Category Archives: YouTube

Sikeston man on America’s Got Talent

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It’s always fun to showcase talent from “down home.” Neal E. Boyd is from Sikeston which is just up the road (from Kennett, MO) in Sikeston, where he’s an insurance salesman.

He’s also a competitor on America’s Got Talent, the show I’ve (never watched) but always thought of as the poor man’s American Idol. Neal sings opera. And from our Small World File, Neal attended choir camp at Arkansas State University under the direction of my old friend Viretta and he sang at the Christmas Eve service of the Presbyterian Church in Kennett a couple of years back. A gig made famous by frequent appearances by Sheryl Crow.

Leigh Mullen stuck to bathroom wall

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This might be the most painful five minutes of video ever recorded. It features an old friend, Leigh Mullen. I grew up with her husband Larry and shared some of my best times with one or both of them. As so often happens, we lost touch over the years. This photo is from their wedding.

Leigh has resurfaced in this YouTube video (shot by her son Will) of her trying to free her (middle) finger, which somehow got super glued to a vent behind her bathroom toilet. This is a powerful testament to patience, good humor and long-suffering mothers everywhere.

Missouri Department of Transportation is YouTube’ing.

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MoDOT (Missouri Department of Transportation) has new videos about highway and bridge projects, highway safety and other projects on YouTube.

  • A flyover animation of the future landmark Mississippi River Bridge – St. Louis
  • Footage of the rapid construction of the Jefferson Street Overpass – Jefferson City
  • MoDOT Saving Lives and Reducing Injuries – A synopsis of MoDOT and the Missouri Coalition for Roadway Safety’s initiatives to reduce fatalities and injuries on Missouri roads.

There are also several other MoDOT videos available, showing how dedicated truck lanes would work, dramatic footage of the Route 19 Missouri River Bridge demolition, guard cable crash tests and an aerial view of the ongoing construction on the new Interstate 64 in St. Louis.

During the early days of YouTube, I hear the clueless ask, “Who wants to watch some guy doing the chicken dance? What a waste of time!” They couldn’t (can’t) see that, in time, even big old state agencies like DOT would figure out creative uses for the technology.

John McCain’s YouTube nightmare

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“Six of the top 10 videos returned by a “John McCain” YouTube search Thursday pegged the 71-year-old as inconsistent, extreme, wooden or a combination of the three. (The one clearly favorable piece came from the McCain campaign and focused on his Navy service. Contrast that with a YouTube search of “Barack Obama.” It’s a swoon fest, with virtually all of the top entries featuring the Illinois senator at his eloquent, uplifting best.” — From LATimes.com

Damn. This McCain video has been viewed 1.5 million times. Pre-YouTube, his opponents could have assembled this video easy enough. And they could buy some TV time and air it. But YouTube just changes everything. How do you answer something like this? “They took my remarks out of context” is getting pretty lame. We’re entering (we’re IN?) an era when everything is recorded and everything shows up on YouTube.

I’ll take geo-political history for 500, Chris

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This segment on last night’s MSNBC Hardball is one of the things I most dislike about cable news (yes, I did watch it).

“Chris Matthews, convinced that LA radio talk show guy Kevin James wasn’t real strong in his knowledge of geo-political history, asking James if he knew what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in 1938. If you answered, “He signed the Munich Agreement, conceding a portion of Czechoslovakia to the Nazi regime,” you are right. If you answered, “He talked to Hitler, and caused 9/11 to happen, just like Barack Hussein bin Laden wants to!” then you are Kevin James.”

When did it become okay to just shout the other guy down? No wonder the rest of the world thinks were a bunch of assholes.