Take Talk Soup, mix it with Leno’s “Man on the Street” segments,
add in some basic cable access-level talent and resources, and you
have the weekly television show Tiny Tubes. So why should anyone
even care about it? Because it’s on the Internet.

As part of the new vlog (video blog) revolution, Tiny Tubes is a
series of short video segments hosted by Ben Dragu and Joan St.
Simone (who looks strikingly like Marcia Brady), and seems to be
created at their whim. Some segments focus on cultural trends or
current events, others are experimental theater pieces; all have
original graphics and music that give it a retro vibe.

And though this show can be beamed into people’s computers all
over the world, its physical home is right here in Santa Barbara.
Esperanto Productions is responsible for the tidbits that come out
every Tuesday; which is why your chance of seeing State Street
traffic or a familiar Farmers Market musician in the background of
a video interview is pretty high.

The shows aren’t polished, by any means. You can usually see
Joan reading from her script, and no one bothers to edit it out
when Ben bumbles a question. The content is sometimes painfully
cheesy. And all topics are, by necessity, only covered in a surface
way. At times, it feels like the after-school project your little
brother made with Mom and Dad’s camcorder. But many of Tiny Tubes’
shortcomings are inherent in the medium. Vlogging is still new
technology, and the amount of people who know about it is still
limited. But it’s a trend that’s catching on fast. Before we know
it, Ben and Joan could be big-time international Vlog-Stars, and we
can say, “We knew them when.” Visit tiny-tube.com.

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