State gets with it, starts YouTube video channel

California bureaucrats Wednesday launched the state's own YouTube video channel.
In one, a twentysomething guy in a hooded sweatshirt stands in front of a plain-white screen sharing his personal story while a jazzy piano plays in the background. "So, my wife, like of, three years, she left me, burned down the house, almost killed my mom, crashed my Beemer..."
And some of the clips are actually pretty hip. For reals!
He's promoting the Franchise Tax Board's free online tax-filing service by mentioning the phrase "Ready Return" three times during the 1 minute, 24-second clip - as an aside that has little to do with his fictional tale.

The video was posted earlier this year on the agency's own YouTube page, but Wednesday it became a highlight of the state's new video channel.
Cyber comedy

The channel features the playlists of departments, agencies and commissions, though none of those videos are as unusually cool as the in-house tax board ads that star college-age employees and their friends who taped the spots for free.