vouge in vlog

In video blogging, mundane is in

...Some vlogs are cooking shows, some are minidocumentaries, some are mock news programs and some are almost art films.

Most simply are records of ordinary life.

The Das Vlog, at thedasvlog.blogspot.com, recently demonstrated the virtues of urinating in the bathroom sink.

Village Girl, found at villagegirl.typepad.com, has posted a video of her 2-year-old dancing with a friend. Josh Leo taped himself browsing through his old baby pictures and art projects at joshleo.blogspot.com. Fat Girl From Ohio is a man blogging largely about his wife's pregnancy at fatgirlfromohio.org.

As the video blog Reality Sandwich recently put it in a video of vegetable shopping, quoting a mantra of the vlogosphere: "Hey, mundane is the new punk."

...Already, though, it's beginning to look a lot like television, at least in spots. Some vlogs even share television's worries, chief among them the burden of coming up with fresh programming on a regular basis.

One of the most winning vlogs is the 05 Project, the work of an 18-year-old in Britain, Ian Mills, who has promised to post a video a day all year at noservicecharge.com/videoblog.

In January, he showed the inside of his closet to prove he doesn't have just one set of clothes, but two. In February, he filmed a stuffed kangaroo seeking directions from a stuffed teddy bear sitting in front of a microwave oven.

In June, when Mills found his well of ideas running dry, he asked his audience for challenges: an easy one, a moderate one and a hard one. In each "Challenge Ian" episode, he recites the three challenges, chooses one, and then makes a video of himself doing it.

One of his most charming features is that he always takes the easy challenge. "I'm not going to slam my fingers in the door," he said, in one episode. "This isn't 'Jackass,"' he said, referring to the television show on MTV.

So far, he has drunk a pint of raw eggs and vomited; jumped into a wading pool fully clothed; and spun around until he was dizzy. It doesn't sound like much, but Mills has a great sense of pacing and drama. In short, he has television charisma.

Right now it seems that video bloggers can't agree what vlogs are exactly, and some of them want to keep it that way.

"What's the rush to define it now?" said Michael Verdi, who wrote Vlog Anarchy, a manifesto. "It would be like trying to pick a career and a mate for a newborn."

But indeed, the newborn seems to have picked its mate.

Congratulations. It's television!

- International Herald Tribune, 'In video blogging, mundane is in', 27 Jul 2005.

Perhaps I could make my own MTVs and post it up here and let the whole world admire. cool. Don't think anyone wanna watch how I pee in my toilet or how I snore like a dinosaur when I'm dead tired.