Category Archives: YouTube

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.