Jamie Block: YouTube series that will save your summer

If I ruled the world, you would all spend this summer watching the first five seasons of “Lost,” all three seasons of “Arrested Development,” the sci-fi miniseries “The Lost Room” and season one (I’ll spare you the rest) of “Heroes.” But it has been brought to my attention that some of you enjoy such luxuries as eating and sleeping to such a great extent that you would forgo those higher TV pleasures. So for you disillusioned readers, I will direct you to the wonderful world of the YouTube series.

The YouTube series is a magnificent thing. As Britney Spears would innocently put it, it’s not a viral, not yet a TV show. A series usually consists of 10 or so five-minute episodes that you can watch in a single evening or space out for the entire summer if you’ve got the willpower. They range from the product of three guys, two cases of beer and a shitty old video camera to the work of C-list celebrities with too much time on their hands.

Now, obviously I wouldn’t be bringing these up if I didn’t have some in mind for you already. Being the hoity-toity elitist I am, I can’t help but recommend the classiest of YouTube’s offerings.

First up is “The Guild,” a tale of some misfits wholly absorbed in their unnamed “World of Warcraft”-esque video game. There’s the nursing mother who finds going on raids more important than removing the surge protector from her infant’s mouth, the guild leader who clearly lost a lot of money in a pyramid scheme and the meek, redhead protagonist who one day opens her door to see one of her fellow guild members with blue roses and a marriage proposal. With good production values, decent acting and an annoying-beyond-all-reason theme song, “The Guild” will entertain anyone who has ever been or ever wanted to be a complete nerd.

If slaying gnomes and bringing your own cheese to a cheeseburger joint aren’t your thing, then maybe I can interest you in the pseudo-how-to series “You Suck at Photoshop.” You can learn to superimpose a picture of your marriage license on a van windshield, edit a wedding band off your deceitful ex-wife’s finger, add a cat urine stain to your carpet and more. But the clincher is that, despite the evident marital problems the protagonist Donnie hopes to edit away, he actually teaches legitimate Photoshop tools, because “you suck at Photoshop — now let’s waste another five or six minutes of my life and see if we can do something about it.” Waste of Donnie’s life? Maybe. Waste of yours? Most certainly not.

For those who scoff at (or at least appreciate) the potential humor in the soap-opera melodrama, I’ve saved the best for you. The subject matter of “Horrible People” is exactly what it sounds like. Throughout the story of a money-grubbing mother trying to marry off her son to a rich family, one character is found to be a chocoholic, at least four people get killed, fecal matter takes a starring role and a man tries to impregnate a passed-out bride-to-be with a turkey-baster. In other words, standard soap fare, but in five-minute bites.

These should be more than enough to tide over the eaters and sleepers among you. If not, you can always check the other nominees for best YouTube series from the last two years’ YouTube awards (apparently we award pretty much everything these days). And come to think of it, those of you who have the time to get through all my other recommendations probably have enough time to get through these too.

So go and enjoy the freedom of summer. Lie on a towel on the beach, umbrella overhead and laptop beside you. Bask in the rays of the sun and the glow of the screen as you watch Donnie move a cat from the couch to a trash bag.

Or spend the summer making your own series. It’s the perfect chance to live out those this-would-make-a-sweet-TV-show dreams you probably have if you’re taking the time to read this column. Who knows? You could be the next winner of the prestigious YouTube award.

And with that on your résumé, you might actually be able to get a job next summer.