Sunday, October 30, 2011

 

Kayleigh Writes about Life and Death


Kayleigh Levitt

Hello and Happy Halloween! Did you dress up this year? Go to a Party? Scare little children? LoL Have fun and stay safe!

Guest Blogger, Kayleigh Levitt is back! Kayleigh is a creative young lady with a real talent for writing. In her first Guest Blog for YouTubeStars, she wrote about Artist and Filmmaker Andrea Dorfman. We're glad to present the second Guest Blog post from this talented young lady who can sometimes be found in a tree singing and playing guitar! This post reviews three videos; a bipolar person engaged in public speaking about his life, and two music videos about Life and Death. Kayleigh gives beautifully expressed insight, read on!

But first, The News!

This week's Featured Video on our Top 100 and Top 200 Charts is a cute Halloween video from long time friend of YouTubeStar.com, Miss Tiffany Jo Allen! Tiffany is working on her 4th CD and you can download her older material here. Enjoy Tiffany's Halloween video where she is dressed as a Vampire Kitty and her dog Lucky is dressed as a witch! (Watch the video right here)

We have a NEW Featured Video every week on our YouTube Top 100 Chart. If you missed any of our Previously Featured Videos, you can still watch them here.

Check out our Top 100 and Top 200 Charts of the Most Subscribed YouTube Channels every week! Go and Bookmark the Top 100 YouTube Chart at YTChart.com right now!



Now, here is Kayleigh's article about Life and Death.


Joshua Walters (on the Ted Talks channel) is a bipolar comedian who explores language, beat boxing and playwriting. His trademark is his unpredictability on stage. He lives in Berkeley, California and is a National Alliance for Mental Illness state speaker. Humor is his way of bringing light onto the dark side of mental illness.

Bipolar disorder has a lot of societal baggage weighing it down. So often, these miraculously sensitive minds lose their edge to medication. Bipolar people have a choice. They can be numb to all their emotions with medication or oscillate wildly between believing they are Jesus Christ and being suicidal. There is no middle path when it comes to the extremes of Bipolar Disorder.

Joshua Walters encourages us to shift our paradigm. As he says, he “can either deny his mental illness, or embrace his mental skillness.” There is magic in the chaos. There are perks to insanity. There are gifts in the madness. He poses the question: What is the right balance between medicating craziness away and riding the manic edge of creativity and drive?

For bipolar people, they experience a rich life with a wide emotional spectrum that makes them risk-takers in the business world and highly imaginative. They can also experience a deeper sense of empathy and compassion for other people’s emotions. Why does this have to be seen as a disorder? It can be a gift.

We all have a choice. In every moment, we can either accept the way we are or try to suppress it. Everything that may look like a weakness actually makes us who we are. We can turn anything around and make it a gift. Walters took his unpredictable behavior and let it help him create a stage presence. Everyone has roadblocks on their path. We get to use our creative minds and make something great out of ourselves given the life we were given. Life is here for us, it is not against us.






This song is called “Exactly” by Amy Steinberg. Amy Steinberg writes her songs with the intention to empower people to see how magnificent they are. Her intention is to reveal beauty in the world we live in. Her intention is to let her art be a vehicle for a spiritual experience.

In every moment, we are exactly where we need to be.

This statement is relatively hard to accept. I may be in school thinking exactly where I need to be is my bed. Or I may be thinking that I have not accomplished everything I should have in my life. It is even harder to accept when tragedy strikes. Silver linings can only stretch so far.

Except for when it is not a stretch. Seeing the positive aspect of a situation is not a euphemism for the truth. It is seeing the unseen. Silver linings form when the clouds completely mask the sun. It is when you know something greater exists beyond momentary cloud coverage. The sun is always there. The sun is not always in sight. Yet, when we fall asleep every night, we do not cry over the tragedy of the lost sun. We instinctually know the sun will rise the next day. We leave it up to the universe to figure that out.

In every moment, the sun is our truth. The clouds give the illusion that our truth does not exist. We can choose to cry over the tragedy of our lost truth. Alternatively, we can trust that although we cannot see it, it is there.

In every moment, we are exactly where we need to be. Our human minds cannot wrap around the mystery of the universe. The reason why we need to be in a situation may be obscured by clouds. We do not need to try to know the unknowable reasons behind every situation. Amy Steinberg conveys through this song that life works for us, not against us.

She states, “If you look at me just right you will see a kiss.” She dares us to look close enough to see something at its origin. Every little moment becomes apart of this butterfly effect. It can begin with a breeze, a kiss, a glance and end with anything. It can begin with wherever you are, in this moment, because that is exactly where you need to be to live the life you are destined to live.






This song is called At the Bottom of Everything by Bright Eyes. Conner Oberst is the lead singer/songwriter/guitarist. He has a rotating group of multi-instrumentalists and collaborators from the indie music scene.

Death has never seemed so fun.

In the beginning, the airplane has a huge mechanical failure. The girl asks the man next to her, “Where are we going?” he looks at her, and he says, "We're going to a party. It's a birthday party. It's your birthday party. Happy birthday darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much."

As humans, we fight death for as long as we can. Our natural lifespan is now 85 years thanks to improvements in medicine. It used to be 45 years. With all this extra time we borrowed, what are we doing? What could we be doing that we are not?

Their impending doom initiated the greatest birthday party ever thrown. Every moment in their lives led up to up to this grand finale. They realized in that moment how fragile their mortality was. What does that call for? A birthday party! It suddenly was time to celebrate life.

We convince ourselves that the future is a promise life intends to keep. The truth is no one gets out of this life alive. At every moment, our mortality is just as fragile as it is seconds before our death. Every moment could be our grand finale.

The lyrics of a verse in the song go, “We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past, And in the caverns of tomorrow, With just our flashlights and our love, We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.”

When we look into the future, more often than not, we think we know. We make goals. We make plans. We make promises to live our dreams later. It is easier to do that than to plunge with our flashlights and our love into the unknown.

The past no longer exists and the future has not started. All we have is right now. In moments closest to our death is when we feel most alive. It is when the mind is present with the body. Instead of waiting for that split second to realize life starts here and now, let us make today our birthday party.

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Monday, October 24, 2011

 

Let's Dance!


We like to bring you a lot of singing videos on this site. Today we'll see some dance videos! Get up and dance too, if you can. If not, do like I do, chair dance!

But first, The News!

This week's Featured Video on our Top 100 and Top 200 Charts is a random, funny and weird video from Ashley of MakeupByASB and her friends. They are seeing the questions from Nerimon's 2011 YouTube Survey for the first time and they improvise their answers. Things get crazy as they feed off each other's comments!

We have a NEW Featured Video every week on our YouTube Top 100 Chart. If you missed any of our Previously Featured Videos, you can still watch them here.

Check out our Top 100 and Top 200 Charts of the Most Subscribed YouTube Channels every week!




Now, watch these dancers!


Christina Amato is an amazing singer with a sweet personality. You've seen her here before and she has been a Guest Blogger for us, several times! Her charming character and dynamic singing performances have earned her over 20 Thousand Subscribers on YouTube. Christina just made this random video with scenes of her adorable dog, a vlog about the neighbors, a fun singing performance of an old soul tune, and some dancing while sitting if I am not mistaken! Looks like Christina is sitting in the corner of her room where she often films. Join Christina in a chair dance, or get up and jump around if you can!






viperaproductions is the music channel of singer and dancer Nicoletta. She sings very well and dances in many of her videos. It's a pleasure to watch her move to the music! In this video, Nicoletta sings, dances and even does some chair dancing. Enjoy this rockin' video and be sure to check out Nicoletta's great covers of older songs by Elvis, Neil Sedaka, Dion and The Belmonts - all favorites of mine! She also covers new artists like Adele and Rihanna. Enjoy Nicoletta's performance!







StantonMusicOnline is YouTube musician Adam Stanton's channel. This fun video is Adam's version of LMFAO's new song and follow up to "Party Rock Anthem" - "Sexy And I Know It". The song is a bit of a parody and Adam and friends have fun dancing to it. I really enjoyed this one, and I learned a few new moves too! Be sure to watch Adam's covers of artists such as Eminem, Maroon 5, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and more!






Tengobaila is Talented dancer and artist Diana's channel for "Improvisational, spontaneous, informal, interpretive, freestyle dancing. Impromptu Having Fun!" And no one has as much fun to as many songs as Diana! She now has over 1500 dance videos on YouTube! So many great songs and fun-to-watch dance moves. Spend an hour or three browsing through Diana's collection of great dance videos, it will put a smile on your face. Get up and dance to this one, a great party song from the 60s and featured in the movie, "Animal House" - Let's Go!

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Saturday, October 08, 2011

 

MissAlissa15 and Tumnusmusic


Not long ago, we brought you Vlogs To Think About - 3 videos with messages. This time we'll show you a genuine interaction between two people who let their guard down and talk openly about how they really feel, deep down inside.

But first, The News!

This week's Featured Video on our Top 100 and Top 200 Charts is a fun video from young actresses and friends Sammi Hanratty and Stella Hudgens. @SammiHanratty1 has been on iCarly and stars in the upcoming movie "The Greening of Whitney Brown". @stellahudgens was in TV Show "According to Jim" and the movie "The Memory Thief". She is Vanessa Hudgens sister. Watch them sing and clown around!

We have a NEW Featured Video every week on our YouTube Top 100 Chart. If you missed any of our Previously Featured Videos, you can still watch them here.

Check out our Top 100 and Top 200 Charts of the Most Subscribed YouTube Channels every week!


Congrats to UndiscoveredJulie! It's been over a year since we heard from this queen of improv and wacky comedy. Julie is back to tell us that she is now married and has an adorable little girl. Thanks for the update and best wishes to you and your family, Julie!



Now, watch this heartfelt exchange between Alissa and Will.


MissAlissa15 is a 19 year old woman from Oregon with a magnetic personality. Her charming comedy and vlog videos are very popular on YouTube. Alissa recently made a different kind of video called "Delete" in which she talked about how helpful it can be to write out a long emotional message and then delete it without sending it. She admits that she gets depressed and thinks a lot at night. She remembers that she used to be able to confront someone who hurt her feelings in order to try to work it out. But now she writes long unsent messages as a form of therapy rather than risking rejection by actually sending such messages. Watch and listen to Alissa as she explains herself better than this description!






Tumnusmusic is the music channel for a young man named Will who was inspired by Alissa's video to talk about the anxiety he has felt recently. His feelings are generally the result of his sense of loss of a dear friend who intentionally took a fatal overdose. Will speaks from the heart and sings an original song about his friend, in his video response. I was moved and so was Alissa. This exchange is in the comments:

you, sir, absolutely fascinate me. i am in love with the way you carry yourself. it all seems so awkward, calculated and passionate. i know you've got so much in your heart and that makes you absolutely beautiful. incredible song and vlog. thanks so much for sharing yourself with me :) ♥
MissAlissa15 1 week ago 276

@MissAlissa15 wowowowoww okay just the fact you commented made my day. so much support can be found all around you, i guess you just never know when it will show up or where you look. :)
tumnusmusic 1 week ago 60







Alissa has a second channel named MissPepperoni. In this emotional video, she thanks Will for his response video. She says she loves response videos and also that she can identify with people who have anxiety and depression issues like she does. She says that response videos like this make her feel less alone.



Right before this video, Alissa made a fun video in which she grooves to various songs. Watch that video to get an idea of how she usually appears in her videos!

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