ESCAPE! Videos #4

https://youtu.be/3V1PX6oFN9s

This video was posted by Yanesh — I’d never seen it either. I hope you enjoy it. I’m NOT a drummer by any stretch of the imagination. Actually, I’ve only ever played kit drums a few dozen times, always just for fun, like this little practice session you see here.

But what about all that stuff that’s happening right now? All those horrible things happening to people all over the world including here, what about all that stuff? Well, it’s time to stop watching the news like a bird watches a snake, and get out of your body for a while.

Your Out of Body Experience awaits you! Prepare yourself for a journey beyond space, time and the 10-second commercial, into the faraway realm of ESCAPE! Videos. Lose yourself in laughter and general merriment, and experience things you would never ordinarily discover, but you will discover them NOW! (snaps fingers).

As your trans-dimensional guide, I tend to plan our journey together by finding videos that, no matter what you did or how thoroughly you may have searched, you would probably never find, and what’s more, I try to make it interesting and if possible, hilarious.

Here’s a small sample of my friend and comedy mentor Frank Gorshin, doing what he did best — cracking up an audience. If you happen to be old enough to recognize the characters he’s portraying, you need to get up off the couch once in a while and try to breathe.

This next video isn’t really part of today’s Trip at all — I never intended to include it, but I happened to stumble across it in my video-searching travels, and thought it might be of some use to those in our marketing group who are trying to move merch in a variety of imaginative ways, and this could be another of them. I don’t recommend watching the entire thing — it’s a catalog of some of the things they made, just worth a glance:

https://youtu.be/rzUiUdzvw5Y

That wasn’t very hilarious, but it represents a new wave of online marketing, where you demo the merchandise and offer a link to the buying page. It probably will do as well as anything else to get you there. You could link it to an Etsy or eBay page, but then you’d want to take this down when you run short of stuff to sell, if that ever happens to you.

Keely Smith and Louis Prima were family friends — they met when my stepfather, Paul Donner Spencer, worked in Las Vegas — he was the Marketing Chief for Capitol Records, and was the founder and director of the Angel Label, which was Capitol’s classical line.

Now, coming up next, here’s an incredible technological wonder, where a person can be reconstructed by a special TV camera, in this case causing the apparent rebirth of a Live Elvis Presley, singing and talking about this very September 2022 show, live onstage, decades after his official death.

https://youtu.be/TVezHTlPMw8

Like I’ve been predicting for years, at some point, there won’t be any live actors needed for the movies, and they’ll all be designed by computer, so enjoy the live ones while they’re still around. This effect isn’t animation, it’s like the masks used on a cellphone, only it’s infinitely more technical and expensive.

So while we’re here, I’d like to present someone else who became a family friend and frequent dinner and party guest, and whom Donner also signed to Capitol Records for her first recordings, Yma Sumac, who sang in five octaves and was an actual Inca Princess!

This short publicity film was shot silent, and sound added later from the album, although she is actually singing in the film — it’s just not precisely matched, but still watchable, portraying what she was like in the 1950s, when we first saw her perform.

And just in case there’s a little extra time in your time, here’s another video for your possible enjoyment. I didn’t put these up — they get filmed by Yanesh, and she puts them up when she gets the upload time.

I haven’t seen any of them until this search cycle, and I’m very happy with them — they show people that you don’t have to be a big star with a fabulous voice to have fun with a video.

I enjoy making them, and enjoy sharing them, especially with youngsters who might not have an easy time learning an instrument.

Stage presence is something I can’t teach you, but if you learn to lower the heat on your ego — that’s a technique learned best in meditation class — you have a chance at it.

I’ve never experienced stage fright, because I never perform, I just play, sing and dance — don’t you?

Life is what you make it.

https://youtu.be/3NJ8hPwQiXM

Since it’s Sunday and we have a longer meeting than on weekdays, I’m including some of these videos of mine that were posted recently by Yanesh — thank you for that!

https://youtu.be/Ye4ORnWTF1I

If there’s still time, I’d like you to take a look at this one. Don’t forget that if you help to sell any of my paintings, you get a hefty commission!

My paintings can be donated to a number of different public institutions including some important jazz organizations and museums.

https://youtu.be/WNy3FuE4yRA

I can’t imagine that there would be enough time left over to watch this next video — it’s one that I wasn’t aware existed, and I’m glad it does — it shows how we constructed the Amazon album.

Now it’s time to go back to your crummy world of stress and starvation, misery and suffering, grievous loss and horrific crimes — in other words, you’re home.

When it gets to be too much, why not replay any of the ESCAPE! Videos I’ve posted so far, and if you’re so inclined, go on your own search — trust your instincts and you can’t go wrong.

This one’s not for you — I didn’t want to lose it, so I plugged it in here. I want to do more of these, and I’m working on getting that to happen on the stage in the big barn.

https://youtu.be/JuhxyKXvJKU

See You At The Top!!!

gorby