Author: Guy Bergstrom

Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot.

Can you make millions as a social media influencer–and how well does this whiskey pair with an Americano?

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Here’s the deal: yes, a combination camera-supercomputer-phone sits in your pocket, and you easily could film various aspects of your life or skills and share them with people from South Korea to the South of Wales with the push of A SINGLE BUTTON, or a series of buttons that are kinda hard to hit on your iPhone 11 and a lot easier with a mouse.

Technically, you could do this, and technically, there are human beings who make a living making YouTube videos, TikToks, and other things that were invented this morning that Silicon Valley has not told you about.

Also, a social media personality who’s name rhymes with Togan Maul got paid a zillion dollars to hug and paw at an undefeated boxer who is 20 years older and 30 pounds lighter and the only reason he didn’t get knocked the hell out in the first round was the undefeated boxer would have totally thrown away the chance to get paid a bazillion dollars AGAIN to hit this clown for eight rounds.

But no, average people will not make millions of dollars on social media, whether it’s your 16-year-old cousin madly live-streaming 12 hours a day while he plays Call of Duty or the master gardener down the street making TikToks about ornamental roses.

They will be lucky to make serious dollars at all. Here’s why:

Whatever you are into, other people are also totally into it

And that’s the problem: if nobody else is talking about your special deal, and there’s a beautiful void in the market waiting for you to fill it, it probably means it’s such a tiny niche that the audience is equally hard to find with a microscope.

Yet if the opposite is true, and half the planet starts totally nerding out about ornamental roses or knitting hats for cats, you can guarantee those needs will get fed by magazines, blogs, and social media goodness. Why? Because they’re chasing eyeballs and ears, just like everybody else, for the ad monies.

The competition is insane

Sure, your friend the master gardener spent five years studying ornamental roses. There are, at a bare minimum, 5.621 bazillion other people who are into roses and have iPhones in their pocket, plus people with PhD’s in plant biology who are into roses, and a few who did their doctoral thesis on those suckers.

Also: it is far, far easier for somebody who is already (a) famous and (b) rich to hop into whatever social media field they want and make money, even if they have only spent five minutes staring at the ornamental roses their gardener put in this afternoon.

You need to get millions of views to make real money, and even more to make great money. Guess who has skads of followers, access to publicity machines, and a burning need for attention? Every actor, professional athlete, big-time journalist, and rock star.

So you are competing not just against all the other experts and aficionados in your field, but with every celebrity alive today along with some dead ones, because apparently Tom Clancy is a zombie robot still pumping out novels and video games.

I’m not saying the lead singer of Nickelback could get totally into knitting hats for cats tomorrow and crush your beautiful vlog into powder. No. That would be ridiculous.

I’m saying the drummer for Nickelback could steamroll your TikTok with their tour bus and not even know he murderized it.

There are a hundred ways to get squashed in this game

Ideally, you want to be (a) the first to show up on social media to fill an empty void, like that kid who reviews toys and now makes crazy amounts of cash, (b) the person with the most knowledge or skill about that topic, (c) the most charming and interesting and funny of all possible people, (d) the one with the highest production values, with a team behind you to shoot, edit, and produce a mountain of content every week, if not every day, and (e) the best possible person at marketing and publicity, with a different team handling the nuts and bolts of that.

You might be two of those things. Even if you are amazing in every area, and possess magical rocks that let you never sleep or eat, there isn’t enough time in the day. Which leads us to the next shebang.

One person cannot do all these things

Even if you are doing this by yourself, and beat the odds by becoming so well-viewed that you can quit the day job and buy your family and friends and casual acquaintances houses and yachts and Lear jets, that means all sorts of other people will notice there is CASH TO BE HAD, causing a gold rush to your peaceful little tropical island made of Benjamins, and these hordes will invade your favorite beach and try to take over the entire island.

Many of those people will be amateurs.

Others will be organizations–companies–that produce media content for profit. TV and movie production folks are far better at shooting and editing video. Radio pros rock the finest podcasts. And if the talent isn’t clicking, they can try somebody else in front of the camera or behind the microphone. And these companies already have viewership they can channel to new products.

It’s all about getting attention

And if you really drill down to the guts of it, social media influencers aren’t really into a specific topic or thing, per se. They don’t get famous for being an expert, or for being especially talented, funny, or sane.

Social media influencers are good at one thing: attracting attention. They are shameless chameleons who will switch platforms, interests, political views, issues, hobbies, and personalities if it means a bigger audience.

They are the trolliest of the trolls. Nobody can out-shame them.

This path leads to darkness, mug shots where the nightshow Jimmys try to guess what drug you were on at the time, then rehab.

Nope out of all that. Not worth it.

Do what you love for the love of it first

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t go wild on TikTok or YouTube–have fun with it. And yeah, you might do really well and make some side money.

But do not listen to that 16-yeard-old cousin, the one who isn’t going to college because he’s too busy training for his professional career streaming Call of Duty, the kid who says you should quit the day job and turn the guest bedroom into a video production studio.

Do what you love for the love of it, and do not endure sleepless nights trying to keep up with the Kardashians.

Do what must be done so your kids have food, clothes, and health coverage.

How well does this whiskey pair with an Americano?

While on vacation, my sister-in-law and I are trying tiny airplane-style bottles of Irish cream and such in our coffees.

I highly encourage all four of these glorious things: vacations, sisters-in-law, Irish cream, and coffee.

Today’s whiskey creamer is Brady’s Irish Cream.

It’s fine. Nothing terrible, nothing amazing. I was hoping to get hit by an F5 tornado of flavor, and perhaps it’s my fault for ordering the Largest Americano Known to Human Civilization, which could have diluted the itty bitty bottle into nothingness.

Verdict: 7/10.

Writing, COVID, working from home, and how well this whiskey pairs with coffee

Posted in 4 Writing Secrets Wednesday, 5 Random ThursdayLeave a comment
Photo by Nic McPhee

Listen: I have hardly posted a thing because the zombie COVID pandemic was the crazy, and working from home is both hard and easy, in that it’s easy to work harder and write far more speeches and such when you are in your pajamas at midnight and not wasting two hours a day on the highway.

So here are some thoughts.

Myth: Writers and editors are solitary creatures.

writing cat, writers, writing, why is writing so hard, writer's block

Reality: Many wordsmiths may be introverts, or extroverts, or whatever. But working with words does not make you anti-social. Not at all. I know people who bang on the keyboard for monies in a variety of ways–reporters, speechwriters, novelists, screenwriters, editors–and 5.6 metric tons of them are some of the most charming and social people I know.

The truth is, WRITING is the solitary part.

You need peace and quiet to do the creative bit, even if you work in a social setting like me with people everywhere. A ton of folks need to close the door, put on headphones, and go.

I can’t close the door and get solitude at work 99 percent of the time, so I’ve learned to tune out the rest of the world and bang on the keyboard faster than light, going back in time to before sound was invented, then returning to the social world when the draft is done.

Writers are different, and there are other folks who like doing amazing first drafts that take a lot longer. My belief is editing and polishing is a lot easier, and you can do a lot more editing and such with people around and noise. Yet that creative part, the hardest and most fun bit, usually takes some intense focus and solitude.

Myth: Working from home will (a) disappear along with COVID or (b) is the future for all possible workers forever and ever

woman using a laptop
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Reality: There are some jobs that have to be done in person. Though I actually kinda believe (b) is true–though only for the workers with the leverage to fight and keep it. Folks were just as productive as when they drove into the office.

A ton of companies and organizations are probably feeling completely befuddled about this now. Maybe they’re jumping up and down that they don’t have to pay massive amounts of cash to rent office space, or freaked out because they aren’t renting and just built a giant building that’s empty.

Middle managers are likely losing their minds because they’re designed to operate in person.

I think this will be good for the workplace, especially people with kids and dogs and long commutes. Pretty good bet that a lot of workers who can Grab a Laptop and Do the Job Anywhere may want to come into the office one day a week for all those in-person meetings.

How well this whiskey pairs with coffee

It’s technically a whiskey creamer, and I am technically on vacation, as is my sister-in-law down here visiting. So we we are trying all these itty bitty bottles of different whiskey creamers in our morning coffee. YOU SHOULD DO THIS, but only on vacation or weekends because if you drive hammered you get wrecked, that is my PSA, kthxbai.

Today’s little bottle is: Sheelin White Chocolate Country Creamer, a product of Ireland, rated a 93 by the Beverage Tasting Institute and silver medal winner at the San Francisco Spirits Competition, where it excelled in the high jump.

Sheelin White Chocolate 750ml

Is it good? No.

It is great, and you ask yourself is there any alcohol in this at all, and you wonder why everything is second-person now, like it’s a bad detective novel, until you look at the tiny print on the tiny bottle to realize this adorable bit of cream and white chocolate is not kidding, and does contain whiskey, and is 28 proof.

Verdict: 11/10, would drink again.

The path

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One if my favorite hiking trails. Long, straight sections like this that are always beautiful, four seasons a year.

My busy season (session) is over, and the pandemic’s end is in sight. I’ll post more soon and hope to catch up with all of you.

I hope you are recovering from the awfulness of covid and 2020.

And I hope that 2021 is a better, smoother path for you.

VENGEANCE by Zack Hemsey is brutal and brilliant

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Technically, this isn’t a music video, and technically, I don’t care.

IT IS THE GENIUS.

Watch, then let’s discuss.

Perfect, right? The music matches the scene.

Not a little, not a lot, but so much I want to marry it.

It’s a slow burn. Tension keeps rising and rising, until it breaks and the drums kick in and it’s like Phil Collins song except Denzel Washington is slaying bad guys with severe amounts of style.

What I love about this action sequence, and the entire movie, is how Denzel’s Washington character keeps surviving and thriving despite being outnumbered and outgunned.

In 99.9 percent of action movies, the hero wins because he’s bigger and stronger (Arnold Schwarzenegger), flexible enough to do the side splits on different planets (Jean-Claude Van Damme), has better gear (IRON MAN, BATMAN), or has superpowers.

Denzel’s character wins by being clever. It’s so much more satisfying than mowing down acre after acre of faceless bad guys before confronting the Final Boss Villain on a rooftop, at night, while it’s raining, then listening to his maniac monologue and chucking him down a chasm to get impaled on something long and sharp.

There’s no creativity in showing us that again. We have seen it 329 times.

Denzel’s character in this movie, and the sequel, wins by being smarter than the bad guys. And he does it without getting repetitive, which is refreshing and entertaining. Even the first real fight scene of this movie, he’s planning things out and out-smarting the villains.

The final Home Depot-ish fight is the most creative of all. I love how he chains his traps together, starting with the stuff on the floor to use his barbed-wire and cement bag trap, then the next thug getting speared with a gardening tool when he stops to check out the body of his buddy.

Without music, this would be a wonderful scene.

With this music, it’s iconic, and I’ve watched the thing, like, five bazillion times. Do I rewatch Schwarzenegger mowing through 200 extras in baggy uniforms again and again? No.

Hat’s off to the director and the songwriter for pulling this off.

And yes, I have seen THE LITTLE THINGS, and yes, we will chat about it later this week. A beautiful film.

Bonus: full song from the movie soundtrack.

Chapter 20: What’s real and what’s useless prepper fan-fic?

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Listen: there are tons of prepper blogs, YouTube channels, slick magazines, and Facebook pages.

They all want you to like and subscribe, because that means more eyeballs and ads and monies in their pockets.

But is any of it smart?

Let’s get real. Would any of that stuff have helped you get through 2020?

You don’t need to close your eyes and imagine a world full of zombies, an invasion of Tentacle Aliens from Planet Xenon, or for all your kitchen appliances connected to the interwebs to get sentient and totally inspired after listening to you watch TERMINATOR 2 for the fifth time.

The Year 2020, which will forever suck, featured a global pandemic and a worldwide recession. Two epic disasters.

Let’s do a little cost-benefit analysis of common prepper items, most expensive to free, and ask ourselves if helped anybody get through 2020.

Personal space in converted missile silo

PRICE TAG: $1 million.

VERDICT: Could sorta be useful, if you were the only person inside and really didn’t want to catch COVID. Totally useless if anybody in there with you had COVID, since all y’all would be guaranteed to get it. Somebody would have to deliver food and water and such.

Out of the price range of all but the 1 percent and pretty useless anyway. You could do the same thing while saving a million bucks by working from home and getting groceries & Chinese takeout delivered.

Underground bunker

PRICE TAG: $50,000 to $400,000 or more.

VERDICT: Same thing as the fancypants missile silo. Meh. Waste of your precious cash.

A garage full of ammo, AR-15’s, and MRE’s

PRICE TAG: $10,000 to infinity, the way ammo prices are these days.

VERDICT: Again, not a help during 2020. Wrong way to prep for a pandemic and/or recession.

Survival sailboat, a la Kevin Costner (legend!) in WATERWORLD

PRICE TAG: Depends on size, new or used, plain or cushy. Tiny and used might be as much as a lightly used Camry, nicer and bigger ones will cost three times as much as your house.

VERDICT: This would actually keep you nicely isolated, safe from COVID and mortgage payments if you sold your house and lived on it. Better have WiFi to keep working, though. And yeah, if another apocalypse decided to pile on, you would be safe from zombies. This is our first semi-winner. Not great, but not useless.

Survival SUV or muscle car, a la MAD MAX

PRICE TAG: How much guzzleline will the engine use?

VERDICT: Actually a bad idea during a real apocalypse and absolutely useless during 2020. Nope. But you’d scare everybody pulling into Safeway.

A collection of survival gear, bug-out bags, and blades

Not a bad selection for a gas station from mallninjashit

PRICE TAG: Grab the pre-packed camo bag at Costco, some firestarters, and a great machete–all for around $100. Or you can go nuts and err on the opposite end of cheap r/MallNinjaShit, spending the firstborn’s college tuition fund by filling the garage with primo gear from REI and a collection of blades that each cost more than my first car.

VERDICT: Never a bad idea to have some camping and survival gear. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires can always happen. They might have done their thing where you live, just to make 2020 suck more. So sure, not a bad good idea. Just don’t blow the college fund.

Skills, skills, and, for variety, more skills

PRICE TAG: Nothing, unless you sign up for classes, which you’re not doing because there’s a freaking pandemic and people are all broke.

VERDICT: Absolutely useful. Survival Lilly on YouTube is super informative, and what she does in the woods doesn’t require any money or fancy equipment. Do it.

Sweat and veggies

PRICE TAG: Nothing but time, though you can get all fancy and suckered into the idea that virtual coaches and Peloton bikes are required. They aren’t. Hiking, walking, running, punching things, flipping tires, hiking–whatever you’re into, do it.

VERDICT: Insanely good. We will all die, and chances are it won’t be after zombies go nom-nom-nom on our legs or plasma vampires arrive from the seventh dimension to eat the sun. It’s pretty much a 95 percent chance you or I will die to what everybody else tends to die from: a car accident (seatbelts!) or a health problem. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, COVID-19. And the best way to avoid all that is to get in shape and eat healthier.

Bottom line

Your time, money, and health are all precious and limited.

There’s no shortage of people who’ll try to scare you into buying their stuff. Except 2020 showed how useless a lot of that stuff is.

The smartest way to prep for any given apocalypse is simple: Sweat a little more. Eat more veggies and fewer chocolate chip cookies. Learn as much as you can.

And yeah, if you want to go wild, look into living on a sailboat, you know, more like Don Johnson in MIAMI HEAT than Kevin Costner in WATERWORLD, though you’d be ready to go all WATERWORLD if stuff happened..

But save your money.

This music video is peak internet and you are required by law to watch it

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Listen, I usually (1) make fun of wealthy stars spending insane amount of dough on CGI for a music video full of cringe, or (2) explore the depths of the interwebs and sometimes go back in time to discover the obscure and bizarre.

This video is completely different.

Somebody you never heard of is playing in the park, banging on bongos, and singing words from a 1930’s song that you will not understand unless you’re from the northern parts of Finland.

Even crazier: the melody goes back to the 17th century, according to something on the series of tubes called Wikiwand, which says: “The song is sung in very heavy Eastern Savonian dialects spoken in North Karelia. It takes the point of view of a young man and a woman named Ieva/Eva/Eeva in Finnish, who sneaks away to where everyone is dancing to a polka, and dances all night.”

Who can’t get down with that?

Also: although I’m Swedish, you have to admit Finland rocks. Best education system in the world. Beat the Soviet army and their tanks during World War II with a bunch of folks running around on skis with rifles. Wrote songs about people sneaking away to dance all night way back in the 17th century. Get on with your bad self, Finland.

Here’s the original footage.

Cool, right?

Then another man who’s not a household name takes that footage, uses some video editing magic, and turns some folk polka bongo goodness into an Epic Club Remix that I have happily listened to FIVE BAZILLION TIMES.

I mean, this thing is my new jam. I could not love it more. Crank up the volume to 11 and listen.

You’ve got the sound guru, a woman dancing like nobody’s watching, Vibing Cat–and to top it, a Random Horn and Strings Section.

I could not love this more. It’s impossible. Tried to. Didn’t work.

The Kiffness, you rock. Give us moar moar MOAR.

Chapter 19: Why doomsday shelters in missile silos are an achy breaky big mistakey

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Oh, it seems like a beautiful idea: turning an abandoned missile silo into a super-secure doomsday shelter. Such a great thought that a number of people have done it, written about it, or put it in video games and movies.

Check out a story about one such Missile Silo of the Apocalypse:

Okay, you’ve got a giant, underground concrete structure that’s already built to military standards. Level after level that you can divide up and effectively defend. Add drinking water, fuel, generators, fridges, ginormous 4k televisions, a swimming pool, and stores of num-nums–bam, you’re set, as long as you can write a check for up to $3 million, right?

Here’s why all of that is, to be technical, a towering pile of stinking poppycock.

Reason No. 1: Your secret hidey hole is not secret

If they can’t find you, they can’t sneak into you secret bunker or cut you off from sources of food, fuel, and water. This is why being deep underground is so appealing.

This advantage is completely negated by having so much press and video online all about your Missile Silo of the Apocalypse.

No, they don’t reveal the exact location. Don’t need to–there are only so many missile silos in the United States, with a bazillion of them in Southern Canada (North Dakota and South Dakota). Oh look, here’s a map.

Map of western South Dakota with the locations of silos and control centers noted

Sure, there are silos in other states, and the Pentagon will not let you walk around active missile silos. They probably have land mines and razor wire and soldiers with rifles protecting those.

Old missile silos that got sold, now, will not be secret at all.

There will be all kinds of paper trails showing when a surplus missile silo went on sale, who bought them, and the location of that property. Even if all you knew was the name of the company selling missile silo condos, it would be easy to see what real estate they owned and exactly how much they pay in property taxes and where such properties were. In my little rural county, we have all that info available via a google maps thing and such. It’s fancy.

Even if you assume all of that isn’t true, the interets are powerful, and five random peoples on Reddit could watch some promos videos like the one above, examine them frame by frame and figure out exactly where the secret bunker is.

So yeah, your secret bunker is not so secret. Which makes it far less safe.

Reason No. 2: Giant target on your back

Imagine the apocalypse hitting tomorrow, and you are not wealthy enough throw a random million or three on a missile silo bunker.

Say you’ve got a family with two kids and no food. But you read about these silos, and there’s one twenty miles away, packed with drinking water and hot food and rich people who don’t have callouses on their hands and probably never served a tour in Afghanistan or Iraq, like you have, and yeah, you’re getting desperate.

Plenty of people will look at these missile silos as a great place to loot or take over.

With all the press and attention, the locations will not be a secret to locals. They will have known about the missile silos back when the military ran them, and chances are a lot of people have family and friends who worked to build these monstrous stuctures, or worked inside them before retiring from the service and settling down nearby.

Locals won’t just know about your bunker. They will be coming for it.

Reason No. 3: You won’t reach the missile silo

I will bet you my first-born and the title to my house that 99.9 percent of people who can afford to drop a bazillion dollars on a missile silo bunker 10 miles west of Nowhere, North Dakota, do not actually live anywhere near that place.

When things are normal, sure, they can fly in and spend a long weekend play-acting their Mad Max fantasies in the bunker before flying back to a mansion or yacht or vacation home in Palm Beach.

Once an apocalypse actually hits, those planes will not be flying. The highways will become impassable. You won’t be able to hike through 500 or 1000 miles of wilderness with your Louis Vuitton go-bag and make it all the way to Nowhere, North Dakota.

The zombies will feast upon your corpse before you make it 30 miles on foot.

Reason No. 4: Best-case scenario is still bad, you die, the end

Say all of the above doesn’t happen. The locals have their memories of all local missile silos wiped from their brains by the Men in Black, and Scottie transports your rich butt straight from wine tasting in the Hamptons to the living room of your fancy bunker.

Congratulations. You delayed death by months, maybe even a year. Two if you’re truly lucky. Because the fuel will run out, meaning the electricity–hot water, hot food, hot showers, all of that–will also run out. Your bright, comfortable bunker will turn into a dark and cold hole in the earth.

Reason No. 5: Better uses for a mountain of money

If you are part of the 1 percent, and have money to burn on a missile silo condo that you’ll never use, there are smarter ways to blow a million or three.

As we said before, the wealthiest people–in America and around the world–tend to live in large, coastal cities. New York, LA, Miami, London, Tokyo.

There’s an ocean, and beaches, and boats.

A boat is a great idea for the apocalypse. Especially if it’s (a) a sailboat, which would work even after fuel ran out, and (b) you live nearby. Which you likely do.

If there’s an apocalypse, you have zero worries about zombies and such after sailing out and dropping anchor. Easy peasy, lemon squeazy. Fish for your protein. Get into eating kelp and such. Grow some lemons or whatever on board to ward off scurvy.

Your main worry, long-term, will be pirates. Invest some of that one to three million into pirate-proofing measures. A flamethrower or three, and some long-range guns. Go wild.

Reason No. 6: This entire option is not an option for 99.99 percent of us

I started writing this series with the intention of being brutally practical.

Blowing one to three million on a missile silo condo is not just impractical, but wasteful and not an option for regular human beings like you and me.

If you can casually lay down a few million like that, email me and let’s spitball other fun ideas for spare cash sitting around. I HAVE MANY.

So what is smart?

Multiple options. Chances are, you drive to work. Could be 5 miles or 50 miles. You need an option near home and another option near work.

Cheap or free is best. Your options don’t need to be fancy. They need to be close enough and good enough.

Sustainable is key. Any solution that relies on fuel, ammunition, or electricity is not sustainable.

Let’s work though the problem. You need shelter, fire, food, tools, and medicine. Enough to get you through the transition from civilization to Barter Town.

Yet any such shelter is temporary.

Surviving any sort of apocalypse means returning to a nomadic life of hunting, gathering, and looting. Yes, the looting part is the most fun in movies and books. Just think about this, though. The only way you avoid nomadic life is to master farming. Unless your secret bunker has a working farm, stocked with crops and animals and equipment, you’re gonna be on the move.

Here are three examples of what would work for somebody on the move. First is a log cabin in the woods, hopefully near running water, as a long-term home base maybe to survive the winter after you stock up all spring and summer.

Second is a cheap sailboat, letting you be a nomad from the start. Get your WATERWORLD on.

Third is mountain bikes, backpacks, and tents, letting you and a team be mobile and able to set up camp anywhere.

What’s definitely not smart is a missile silo bunker. Though this story does tempt me into selling spots at my secret series of Survival Cabins in the Olympic Mountains.

Previous posts:

Okay, this video is clever and hilarious–well played, well played

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As I’ve been married for FIVE BILLION YEARS, and have never used this thing people call “dating apps,” which sounds like an appetizer made from dates and possibly wrapped in bacon, I am unfamiliar with the Tinders and the Matches and the Bumblebees and such.

What I do know is that this new ad for Match is brilliant.

Here, watch it, then we’ll talk smack.

Okay, that’s perfect, right? The actors, the meet-cute scene, the montage. ALL OF IT.

What’s especially great to me is Ryan Reynolds was involved, and whatever he touches is inevitably funny, along with Taylor Swift letting him use Love Story, her best song, always will be, and no, I have ignored most of her pop songs and actually like the country stuff better, and the new indie piano album, understated, under-rated.

Taylor, you keep innovating instead of pumping out the same songs and albums for 40 years. No, I am not looking at you, AC/DC.

Okay, these dudes have a point.

Also: I would listen to the entire DOG ON THE ROAD parody album. Make it happen. Send me the link and I will send you monies to Australia via horses, dolphins, and finally drop bears wearing cute little ’80s fanny packs, Chris-Pine style, and yes, you want to see the full footage instead of three seconds of a teaser, here you go.

Note: I hope you are all surviving 2020, and I wish you all the best during the last few weeks of the Worst Year Ever–and my promise to you is that 2021 will be far, far better.

Exploding Whale cray-cray–watch glorious remastered 4k footage on 50th anniversary of historic event

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Now, weird news has happened forever. We just didn’t have CNN, fark.com and Wonkette around to shoot video, take notes, and tell us about when Billy Bob the Caveman drank that fermented berry juice and tried to kill a sabre-toothed tiger with a spoon. Pour one out for Billy Bob.

Florida Man has always been when us, even before there was a Florida.

HOWEVER: Perhaps the greatest local news video of all time, when it comes to weird news, is the Exploding Whale.

I’ve written about this before. The reporter who covered the story wrote an entire book after the event.

All we could see, though, was grainy footage. Clear enough to witness the cray-cray, just not up to our standards.

Today, however, for the first time, we can view the build-up and the carnage in glorious high-definition, because the reporter found the original footage on this stuff called “film” and technical geniuses turned that film into digital goodness.

Here, watch and share, and raise your glass to celebrate the 50th anniversary of what I believe should be a national holiday: The Day the Whale Exploded.

The best pro-Biden ads of 2020

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Listen: I’ve worked as a reporter or speechwriter since forever, and yes, there are receipts: I have a Bob Kerrey bumper sticker.

So yeah, it’s fair to say I’ve seen 5.93 metric tons of campaign ads.

And yes, 99 percent of them are typically unremarkable. Part of that is because political consultants bought into the “only negative ads work!” idea and ran with it all the way to crazy town.

This meant seeing piles of black-and-white ads with scary music and narrators trying to make me think Candidate A would outlaw ice cream and turn my house into a brothel for North Korean soldiers.

This year is an exception, at least on the Biden side, with Trump busy trying to outdo the infamous Demon Sheep ad. Yes, I am not making that up. There really is a Demon Sheep ad that Carly spent real cash to create and run in California, which is not exactly a cheap media market.

Hurray for positive ads in 2020

There’s some new research that positive ads work, thank God.

Biden has run a ton of them this year.

The Lincoln Project is known for scathing, hilarious ads, but they’ve also run impressive positive ones.

Many of these are long-form, which is also a nice switch. I’ve been in the gym for an hour in the morning during presidential years when every single ad was political and they were all Black-and-White Scary Music Nonsense.

Here are my favorites of 2020, with most of these set to music.

For Your Boys

Sam Elliot FTW

One Opportunity

America the Beautiful

Hometown

The Change

Brandon

Did I miss your favorite ad? There have been many this year. Hit me in the comments.