I bought an excellent stainless steel mandoline at a garage sale for $25 (normally $200 plus… SCORE!) but it didn’t have any instructions. I’m not particularly machanically inclined and this thing is terrific but a few things were really defeating me. So I did a google for instruction manuals. Got a you tube link for “how to use a mandoline slicer”, searched on that on You Tube and got a full demonstration of how to use not just a mandoline slicer, but mine precisely, which does not have the name on it, by the way, so I wasn’t searching on the name. It was incredibly gratifying.
I was prompted to this thread by my other thread this morning on wanting to hear what English sounds like to non-English speaking people. Someone linked to a YT vid that was in response to someone actually asking for examples of people imitating English, which of course meant a bunch of other videos demonstrating exactly what I wanted: to know what English sounds like to non-English speaking people.
The internet is fabulous. The fact that people take the time to fill in the blanks is wonderful. That so much obscure stuff can be found is incredibly wonderful…and spoiling. It’s getting so I get pissed when I can NOT find whatever weird obscure answer I’m seeking.
So…what is your “hot damn! Exactly what I wanted! How obscure and wonderful that it’s here!” find on Youtube…or anywhere else, actually.
When I was a kid back in the 70s, I was a big C. W. McCall (“Convoy” and a lot more) fan. Still am, but that’s not the relevant part. Anyway, I read in an old TV Guide article back in around 1975 that the C. W. McCall character was actually first used on a series of commercials for a Midwest bread company called “Old Home” (the basic song survives in “Old Home Fill ‘Er Up and Keep On a’Truckin’ Cafe.”) I wanted so much to see that commercial, but since I was in California and these were the days before readily available VCRs, I doubted I would ever get to.
Last week I was bored, so I went to YouTube and searched for C. W. McCall, looking for something else. And what should come up but an old, grainy copy of the very commercial I hadn’t thought about in about 30 years!
I’m not sure that’s quite what the OP was looking for, but it certainly delighted me at the time. (The commercialwas very cheesy, btw. )
And the question that rings in my mind…who is putting this stuff up? Why? Especially in the case of very old film and video, not broadcast since before VCRs…where did they get it??
The Video of the Coconuts (without Kid Creole) song “Did You Have To Love Me Like You Did”. Haven’t heard the song in like 25 or 30 years, and suddenly it was in my head. Then I had to find it. And there it was.
There have been so many, it’s hard to pick “most obscure” since many of mine date back to the 50’s and earlier.
But I believe the first one to surprise me that somebody had gone to the trouble to post it was the end title music for Coppola’s The Conversation by David Shire.
It has since been removed, but they used to have part of a CHiPs episode where Ponch sings “Celebration” (the Kool & the Gang hit). They still do have another segment from that same episode with a classic performance of a song named “Pain” by a punk rock band also named Pain.
There’s a video response with a wicked cute girl who has apparently not seen the original, because she has slmost no clue what she’s doing. She admits that she has no clue. And damn, she’s cute. So, thanks for that link.
I can’t find it on youtube, but I remember Jacques Pepin making an omelet on his TV show once, and it was a thing of beauty. Julia makes up in enthusiasm what she may lack in technique.
This may not seem obscure, but considering that just a few short years ago things like this didn’t exist, it’s pretty darned cool.
Whenever I get stuck on how to play a song on guitar…it’s on Youtube. I don’t have a link to share, but the other day I was wanting to learn “Rock Around the Clock.” Bingo.
Some vids are better than others for guitar instruction, but the fact that I can pinpoint a particular song or riff is what makes it so great, rather than buying a DVD that only teaches me what it has to offer.
Youtube has failed to provide video of Marooned (a wonderful Pirate Faire / RenFaire a capella group), but it does have a few videos of Adam the Bawdy Juggler
In the Late 90’s, M2 (MTV2) had spots which my wife and I found interesting. One day I found one that my wife and I quote from sometimes Blur, and Oasis
OK, actually, when we feel silly we’ll just repeat “It’s like Blur and Oasis, Blur and Oasis, Blur, and Oasis.”
Unfortunately I haven’t been able two others that they showed. One, a kid in, India I’m guessing, holding some sort of drink singing “My name is…” We could never quiet make out what his name was.
And then there was one of two stoners talking their favorite music, like Slayer and Cannibal Corpse, and one of them puts down Nirvana “Smells like Teen Spirit my ass.” He then goes on to mention Black Sabbath and says “There’s a lot wisdom in that older music.”
I work in paeds and I made a passing reference the other day to International Year of the Child. The nurse I was working with knew nothing about it - not surprising, I guess, since she was born in 1988, nine years after IYC. But I found Care for Kids on YouTube.
I was a big fan of Dave Allen, his show Dave Allen At Large became a staple of late night TV on the local PBS stations in the USA in the 80’s.
I was disappointed recently when I could not find his short spoof of Dr Who with one of his favorite characters (the Catholic Priest) and I was going to just describe the missing sketch for a question relating British TV that appeared on the SDMB.
Just when I was typing a reply to the post I did a last minute search on YouTube and sure enough:
Even more obscure, I was looking for videos showing my former high school in the old country of El Salvador, not only videos of the school did show up, but there was even a flashback video made by a former student that had photos of guys that I had met there.
From having seen it one time (I didn’t remember much else about it other than that I had seen it one time and enjoyed it), I remembered having seen a segment on Sesame Street involving a flamboyantly dressed black lady singing a song about hummingbirds in a language I didn’t speak, called “Zoom Zoom” or some reasonable phonetic equivalent. I also remembered the melody of the chorus.
From these pathetic crumbs of information, much to my astonishment I was able to track the segment down on YouTube! It turned out to be a 1987 segment with the great Cuban salsa singer Celia Cruz singing a song called “Sun Sun Babaé,” accompanied by Big Bird – “sunsún” or “zunzún” being a Cuban word for hummingbird(“You are the biggest bird I ever saw! But do you know the smallest bird I ever saw?”).
(I had remembered the second line of the chorus as meaningless sounds, since of course I didn’t speak Spanish yet, but it turns out that my memory was pretty close to the real second line, “pájaro lindo de la madrugada.” Not bad for a five-year-old. La Celia must have made a pretty big impression on me.)
Okay, last summer I left a DingDong or something out in my room, and when I noticed it there were ants swarming all over it; I started thinking about how ants can eat large things all gone and suddenly I had a burning desire to see a video of ants eating something really close up.
So I searched for “video of ants eating something really close up” and I got a hit with those exact words. That is so cool.
P.S. Chicken Fingers: “darn tootin’, it’s the big fig newton…here comes the tricky part…the big fig newtooooon!”
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