The In-Sect - video

Sol Bernstein is the creation of English stand up comedian Steve Jameson. He’s playing an 85 year old-school Jewish comic: “After 25 years of semi retirement, playing nursing homes, Sol Bernstein has found a new audience – he had to, his old one died.”
This tribute act is a very old fashioned combination of raunchy oneliners and far fetched puns. But this works very well and gives you this cozy nostalgic feeling. His website" sports four Quicktime movies of his show (a little slow loading, be patient): Sol Bernstein’s homepage, an interview with Steve Jameson. Or simply book him for your next party here!

May I present to you “Fugly Duckling”: “Our bottom line is fun! Were not going to be the next Metallica, so we go out there and kick ass having fun. We are the formula for the Ultimate All American Band, two of us are active duty air force, all four of us love Star Wars. We drink blue, we sweat white and we bleed red.”
Actually there was an All-American Band and none of them were active duty officers. I further like the patriotic ambition to align your metabolism to the colors of your nation’s flag. I drink black, I sweat red and I bleed gold!
Fugly Duckling live!

Lance Krall is a comedian from Monterey, California. He is best known for playin “Kip Calderas” in the “Joe Shmoe Show”. In 2005 he and his friends produced the “Lance Krall Show” which only aired on Spike TV for one season. There’s no DVD available right now, but the bigger part of their skits is available on YouTube – thank God.
Watch my favorite clips: To Kick is to Kill, SNL audition reject, Best Buddies, The Morning After, Wolf Boy at ComicCon, Sunday Hangover, Oh My God, Thank God For God, Boss’ Bake Sale and Triple Homicide.

He’s working on a new show right now called “Free Radio” – I’m looking forward to see it!

Do you remember the scandal created by the close up photographs of crying toddler faces? Popular photographer Jill Greenberg made her infantile victims cry by taking away their candies. Many were shocked by this methods. Jill Greenberg, 40, mother of two was bombarded with hatemail. Francis Bavierè from Brussels, Belgium makes his readers aware of these three commercials for the Belgian quiz show “Blokken”. (Based on a pun: ‘Blokken’ is the Flemish word for building bricks like Lego) BTW: The concept of Blokken is quite interesting – it is entirely based on Tetris! And don’t forget to see the commercials (which were never broadcasted): Noha, Florentin and Louis. I think there is no long-term damage done, but it’s low-down anyway.

The montage above shows the founders of YouTube (from left to right) Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The three upper images are from a video showing them as they discuss the failure of their website. Must be from April or May 2005. Half a year later Seqoia Capital invested $ 3.4 million in their project. (Don Valentine, founder of Seqoia, invested in Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Oracle and Apple!) One year later their little site was the fastest growing website in the history of the internet, even outpacing MySpace. (Its current Alexa ranking is 4, directly behind the three big search engines.) On October the 9th, 2006 – 18 month after this video was made YouTube was aquired by Google for $1.65 billion.
Chad and Steve’s shares were worth $326 million, while Jawed only earned $64.6 million, due to the fact he had left the company to graduate in computer science.
The second row of images shows the three founders as they can be seen in the latest clips I could find on YouTube.
Watch: YouTube, the early days and the first video published at YouTube at 8:27PM on Saturday April 23rd, 2005. History in the making!

I always wanted to be a juror in televised singing competition like American Idol or Pop Idol – wouldn’t a casting show for casting show jurors be a great concept, Mr. Endemol? – so I invented one myself: Welllllcooome to the first round of the In-Sect’s WebFame-Starsingers competition. The first assignment is – drum roll – “What’s Going On?” from the fabulous “4 Non Blondes”. Give your best! And here they come:

10 Metaplasma featuring Carlo D’Agosto

This band is too busy watching their instruments. Mr. D’Agosto seems to be a quite skilled guitar player. But it really would help, if he’d play the same song as the band. My tip: Don’t quit your dayjob!

9 Biboille:“I know I suck”

This is not really a cover, instead we watch a 12-year old practizing the guitar. Adding 10 points for the chuzpe to upload this, subtracting 10 points for the bad camera angle.

8 Cajo Kosiner: Maniac Version

Cajo is dedicated and really a guitar pro – but why does he sit on a sofa, when he wants to dance? This makes the performance a little nervous – but I like the Bob Dylan part at 1:50!

I’m sorry, male competitors: It seems like this is a women’s song – or do you really have problems with our little brotherhood of men?

7 Ann Spade

I’m totally objective with a clear clinical approach to my job! I’m not distracted by the fact that Ann is clearly the best looking competitor, but the guitarplay just is not convincing, sorry. Hah – now you see, what you get for not dating me!

6 Nishtha: YourNightmare

Hey, she took that nickname all by herself! And it’s misleading: I can’t imagine she’s looking nightmarish, that she’s gotta hide in the shadows! Nishta, we average-joe-consumers are quite used to actually SEE the artist. 10 points minus for playing hide and seek. 3 point plus for creative guitar play!

5 Demented Poet

Rosanne, I like your hat and your website, but you clearly overact here – that’s just too much staginess, sorry.

4 Elen: The singing life of Els

Ah, finally we reach semi-pro level! But, it’s just the same: Too much facial expression. 7 points minus for not playing the guitar, 3 points plus for the artsy greyscale and 2 points plus for showcasing your hometrainer.

3 Michelle & the Stuff Toys

Michelle is a professional musician with regular gigs at places called the Mox Bar, BarStop, Wala Wala, Balaclava or ACID bar. But the sound quality of the clip is just plain… horrible. Also knowing the lyrics could prove helpful.

2 Ben Harpette

“I think it’s not bad, isn’t it?”, Ben writes. No, it’s not bad – it’s the second place – and I think there’s even more to develop! But, alas, a penalty for not switching on the light again.

1 I’m Jennifer. I am 13

“I hope some day for a MIRACLE and I will be DISCOVERED!” I always have a spooky feeling when 13-year old children sing like grown-ups, but she really has a great voice and great potential. Winner!

(Fanfare, Clapping. Howling. Tears. Laughter. Paternal smile of the showmaster – that’s me.)

Note: Excluded from the contest were Michael Flatley (Thank you, Ghost Morphine for showing that “What’s Going On?” syncs perfectly with Michael Flatley’s Lord Of The Dance.), the 4 Non Blondes for being the original, the Gay He-Man for being too well-worn and Pink, just for being too good to be true.