribers on YouTube. The next hundred would take two years.


2008

2008 was a typical year. The posts slowed down at the beginning of the year.

I decided to become more social on YouTube and began to generate a small following. I also posted my first two real VLOGs, which I had attempted several times before but was never satisfied with the outcome. These were also the last two real VLOGs I posted for over a year. My YouTube networking became stifled.

That summer, I had planned to make a season two of The Network series. This was to be a social thing where I would leave video responses and collab with other YouTubers. The previous year, I'd had a lot of time off what with having only one class for summer term, which was shorter than the other terms of the year. But in 2008, I didn't have the time off that I anticipated, and once I launched season 2, I got stuck.

The Network season 2 began with the revelation that The Executive was stuck in my head and he ended up possessing me. He then made a video revealing his name to be Belphegor and announcing the startup of the New Network.

The series ran into Fall term, which was not intended. As my final term, which included an internship, I was extremely busy. Since The Network videos are highly involved, just how in the story I was stuck in my own head, in reality I was stuck in The Network series. I was able to post a new video about every two months. The following that I had started to generate began to fall away. But on the plus side, TheWinekone subscribed. I was pretty psyched about that seeing how he was one of the people who got me started on YouTube.

Also of note in 2008 is Moepickles.

I started to become sullen with YouTube. Views were going down for everyone who wasn't in the top 100. My following was dropping off. The featured section disappeared. Bulletins disappeared. The top 100 was becoming unrecognizable. And the YouTube community seemed to be dying and being replaced by a pseudo-Hollywood.

But we did get our first African American president.

And I finished school.


2009

In February of 2009, I joined Twitter, and became addicted throughout the year.

Oregon celebrated it's
sesquicentennial.

I finally finished The Network in March. I was pleased with what I had produced, but was relieved to be able to return to my usual videos.

I upgraded to a much higher quality camera, which was a graduation present.

I watched the final season of Battlestar Galactica at Portland's Baghdad Theater.

There was great animosity toward YouTube in 2009. The old community split between the YouTube loyalists and Renetto's Vloggerheads. A vlogger named Mr.ChiCity posted a video called "YouTube is Dying" making some harsh claims about YouTube and the partnership program. This was all amplified by the YouTube redesign that some called HuluTube, but I like to call Y-Tube-K. And the channel redesign pissed off even those people who were loyal to YouTube. A lot of faces began to disappear from the community.

But, I did appear in my first collab video.

In April, I created a new banner for the blog, which is the current banner at the top of the site.

I began to shift my focus away from YouTube, as I felt that the community I had signed on for was pretty much gone. Instead, I began to focus more on a following of Portland based bloggers, podcasters, and media people on Twitter.

One of my last few videos for awhile was a shout out to the old YouTube.

In October, a boy got swept away by a weather balloon... but it turned out to be a hoax.

But the big event for the year was the KUFO firings. Local radio station 101 KUFO was bought out by new management. The personalities whom many felt were the last good thing on terrestrial radio were fired and replaced by middle-aged fratboy-wannabe jerkoffs. At this point, I turned my attention fully to the Portland community in support of the people who were fired.

One of these radio shows reincarnated in podcast form and merged with a local startup podcast network called PDX.fm. (recently changed to Cascadia.fm)

In November, I decided to change Superstar of the Week from being just a picture to being a full blog post.

And Daniel Baldwin moved to Portland.


2010


And finally, this year...

2010 has been very sparse as far as blog posts go. I started off disillusioned by YouTube, feeling that the community was gone, and had lost my motivation to post videos. On top of that, I had been unemployed for a while, and also lost my motivation to blog as well as fell off the face of Twitter. Basically, I removed myself from social media in order to focus on my job search.

In March, after three months of nothing, I decided to post a video. It was a Downfall parody where Hitler was angry that I had put him in another Downfall parody. This video has been removed.

Eventually, I came to a new conclusion about YouTube. I decided that I would be a part of the old YouTube community, even if I were to be the only member. So I began posting
VLOGs. at first, these VLOGs made reference to the old community. But, as I picked back up again, I began to realize that there was still a community on YouTube after all. The face had changed a bit, but it was still there, and most of the naysayers of 2009 had left. The YouTube community had survived the Apocolypse. So I decided to be a part of the community once again.

It has been like starting over again. I have a few friends left over from the old days, but I began socializing and networking just like I wanted to do before, and my friends and viewers have been skyrocketing. My subscriber base has increased by hundreds within the year so far, not as much as some, but a lot more than I can say for the previous three years, and this is pretty inspiring.

So, I'm back in the swing of things.

Also, Superstar of the Week is back and I have introduced Absolutely True Fact of the Week.

So, if you are reading this, you have just been through a long winded blog post about the last five years of J-Dubb's Theatre. Good on you.

J-Dubb out.







Friday, October 08, 2010

The Internets iz Broken

What would happen if the internet stopped working? This is the topic I've been asked to discuss for week 1 of the Don Vantel challenge. Here is my response. Please vote for this video by clicking the thumbs up button.


Music by Kevin MacLeod

Saturday, October 02, 2010

The Devil Sings "We Didn't Start the Fire"

In 1990, the Devil was asked to cover the song, "We Didn't Start the Fire" for his new album... Awkward...


Music by Kevin MacLeod