Our friends at JibJab whipped up another odd video for us for the Thanksgiving holidays.

It includes some of our staff–the whole staff is here–glad we are not the poor turkey (for more on turkey mishaps, see this horrifying video of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin).

BoomTown is thankful for our great All Things D team, as well as our amazing readers. Also this year, for Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang, without whom there would be no news.

We’ll be publishing more lightly after tonight, but there will be news over the holiday weekend, so keep checking back.

Now, here’s our video:

It’s been just a week, and BoomTown is rocking out in the DonorsChoose.org’s Blogger Challenge 2008!

It started a week ago, with us featuring a video from my hell-froze-over dinner with Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang, who ably endured a meal with me in support of the kids who benefit from the unique charity.

DonorsChoose.org is a charity that funds classroom projects in high-need public schools, using the Web to match teacher project requests with donors.

Last year, BoomTown did pretty well, raising $12,199 from 52 donors and impacting 1,940 students.

This year, just a week in, we are already at $3,617, from nine donors and impacting 348 students. That puts BoomTown in the No. 2 spot behind our archrival VC Fred Wilson (he is at $5,877).

That’s great, but I have a long list of technology requests in high-need public schools, so we need to get cracking.

You can click here to reach the giving page or use the widget on the lower right side of the ATD homepage or the left side of the main BoomTown page.

To get you inspired, the fine folks at JibJab sent me this deeply embarrassing video of me and Yang (well, our heads, actually) dropped into a promotional video for “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” which opens Oct. 24.

It’s painful to watch (most especially, Yang in a dress as Gabrielle), but it’s for the kids!

Also, there is no telling what low level of pandering–next week, for example, I plan on press-ganging my kids to help out–I am capable of to raise the money.

Here’s the video as proof:

Organized by Beta South, a networking organization for digital start-ups in the Los Angeles area, it’s an interesting contrast to the frenetic nature of comparable Silicon Valley parties.

In the video, I talk to SoCal techies about the scene there, as well as comparisons to Silicon Valley, including Mike Jones of Userplane (sold to AOL) with Rubicon’s Frank Addante; Peter Pham, who was at PhotoBucket (sold to MySpace) and now BillShrink; and my favorite L.A. Webhead, Gregg Spiridellis of JibJab.

I also contemplate a mutant L.A. strawberry.

Here’s the video:

Well, a different kind of romantic, as you will see from the latest Sendables video greeting card from the creative folks at JibJab for Valentine’s Day.

Now, get off the Internet and go home and have a real life with your loved ones (I will still be here when you get back, of course).

So far, in truth, there has not been much to speak of.

One of the only really interesting phenoms I can think of–setting aside the Mentos-and-Coke thing–are the cartoon satires of JibJab Media, such as “This Land.” It was a major viral hit online and garnered huge attention outside the Web as well. (And you can see it again below too.)

But even that, as entertaining as it is, was no long-term success, nor did it generate the kind of money a big Hollywood blockbuster can, often no matter the quality.

So it was nice to have this video tour and discussion with JibJab co-founder Gregg Spiridellis at the company’s Venice, Calif., offices about the market for entertainment online, which still has not been figured out.

JibJab is trying to do that in a location that puts them smack in the middle of the entertainment industry, although its methods are decidedly different.

For example, today it launches its new Sendables product, aimed at the $85 million online greeting-card business dominated by American Greetings and also cheesy “social expression” products (think animated smiley faces) that actually garner substantial revenue.

(Its other recent product is called Starring You! Using relatively easy tools, people can cut their their heads into premade JibJab movies, with more than one million heads now created.)

The Spiridellis have higher hopes for Sendables–there will be 200 high-quality cards for sale for from 50 cents to $3 at its launch for all sorts of occasions–seeing it as JibJab’s efforts to upgrade the programming in the sector.

Gregg and his brother Evan (they started the company together in 1999) call today’s e-cards “lame.”

To try to eat into that market with class, the company recently closed a Series B funding with Polaris Venture Partners.

Here’s Gregg Spiridellis and I talking about the state of entertainment on the Web:

And here’s JibJab’s “This Land.”

I will be traveling south to Los Angeles Sunday afternoon to do a few days reporting there.

That will include visits to the offices of JibJab, Userplane, Disney’s Internet Group, as well as some catching up with newly minted investor Ross Levinsohn and Joost CEO Mike Volpi.

We’ll be headed that way again a week later to go to Rafat Ali’s “iPhone & Beyond” one-day conference, and to see the new studios of TMZ, the execs at Move.com, Veoh and perhaps visit MySpace, Yahoo in Santa Monica, Helio and also meet the new head of Hulu.

Also on the agenda, DEMOfall and a lunch with blogger Paul Kedrosky in San Diego.

As you can see, a wide range of companies and people, which is why if you’re going to be a tech reporter going forward, you must school yourself quickly on what is happening in the digital arena in Southern California.

I have an even longer list of people and companies I want to meet there, so I expect to get there more often over the next year, rather than just sticking to the 101/280 corridor here in Northern California.

In fact, I have been wading deeply especially into the entertainment industry for a long time now, because the intersection of that industry and tech is one of the more important stories going forward. It’s a canard that Silicon Valley and Hollywood are at odds. While they will be fighting, of course, their fates are now inextricably combined and even aligned.

Case in point: A post I did this past week on the appalling instance of an ingenue singer being “discovered” on YouTube, when it turns out she was being secretly groomed by Hollywood Records to seem like an amateur phenom.

An amazing story, which is all about how marketing, entertainment, content and distribution of information are shifting quickly and with great chaos.

So, I will just say, as Randy Newman sings below (a video someone ripped onto YouTube, of course), I love L.A. Considering the stakes, it would be foolish not to.