Gumball Wars

Call me a kid, but I absolutely adored the storytelling in this.

Gumball Wars from Scott Thierauf on Vimeo.

Video link swiped from Kuriositas.

Blast from the Past

I've been hunting down my favorite old music videos to share with my daughter (who has no idea how cool MTV used to be) and in the process I found one I haven't seen in at least twenty years or better:



I know, by today's standards it's pretty dorky, but I loved it. Back when music videos were in their infancy they often told little mini-stories like this. They fascinated me and no doubt influenced me in innumerable ways. The song is still a heartbreaker, too.

What are some of your favorite old (pre-2000) music videos that told stories?

Stats Story

This is an eco video I came across paired with an article on Peak Oil (in short, the troubling time we've arrived at, when demand for oil increases while production decreases.) The video uses the grim reality to tell a different story, one with a rather hopeful vision of the future.

There Can Be Only One

Thanks to Rosina Lippi, I've become hooked on One Sentence, a site devoted to telling true stories in one sentence. These extremely short stories range from the funny and silly to the touching and tragic, but most of them share one thing in common: they make an instant connection to the reader.

The one that got me on my first look: As a kid dripping in mud, I couldn’t see why bringing four frogs home in a zip lock bag was bad idea. — Cam. That brought back a lot of memories of my daughter, who never met a reptile she didn't like. After school I used to have to take her lunchbox outside before I opened it, just in case she brought home a new friend.

Novelists are spoiled by the fact that we usually have four or five hundred manuscript pages to tell our stories, so I think this is an excellent writing exercise. Here are a couple of mine:

I couldn't stop CPR long enough to convince one of the morons standing around and watching me to call 911.

It rained on our first date and on the last day of our marriage.

He kept bugging me to sign their stock until he saw that my kid had to hold the pen for me just so I could sign the credit card slip.

All right, you guys, it's your turn -- post your one-sentence story in comments.