Long Live You Tube!

I had no idea that all that old stuff was on You Tube, I though it was just amateur videos posted by ordinary people. Well, I did find some old Bo Derek movies on there once, but the quality was poor and I figured that somebody had posted their pirated copies. According to Wikipedia, they have rules about posting copyrighted material, nudity, and explicit sex, but they are seldom enforced. The You Tube people do not monitor or screen the postings but, if somebody complains about a particular video, they will take a look at it and take it down if it doesn't meet their standards. If the actual copyright owner registers the complaint, they will offer to either take it down or share the advertising revenue with them.

When Old Dog mentioned that they have some clips of the Ed Sullivan Show, it made me remember Senor Wences. You know, the Spanish guy with the puppets who did, among other things, "Difficult For You, Easy For Me". I typed his name in the search box and, sure enough, he was there. Looking at those clips after all those years caused me to see them in a different light. As a kid, I just thought it was a cute puppet show. Now it dawns on me that this guy had to do all those voices, including his own, and operate the puppets, sometimes while spinning a plate on a stick or juggling several balls. In one scene, his hand puppet, Yanni, is supposed to be sick, so Wences tells him to stick out his tongue. Yanni opens his mouth, which is Wences' thumb, and out comes another finger on the same hand. He made it look easy, but I tried it myself, and I couldn't do it.

Like I said, I didn't watch a lot of TV when I was young, or a lot of movies either. One of my friends talked me into seeing "Moby Dick" with him, the good version with Gregory Peck. He had already seen it, but he wanted to see it again, which puzzled me. Why would anybody want to see the same movie twice? Okay, fast forward about 30 years: VCRs had been out awhile, but we didn't have one yet. One of our local stores had the machines for rent, so we decided to try that to see if we even liked it. As luck would have it, "Moby Dick", the good version with Gregory Peck, was on display and caught my eye, so we rented it. Shortly after that, we bought our own VCR machine, and "Moby Dick" was one of the first films we bought. All I remembered from my earlier viewing were the action scenes, most of the dialog went right over my head. This time, however, I must have paid more attention because the whole movie kept me spellbound from start to finish. I guess there is something to be said for the wisdom of age.