Ever wondered if those magical claims put out by your local 99-cent store are true? (Come on, you know you have.)

And more importantly, ever wondered whether the 99-cent store could provide you with everything you need to make your Valentine’s Day super sweet for your super sweetie? (Don’t lie.)

Well, some intrepid YouTubers set out to answer that very question. Be careful — what they found may surprise, even shock you.

Also, on YouTube News: a common household item is coming to kill you. Find out which one — after this commercial break.

The dirty little secret here at SMITH — hell, it took me months to figure it out myself — is that damn near all of us happened to go to the University of Pennsylvania. In tribute to that, and to the general inability of folks like us (except, of course, JahFurry) to dance, I’m proud to present this week’s video. Sent to me by yet another Penn alum (I can’t escape!) it shows one proud Penn student showing the denizens of the New York City subway how to dance. Join us for this beautiful experience, won’t you?

Today at Salon, where I’m also on staff, writer-at-large Gary Kamiya writes a cover story about, well, our readers. It focuses on the often wild letters section at Salon, and how both Salon’s writers and Salon’s content has been affected.

This is a frequent topic among staffers — “You” are on “Our” minds all too often. And some of us are quite affected by it. Personally, I really enjoy the nasty letters sent in about me and my articles, but then, the nasty letters about me are never quite as vitriolic, never quite as personal, as those about some of our other writers, particularly the female ones.

Thought this was worth mentioning here on SMITH; this is, after all, one of the least discussed, though ultimately perhaps most influential, aspects of the personal media revolution, and I thought it worthwhile to bring the discussion here. What do you think? Tell us — just don’t call me fat.

Below is what is either the most horribly offensive or bestest video ever. This has been burning up certain parts of the blogosphere since late yesterday; it’s a video made by a man named “Donnie Davies,” and it’s called “The Bible Says.” Basically, the message is that the Bible says gay people are bad — and it says it in pretty harsh language. It’s already been pulled from YouTube, but it remains, for the moment, available on MySpace.

So here’s the question that’s on pretty much everyone’s mind: is this real? Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage seem to think not; I tend to agree, especially as there’s a distinctly jokey element to this whole thing, and, in the list of “Safe Bands” that won’t make you gay on the website of Davies’ record label, “Love God’s Way,” Cyndi Lauper is included. Tell us what you think — the video is below, as is a list of all the sites involved in what I’m pretty sure is a very elaborate bit of performance art, probably designed, like Lonelygirl, as promotion for some upcoming project. (And yes, I tried Whois searches on all these sites; I came up empty.)

Love God’s Way — the record label
Donnie Davies’ website
Evening Service — the band playing in the video along with Davies
MySpace pages for Davies and Evening Service

Continuing on a theme set earlier in the week by Larry (I’m sorry, I can’t help it — I get excited when will.i.am actually produces a good song, plus I love that MLK sample) here’s a video from YouTube that’s part of something called the “I Have a Dream Project.” It’s a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., based on the telling of the dreams of others. This is the one that’s gotten the most attention and, I think, deservedly so.

YouTube is back up. Yayyyyy! Yayyyy! Feel the excitement, people.

So why did I pick this next video, you ask? Why would you, Alex, pick a parody of Lonelygirl15? Are you still bitter?

Yes. Yes, I am. And also, I found this funny, in a totally disturbing way.

Dear fans of the Friday video:
Please, be patient with me — YouTube appears to be down today. But never fear; if the site remains unusable I’ll fill the hole in your hearts left by this fun ritual with a lengthy, boring diatribe on a recent failure of citizen journalism. And won’t that be fun?

I’m back from a brief vacation in Europe, which — he said by clever way of segue — brings up the thing I wanted to post on. The friend I traveled with had been telling me for some time about Pandora Internet Radio. Their gimmick, essentially, is that when you tell them what music you like, they’ll tell you what else you’ll like. I’m normally skeptic about this sort of thing, which pops up on the other music services I use, iTunes and Napster, plenty, and I’ve never found that useful. But I’ve been listening to Pandora for all of five minutes now and I’ve already found four songs I’ll be downloading when I get home.

This by itself probably isn’t all that SMITHy, but what caught me was the introduction written on the page:

Ever since we started the Music Genome Project, our friends would ask:

Can you help me discover more music that I’ll like?

Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.

We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.

I like that, a whole lot. Speaking as someone who often serves as a personal DJ for people — making mixtapes/playlists, passing on musical wisdom if not the music itself (uh, not that I would do anything that would violate copyright) — I love the idea of having the entire world as my personal DJ, being able to go on the Internet, say what I like, and have a program that (accurately) goes back and sees what other people with similar musical tastes would tell me to listen to, if they could. Pandora seems to be the first, unlike iTunes and Napster, to have hit on the right formula to do just that.

Yes, yes, I’ve gotten you allllll excited with my post title, and don’t worry, I’m not screwing with your mind. We’ll get to it, I promise.

In the meantime, though, a real sample of personal media, from “YourTube News.” This one’s a well-crafted (if long) opinion piece about the “phenomenon” — you’ll see why I have that in quotes — of new, Lonelygirl15-esque, video series. I think it’s pretty well eviscerated here.

After the jump, as a very special holiday gift to all of you—my dick in a box.

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I won’t be in the country for Christmas — uh, not that us Jews celebrate Christmas anyway, except for eating Chinese food on it; more on that later — so I think it’s time to celebrate now. (Take THAT, Bill O’Reilly.)

In that vein, here’s a video that truly spans the entire breadth that is YouTube: A rendition of “The 12 Days of Christmas,” as sung by YouTubers around the English-speaking world. Sure, most of these people can’t sing, and a few are, well, a little creepy, but the whole thing is really cute. And it’s cool to see just how much of a community YouTube is, not to mention how far that community stretches.

More on that whole Chinese food on Christmas thing after the jump.

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