I've Been a Youtuber For 10 Years and Still Am Not Too Popular, But It's Okay

Youtube informs me that today is the 10th anniversary of posting my first video and creating a Youtube channel, which is now dedicated to being KaraokeRhapsody.com. I'm still not very popular, but the channel has started making tiny bits of passive income so there's no great reason to stop now. Plus I love this shit. Here are my 10 favorite videos/contents I've done so far on the channel, in no special order (most of them have to do with karaoke.)

1. Radiohead's "Climbing Up The Walls" with Spider-Gwen

#CosplayKaraoke! @CosplayKaraoke! And also Cosplay Karaoke! Spider-Jessika slinks around and Alissa purrs through Radiohead, and also shows the occasional value of a camera-falling-off-table-to-the-ground shot. #LetsJustGoToNicks

Yelp Obituaries: Famed Yelp Reviewer Dies At 27, Will Never Come Back

Life lost a customer forever yesterday when it failed to provide oxygen to Alex Darren upon request. Darren, known for his uber-popular Yelp reviews of over 107 local pubs, gastropubs, food trucks, and “dives,” was 27. Y.O.L.O. 

He had over 260K followers on the popular review site, with over 7 million confirmed stars rating his reviews. Yelp users found him extremely helpful. One of his most popular reviews of Izakaya Ba-Ka in Menlo Park, titled What kind of a Japanese place doesn’t have Teriyaki?, is excerpted below:

Fuck this place. The service was TERRIBLE. And they overcharge for all these little plates of food. I wanted to get a regular teriyaki burger with organic greens, they seemed to not know what I was talking about. Then I asked if they had gluten-free items on their menu, but it was like they’d never heard of the word, “gluten.” The sake came to my table COLD. The owner doesn’t even speak English. Plus, it was dirty. I’d rather tear my own eyeballs out than ever go to that joint again. See ya, I’ll take my business to a reliable Japanese dive, like Sushi Boat. 

Cosplay Karaoke: A Mah Manifesto

Here are some major problems in the world that #CosplayKaraoke solves:

1. Most superhero, science-fiction & fantasy films are NOT musicals.
2. Conversely, most musicals do not have superheroes in them. Some do.
3. Spider-Man: The Musical needed to be a lot more fun than it was.



4. Superheroes need to karaoke, too.

10 Easy Ways to Support Unpopular Youtube Artists Without Spending $ or Time

This question comes up now and then, so I thought it'd be useful to have a cheat sheet. We're in a time of financial calamity but people still make art, and in the social media age there are ways for fans to help/validate/enable artists which are quick and free and essential to your favorite-but-struggling videomaker/musician/writer/cat photographer continuing on their path and being able to make more art, which is what this is all kinda about, que no? 

In descending order from MOST GENEROUSLY HELPFUL to JUST SORTA HELPFUL. 

1. Give them money or gigs. (Okay, this one is not free. The rest are. But venmo'ing @dominic-mah-1 is a thing.)

2. SUBSCRIBE to their Youtube channel. Or whatever their official channel is. Subscribing should be easy for anyone who has a Youtube or Google account. Every Youtube video's got a red SUBSCRIBE button next to it if you haven't subscribed already. Subscribing is extremely helpful because when producers or hiring folk look at an artist's Youtube page, they like to see that the page has a healthy regular following. And the best part is, subscribing obligates you to nothing, you don't even have to actually follow the artist, or have deeply considered all of their videos -- but by subscribing you've helped them a LOT. Subscribing means you might get an extra email from Youtube once in a while, big deal, you can get out of that on your preferences page. All the benefits of being a working artist who can pay some bills with their Youtube stuff (people do do this) lie in the direction of having LOTS OF SUBSCRIBERS. And it takes, like, 30 seconds at most.

Golden Girls/Nick's Lounge

This is very #LetsJustGoToNicks inside-jokey, but it's also out of love for The Golden Girls theme song. Please subscribe to my youtube channel regardless! And thank you for being a friend.

Dom's Favorite And Least Favorite Songs To Hear In A Karaoke Bar

This list will be updated periodically, you may use your vouchers for 2 GA tickets depending on availability, yadda yadda yadda....

FAVORITE K-BAR SONGS TO LISTEN TO (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
Umbrella
Dancing On My Own
Super Bass
Chandelier
A Little Respect, also anything Erasure
Anything by Stevie Wonder
Almost anything by Prince
Most things by Michael Jackson or the Jackson 5
Fake Plastic Trees
Beast of Burden
Crazy For You
Untouchable Face
anything from Les Miserables
Cabaret from Cabaret
anything from Rent, Tommy or West Side Story, and one of those two Hedwig songs, but not both in the same night, jeezus they take forever

20 Thoughts On Rewatching BATMAN V SUPERMAN By Myself

1) JESUS CHRIST, MY CHILDHOOD, MY INNOCENCE. WHAT DID I GIVE IT TO? THIS ATROCITY, THIS GROTESQUE ORGY OF INFANTILE MASCULINE POSTURING? COMIC BOOKS ARE HELLA STUPID.

2) Okay, dude, it's just a movie. 

3) Hans Zimmer almost saves the day with a cohesive score combining the Batman and Man of Steel themes and introducing a bracing, percussion-heavy theme for Wonder Woman/The Trinity (which slightly recalls the theme music to both the '60s Batman TV show and the Wonder Woman TV show). 

The Star-Sword-Superhero Nerd Trifecta

So I was on a podcast with Keith of Nerds Of Color, debating the Nerdiest Asian Actor In The Universe.