Veterans Day

Grock (Adrien Wettach), remembered as the “King of Clowns” tells of entertaining maimed and crippled soldiers from World War 1.

“All my desire was to enable them to forget the terrible reality of their state… little by little {I} succeeded in conjuring up that deeply human and tragi-comic world of absurdity… nonsense… and at the same time profound wisdom. Blind eyes were raised, making the smile more eloquent… these young men … clapped their stumps together for lack of hands, stamped, shouted and laughed; laughed with all their hearts.”

America has plenty of wounded warriors returning home every day. Today is the day to thank them for their service, and maybe tell them a joke.

Youtube calling

I really like this stop motion animation, inspired by Basil Wolverton

It’s quick and fun, and nicely done. The animator was Thomas R. Smith

I also noticed two other things about it. It has 16 million views, and no advertising. I recently read that popular youtube videos with advertising earn about $5000 for every million views. By that number, “Ugly Girl” could have pulled in $80,000. I wonder if Mr. Smith intentionally declined, or was just unaware of the potential. UPDATE: On further thought, perhaps Smith doesn’t legally own the piece.

I know the people behind “Kozo, the Dancing Hippo” On youtube it has been duplicated and remixed so many times I haven’t bothered to count. The views on all of them runs into the tens of millions. I imagine if they had worked the system, they could have profited from each of them. I need to learn more.

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