rigorousintuition.ca

Hilarious video on double rainbow is a YouTube hit

Sat Jul 10 2010
Jayme Poisson Staff Reporter


Jimmy Kimmel has done the world a favour by tweeting this hilarious YouTube gem that may otherwise have stayed buried in the depths of Internet dregs.

The comedian agreed that it may very well be the “funniest video in the world.”

Originally posted in January, the clip shows Hungrybear9562 (who also goes by Paul Vasquez, or, more recently “Double Rainbow Guy”) literally weeping over the sight of a double rainbow outside his Yosemite, Calif. home.

Vasquez is a grown man, in case you were wondering.

“It’s too much! I don’t know what this means!” he says, through fits of moaning apt for the bedroom, ecstatic outbursts and moments of existential wonderment.

“Oh my God. It’s so intense.”

The original clip, in all its three-and-a-half minute glory, has 3 million hits in its sights. And remixes are popping up left, right and centre.

“Double Rainbow Guy” has been answering to his fans. In an interview with CBS he re-lived his incredible find.

“You can actually feel, like, the rays. Like you can from the sun. But they were rainbow rays. The rainbow rays knocked me down.

Rainbow rays?

And chatting with ABC’s Good Morning America, Vasquez answered the burning question everyone wanted to know.

Was this guy on drugs?

Nope. “I was just on pure rainbow power… It was just the spirit of the universe influencing me.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/artic ... outube-hit

I'm not laughing. Why am I not laughing?

I'm with you Jeff - I don't get it, it made me smile at the guy's amazed outburst but funny? weird...maybe i its just us or do the other 3m folk who have watched it really find it 'hilarious'

I think most people can’t deal with what they don’t understand, so they have to make it funny and laugh.

(I saw double rainbows in Hawaii and one on my way to work and they are awesome, but……gee, I wish I had his kind of reactions!)

Sigh. Maybe the question is why people would feel compelled to film and record their peak experiences.

"Wow, I'm feeling awe, the presence of the sublime... where's my handheld so I can weep and free associate about all this and share it with the public?"

^^You're right Norton. And the image of him in ecstacy with his handheld camera filming the rainbows is really what's funny. Funny and sad.

I remember visiting someone in a suburban area when it was still unusual to see deer. A doe was grazing on a grassy island between streets and everyone ran inside to get their video cameras, thereby shortening the experience of seeing wildlife and turning it into another kind of experience: filming wildlife in order to show others.

Jeff wrote:I'm not laughing. Why am I not laughing?

It's not really funny, or rather, it doesn't seem to fall into the realm of the comedic. Mr. Vasquez' reaction to his face-to-face confrontation with the sublime is a perfectly natural one, but it is a reaction which modern life makes virtually no allowance for, and one which has no place in the realm in which we spend the vast majority of our waking hours.

Mr. Kimmel's tweet relegating the honest expression of awe and wonderment to a position within his public context as a "funny man" on television is the perversion here, and that may be a part of the popularity of the clip once Kimmel's Twitter followers were exposed to it. There's an unresolved conflict inherent in the juxtaposition there, of the perfectly innocent and the utterly contrived (a conflict exacerbated by the awkward containment vessel for his ecstacy, the YouTube format and the computer screen), that may cause people severe discomfort and anxiety, leading them to release the tension by laughing at Vasquez' outburst. Laughter is often a reaction based in the emotion of fear and surprise, two states I can imagine might accompany most Western people's viewing of any genuine or sincere appreciation of the grandeur of a complete double rainbow, or of the inexpressible beauty of the natural world, or the world in any of it's breathtaking forms at all. The world is a shocking spectacle of terrible beauty, and to allow that in, and to find oneself contexturalised within the scope of that vastness and wonder, if truely experienced and heartfelt, is a thing that would bring any real person to his knees.

But these days we have built such a phalanx of embattlements and towers to guard ourselves against the inpouring of nature's quite standard revelations, that, when faced with the magnificence, we turn instead to the dashboard lights, or the billboard in the background, or the radio or television dial, and pause our innate sense of ourselves to wait there for instructions from the spokesmodels on how to proceed with our egress from the violence of reality's majesty, nervously anticipating our return to a context of aquisition more suited to the headlong needs of late capitalism. We retreat in shame, and lie, and call it a victory of man against the elements. We laugh at his awe.

Mr. Vasquez' openness to the rainbow's power is commendable, and is an example which should be followed with insistence by those of us who wish to find a new way to live here, without becoming the characteristic consumerist patsies of the requirements of the marketplace which lays a pricetag on anything it can grasp or measure. It is a happy fortune that the radiance of the rainbow cannot be so quantified, and the lack of vocabulary or measurements with which to assess the glory, that very inability, is a part of what makes his moment so painfully real. He went outside to take a picture of a rainbow. It's a simple thing. Most of us have probably at some point in our lives done the same. And then he, unlike most of us, was caught, offguard, unguarded and exposed before it, naked.

I laughed when I watched it, in shock and empathy with his plight. But I think it's important to weep uncontrollably at the sheer crackling preciousness of the now at least once a week or so. Sometimes it takes a rainbow.

I love this guy -- and I don't think it is funny although I did laugh but in a 'laughing with you not at you' way.

I think the fact that stooge-douchebag Jimmy Kimmel has labeled it hilarious just means that we're just under a new training regime known as: "Learning to hate people who are naturally happy"

I have cried from the sheer beauty of nature. I think a lot of people do. And I'm glad that this guy appears to be unselfconscious about it.

Kimmel is a fucking dick. Back before his and his ilk appeared on HD 1080p screens, this is what motherfuckers did, this is what humans talked about, were in awe about and supplied the makings of the myths, the fables and the stories that would be handed down for generations. It captivated the human soul. Kimmel is merely a fucking jailkeeper of the matrix -- a function of the captors, not the captivators. To make fun of this guy is to make fun of all of humanity for all of time. This is hardly a "funny video" let alone the most "funny of all time". This is a beautiful video NOT filmed by some self absorbed asshat that lives in LA and stares at smog, tits, Kobe Bryant billboards all day. This is a man in nature and reacting to it. These self-loathing, smug, rich bastards do it all the time. It sells. Teaching humanity to hate itself sells and in turn this hate turns into profits, control of one's spirit by making one thing, especially impressionable youth, that having a unique thought or expression is embarrassing.

My impression of the video.

I teared up. Didn't cry but teared up. Timing and place when it comes to rainbows, is where it's at. And this guy's reaction is noble for a man who is obviously living in an area where he can commune with nature and not commune with the cesspit of Los Angeles arrogance parading as humor.

The fact that this "hilarious" rainbow viewing wasn't over the horizon but according to the filmers vantage point was right there in the trees, in the valley is awesome. I personally would have stood out there like him and watched it until it went away.

I also enjoyed by the end of the video how the rainbow had crept further into the background.

Reminds me of all the people who made fun of me for being fascinated by things as a kid I was fascinated by. We're taught not to be fascinated. Everything must have a purpose. It ultimately breaks your soul. At least they try to break it. . .

Opportunities to experience ecstasy become fewer and fewer the more humans retreat from the natural reality of the Earth into the false worlds they create both collectively and individually.

So when ecstasy in response to natural reality is realized, the experience of it can come as a surprise.

Our responses to witnessing such an all-too-rare event can be a surprise, too.

yep, not really funny. Might have been funny if he said, "this means something" from CE3K

I see rainbows relatively frequently, even double and rarely a barely visible triple, it rains a lot here. Only observation I can make is I'm often on the bus at the time, and so many times I can see not a single other person even looking at it or noticing. Sometimes it looks like they touch down in the city, but if you were there I don't think you'd see anything. These rainbows are usually near sunset, with the sun to my back and the rainbow in front of me. That always seems kinda odd since it seems to imply the refracted light is coming backwards, rainbows are formed from the parallel sunbeams not scattered light right?

anyway, this is actually the funniest video on youtube...

which you might recognize if you listen to Irwin's show on wfmu

and best rainbow related song I can think of atm...

82_28 wrote:Kimmel is a fucking dick.
...
Reminds me of all the people who made fun of me for being fascinated by things as a kid I was fascinated by. We're taught not to be fascinated. Everything must have a purpose. It ultimately breaks your soul. At least they try to break it. . .

yes and yes

One time in Colorado, it was about dusk and I was driving north -- southern end of Denver. I saw a huge green and blue meteor streak down, so bright, so large and it literally went into a fucking cloud and illuminated the whole cloud. I literally thought it was going to hit. It didn't -- well, probably some sort of dust and particles did.

I cried. I pulled over off the side of the road and cried. I perfectly understand this man.

norton ash wrote:Sigh. Maybe the question is why people would feel compelled to film and record their peak experiences.

Sometimes, to try to share with others. A couple of months ago I saw an enormous rainbow, and was compelled to take a photo with my cell phone, in order to post it on FB to share with family and friends. It was truly a glorious experience. It lasted almost my entire drive home from work.

I've seen the double rainbow from one end to the other just like in the vid, driving in a car by the Mississippi river. It was spectacular I have a couple of photos and I'm going to look for them now. I did take it as a sign of the future for me........ and it was.


I also saw the rainbows at Mackinac Island over Lake Michigan when I was very young and have pictures of that experience too but at the time not so much spiritual


hard to see but it was there!








and this guy showed up about a half hour before the rainbows

Alright, everybody break out your rainbow pics. Here's one I took a coupla months ago while driving on the freeway near Lodi. You can tell I'm dedicated, because it was pouring buckets, and I'm doing eighty while using my celphone to take a snap.



It's terminating right on my hood. The fucking thing almost came inside the car.

I did not laugh. I did experience wonder at his ecstasy, however, and appreciation. What played in my mind were the grade school science lessons that explained the separation of visible light through the prism of rain droplets. What accompanied those thoughts was a feeling of mastery, as if I gotten the trick and so could not raise my response to the level of this one man's. Seems simple really, we don't live in the garden anymore.

I can take in the explanation of a laugh in response, but I can't internally replicate that experience to the point where I really understand it.

....

Rainbows are ubiquitous here, but I always look at them. The full moon near the horizon out my south facing windows is always surprisingly spectacular. I have tried in the nearly 20 years since I moved here to not become accustomed to views of the snow-capped mountain ranges to the east and to the west, nor that of 14 thousand ft. Mt. Rainier when it is "out".

We rarely have thunderstorms here. I hope when I visit the East coast in a few weeks there will be a thunderstorm. Except for during a few similar trips, I also have not heard any crickets, cicadas, or frogs in 20 years.