Wow, it’s YouTube Tuesday again!

Sigh, this darn thing is going to happen every week, huh?

Note: As always, my links to YouTube videos are not necessarily “work safe”, in that they may contain strong language, gratuitous violence, and interspecies relationships between humans and pandas.

While I am in the midst of my 400 page long blog entry treatise on Natalie, the CommunityChannel, I thought I would pause to tell you about one of YouTube’s up and coming stars, a guy with mad skillz, a guy with an endearing personality, a bright, funny, insightful, whimsical sort of guy who really knows just how much Life Sucks!:

The vote mentioned in the vid concerned the Tale of the Stashe. The link takes you to one of my playlists, a feature of YouTube where in a user can compile a collection of associated videos together. This link allows you to automatically play through all of the videos in the collection.

Joe “Vanawesome” is a truly talented video maker. His ideas for vids are clever and always enjoyable - some of the best you will find on YouTube - but it is in his use of special effects that he stands out from the pack.

Warning: The first, second, third, fourth, and fifth times I saw the following video, it scared the bejeezus out of me…you have been warned:

Weird and awesome - Vanawesome - isn’t it? His toolbox includes such goodies as Adobe After Effects, 3D Studio MAX, and Final Cut Pro, (wow, I love Amazon.com).

Joe’s diverse editing skills are on display at his own website, http://www.vanawesome.com/. Unfortunately, there is a message there about his “site [being] dormant and possibly removed… ” I hope not. At the very least, he should post his demo reel to YouTube. Speaking of demos, check out this preview of a film he made in college: Punching Hellen Keller (back to the future).

OK, I have to confess, my first impression of Joe, when I encountered his Boobies make me wanna ROCK OUT, wasn’t a very good one. Little did I realize at the time how powerful Vanawesome’s rocking out is upon women; nowadays, his female subscribers can’t wait to give him a boobie shout out!

Oh, that reminds me, one of YouTube’s very popular vloggers, Paperlilies aka Paperlilies Art aka xplx recently posted her own thoughts regarding Youtube Boobs and the YouTube partnership program.

Vanawesome’s next effort to be brought to my attention, however, was brilliant. In response to someone joking about him stalking CommunityChannel, he brought forth his good friend Scott Baio:

Baio has become a beloved stock character in Vanawesome’s repertoire, (well, he’s been in at least two vids so far ). Joe’s funny 70s and 80s pop culture references are very much a part of his brilliance, (at least for an aging 30s something guy like me).

Joe’s reaction to CommunityChannel’s removing all of her vids one day was also a truly inspired effort, and lead to the handlebar mustache saga I mentioned earlier. The pièce de résistance to the whole affair was this extraordinary video, one of the very finest I have ever seen on YouTube:

With this one video, Joe “Vanawesome” let the YouTube community know that he had arrived, and was ready to take his place among YT’s very best stars.

Another thing that impresses me about Joe is his ability to inspire others. As the above collaborative video, Demon Possessed Mustache / Real Life Transformer!!!, shows, he has quickly made a lot of talented friends in the community. One of nicest, sweetest of his friends is this lovely young Canadian woman, Lindsay “Mustardsauce“, who was inspired to create her own rendition of Plain White T’s Hey There Delilah, as an ode to Joe and her other favorite YouTube boys:

OK, this blog has become, like, 10 times longer than I had intended, so lets finish up: without going into any details, there was a recent “war” thingy on YT concerning a popular YouTuber called Lisa Nova and activities she engaged in that many felt were spam-like. This was Joe’s contribution to the “war”, in his polka-inspired “gansta-hosen” and all:

Finally, Vanawesome has recently started a new channel, in which his alter ego Big Fat Crossmack parodies Ian Crossland, an, um, unusual guy…I think the parody itself says it all:

Cheers, Joe.

P.S. I made some quick stylesheet-related changes to the blog today, so things may look a little more goofy than usual.

Filed under: YouTube Tuesday