I just stumbled across California is a Place, watched all of these VERY beautifully shot shorts back to back and fell in love hard. The shorts feature skaters using empty pools in the back of foreclosed Fresno homes, Mariachi singers in LA, old ladies on a synchronized swimming team and more.

I loved Uppercut the most, it's about a real life fight club for emasculated deskbound nerds in Silicon Valley. 

2010, 19 mins - In Richmond, Virginia there are moped gangs who take themselves as seriously as real motorcycle gangs. This short is absurd, then funny, then scary. You should watch till the very last hyper-climactic second.

PS, it screened at Sundance and SXSW 2011.

American Juggalo, Sean Dunne, 2011, 23 mins. Juggalos, often-mocked hardcore fans of the Insane Clown Posse meet every August at The Gathering of the Juggalos in Illinois. They refer to fellow Juggalos as family; one says The Gathering is his "one week out of the year to be home."

This sounds just like the language used to describe Burning Man. Fundamentally Juggalos and Burners are quite similar. Each group has found a place to be accepted as themeslves, take drugs and drop out of their regular lives for a few days. It's anthropology. Humans like to be part of a group. 

If you watch Rich Van Every's Burning Man - Dripping in Gold 2011, 4 mins, which has no interviews but still does a great job of showing what the community is like, you'll see the differences too. There is a clear class difference between the groups. Burning Man is very much about art, The Gathering is not. And if we trust the shorts, Burning Man draws many more girls who look like models. 

2010, 14mins - Rocky Salemmo is a Cohen-brothersian hyperactive bowler hustler from Staten Island. Life lessons from this short: feign drunkeness to win, stay away from booze, drugs, and "bowling alley tramp whores."

By Sean Dunne. 

Ben Eine - Oranges and Lemons from abbie brandon on Vimeo.

2011, 6 minutes - Street Artist Ben Eine draws letters on buildings. Because: "at the moment you walk down every fucking High Street and there's two Pret's, a Starbucks and a Gap and it's fucking boring. Who the fuck wants that?" 

His work is all over San Franciscoo (map), BTW. 

Via Hypebeast. 

2007, 10.5 mins - This film is a compilation of voicemails left on the Apology Line, an answering service for anoymous apologies on any topic, like infidelity or a petty theft. Breaking: Other people's problems are just as fascinating as they were yesterday. 

Also, it's full of hot n sexxxy shots like the one above, grr grandpa, GRR!