Isn't it Ironic?

What is irony and why am I blogging about it? Here's one definition:

Irony is a literary or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what a speaker or a writer says; and what he or she means, or is generally understood.
In modern usage it can also refer to particularly striking examples of incongruities observed in everyday life between what was intended or said and what actually happened.

Let me give you the short version, or at least the version that applies to me and this blog entry. In case you haven't noticed, and there is a very good chance that you (and 99.9999% of the rest of the free world) haven't, I recently recorded, and posted on every video site imaginable, a humorous political song called "Pick One." It is a lampoon about the tug-o-war of a primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, with a little Bush and McCain tossed in for balance. While it has received positive reviews and the feedback has been very encouraging, the amount of hits on all of the aforementioned sites has not been what I had imagined. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's too long, or the music is not every one's taste. Or maybe it is just not the type of entertainment that is successful on a broad spectrum. This is, after all, a country that finds shows like "Dancing with the Stars" and "American Idol" entertaining, and amazingly popular. Now, I'm not dogging (too much) these types of shows, just stating that they are not my cup of (green) tea. And maybe "Pick One" is not theirs.

Now, I have far from given up on "Pick One," especially with the promise of a summer filled with this nip and tuck race between Hillary and Obama. And I am still promoting my video with gusto, but my creative spirit must go on. So I make more videos, write other songs, and post them every few days. One video I recently posted is the first of several I have planned for a funny "How-To" series, called: "How to...Get Slapped by a Woman." It is funny in a wow-look-at-that-guy-getting-smacked way. And it is blessedly short (0:16). It also took almost no time to create, and definitely cost next to nothing. Here comes the ironic part...it has gotten almost as much attention on Funny of Die (a comedy video-sharing website, for those of you unfamiliar. Check it out, by the way, it is fantastic!) as "Pick One" has on all those other sites. More ironic: the slap vid has only been available for your viewing and guffawing pleasure for a few days, while "Pick One" is crawling toward the end of its second week.

My point, and I do have one, is this: Isn't that ironic? Or just fickle? Or eye-opening? Or...(fill in the blank). "Pick One" took weeks to make, cost a few bucks for studio time and video editing, and the end result is a polished product. "Slap Mike" (I'm paraphrasing here, folks), by comparison was whipped up one Sunday afternoon, filmed, edited, and popped on my website by that same night. Ironic? More like: bizarre. Or funny.

The bottom line is my videos are being watched, which helps promote my website, which is why I create a wide variety of videos in the first place. My goals have not changed, they still remain: to share information with as many people as possible; to help others; to entertain. And the thing that I must remember is the viewing audience cares not a whit about the cost or time it takes to produce a video, only that it is something that they want to watch, enjoy, and, hopefully, share.

Think about it.

peace,

Mike

View "How To...Get Slapped by a Woman" at livelife365.com or at bottom of this page. Enjoy!