The curious case of Jonathan’s YouTube channel “SURGE”…

It was recently brought to my attention that a false rumor has begun circulating that I purchased views for my YouTube channel last summer to boost my numbers for some strange reason. (See the above screen cap.)

Of course, this doesn’t address the most obvious question of I why would do this and then never even mention it. I mean, you buy 300,000+ views to…what? Brag? I completely forgot to brag, folks…d’oh!

In fact, I never even noticed it, let alone talked about it. And apparently, it boosted my subscribers by a couple of thousand, as well, and I never mentioned that either until earlier this past week—and even then it was buried deep inside this response (paragraph 3) in the comments under a blog. I mean, if you’re gonna buy that many views, then shout it from the rafters, right?

The other thing I wondered after hearing about this crazy, stupid rumor was: how much exactly do 300,000+ YouTube views cost to buy? I mean, haven’t YOU ever wondered that? Well, you probably haven’t—but I bet you’re curious now, aren’t you? And that’s why I looked it up

Wait…what??

Buying 300K would have cost me more than FIFTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS?!?!?!? Holy second mortgage, Batman! I would be kicked out of the house at warp speed if I did that!

Anyway, I was still kinda curious where this surge came from. I mean, SOMETHING happened last summer! A bump like that doesn’t materialize out of nowhere, and I doubted that anyone else out there liked me enough to drop over a grand and a half buying views for my channel. So where did those views come from?

Turns out the answer was: STONE TREK!

Huh?

Back in 2016, one of my first-year’s blogs was about the hilarious fan series Stone Trek, a brilliant mash-up of Star Trek and The Flintstones. At the time, their episodes appeared on this Angelfire web page using the Adobe Flash player to animate (which is how the episodes were created in the first place).

A couple of years later, a convention organizer from San Diego where I’d be a guest wanted to show Stone Trek along with other shorter fan films as part of a continuous program in one of the smaller panel rooms. So I did a video capture from the Flash player of the five completed Stone Trek episodes and provided them as mp4 files for the convention.

And thank goodness I did!!!

Continue reading “The curious case of Jonathan’s YouTube channel “SURGE”…”

STONE TREK is now available on YOUTUBE!

One of my all-time favorite fan series is the mash-up parody STONE TREK.  From 2000-2007, BRIAN MATTHEWS, the creator of Stone Trek, and WALLY FIELDS, who did the voices, released nine hilarious episodes (eight of them 2-parters), masterfully combining the modern stone age of The Flintstones with the final frontier of Star Trek.  You just have to see those episodes to appreciate their comedic perfection, and I’ve enthusiastically rated it as a MUST SEE fan film.

There was only one small problem.  These nine episodes were all created in Adobe’s Flash application  and never exported to YouTube.  The original flash files weren’t even viewable from many smart devices because of the Flash format.

I interviewed Brian and Wally a few years ago (click here to read the interview), and after we finished up and were just shooting the breeze, I asked if he ever thought of maybe exporting the episodes in video format and uploading them to YouTube.  Brian told me that he’d think about it, but in the years since then, all I ever saw were a few of the episodes posted to YouTube by other fans, in varying states of quality.  But the majority of these nine comedy mashup classics remained absent from YouTube.

Until now, that is…

Continue reading “STONE TREK is now available on YOUTUBE!”

STONE TREK (interview with BRIAN MATTHEWS and WALLY FIELDS, part 2)

kirkstone-and-kirkstoneLast time, we featured the first part of our interview with Brian Matthews, the creator of the hilarious parody STONE TREK, and his amazing voice-over artist, Wally Fields.  Stone Trek is one of the most inspired, creative, and well-executed of all the Star Trek fan film mash-ups, a series of nine cartoon shorts created by Brian Mathews and released online using Adobe’s Flash software between 2000 and 2007.  Merging the two distinct television franchises into a completely fresh hybrid, Brian and his team took us where no caveman had gone before…

Continue reading “STONE TREK (interview with BRIAN MATTHEWS and WALLY FIELDS, part 2)”

STONE TREK (interview with BRIAN MATTHEWS and WALLY FIELDS, part 1)

cover-2When it comes to fan films, Star Trek is no stranger to mash-ups.  Fans have taken Star Trek into the Star Wars universe and vice versa. Kirk and Spock have met the 1960s TV Batman and Robin.  Heck, the Enterprise has even picked up Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz!  (I’ve already done a feature on Star Trek vs. Batman.  The others are coming.)

But by far (at least in my opinion) the most inspired, creative, and well-executed of all the Star Trek fan film mash-ups is Stone Trek, a series of nine cartoon shorts created by Brian Mathews and released online using Adobe’s Flash software between 2000 and 2007.

Stone Trek is NOT some silly crossover where the USS Enterprise travels back in time to Bedrock and Fred Flintstone beams up to meet Captain Kirk. Instead, it’s a complete hybrid of the two shows, an entirely new entity combining recognizable elements of both but ultimately emerging as something totally unique and original.

Continue reading “STONE TREK (interview with BRIAN MATTHEWS and WALLY FIELDS, part 1)”