New Feature: God Bless YouTube

From now on, every Friday afternoon, I'm posting my personal favorite YouTube clip. I'm open to suggestions, so if you have one to share send it along to northoforbes@gmail.com. It Doesn't have to be new or even that rare, just something you think I'd wanna watch. Cliched idea. Perhaps, but it's my blog so don't click the link if the idea bores you.

Props to Phil for pointing this week's clip out to me.

Also, two things to chew on:

Did anyone suspect in the fall of 1999, upon the release of the "Drive me Crazy" music video, that this co-stars career would ever surpass this one's? What's even more funny is that it took me almost 10 minutes to decide which picture depicting Britney as a complete mess to use in the previous link. One link, so many choices.

In addition, I was in traffic last night behind an SUV with the license plate "DMB LVR." Yes, I know, I was a big DMB fan at one point in my life, but that was oh, I don't know, 1999. It's moments like that that make me wish I'd put down the extra $35 for a camera phone.

The Smize

I realize I could probably write a bi-weekly post criticizing the work of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Sports Columnist Bob Smizik. As one former colleague of his said, Smize is excellent at "taking passionate positions on issues he doesn't really care about." Actually though, his most recent offense doesn't exactly take on the overtly negative, glass-is-half-empty, lecturing tone that most of his writing exudes. That said, it's still pretty close. In today's paper, Smizik has a column where he devotes 1/3 of his space to re-hashing all the close calls that went the Steelers way in Super Bowl XL. Smize then goes on to make the brilliant point, that, shockingly, had one of these decisions been reversed, the Steelers might not have won the game! The Super Bowl happened more than six months ago, and the game's officiating was one of the bigger stories of the NFL off-season. I just find it insanely lazy and flat-out stupid to write a column that includes paragraph long descriptions of each of the questionable plays. Adding to the irony is the fact that in the sports section of the Post-Gazette's online edition is a poll asking readers how many times they are going to Latrobe to watch Steelers training camp. The options: A) 1-2 B) 3-5 C) More than 5. "Not at all" isn't even an option. Do these sound like the kind of readers that need any second of the Super Bowl re-hashed?

I wonder if Spike Jonze is Directing

I know this is sort of aping a post from another blog, but Deadpsin's take on the Povertyneck Hillbillies/Ben Roethlisberger music video is worth a look. Perhaps it's more a reflection on me that, after living in Pittsburgh full-time for over a year now, I don't bat an eye when I hear the words "local band" and "Povertyneck Hillbillies" in the same sentence. Upon reflection, I'm not so much horrified at the band's name, but rather, more confused as to what it actually means. I think they just kind of picked three words with the connotations "blue-collar" "cowboy hats" "good Americans" and "cheap beer" and decided to toss them together to form some sort of name that relies more on word association than actual syntax. The Deadspin post also points out the juicy detail that the Povertyneck Hillbillies are the official band of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Wow. We're talking about the Super Bowl Champions and one of the more popular teams in the world here. What a reflection on the local music scene. Somewhere, Manny Theiner is reading that and wondering where all his dreams went wrong. (Free cookie to the first person who gets that reference). I also find the comments section tremendous, particularly the exchange between the former Pitt student, and the guy who thinks he went to college in Oakland, Cali.

Snow in July

Bringing back the blog from the land of the dead.

First of all, this story out of Long Island yesterday is unbelievable. The Islanders fired General Manager Neil Smith, architect of the 1994 Stanley Cup Champion New York Rangers, and replaced him with former back-up goaltender Garth Snow. Now, current Carolina Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford is a former back-up goaltender too. It's just, he played almost 30 years ago, retired in the 80s and spent the last two decades working his way up the hockey ladder. Garth Snow on the other hand, was a back-up goalie LAST SEASON. And a crappy one at that. The brains behind all of this is Islanders owner Charles Wang, whose justification for the whole situation can (and trust me, should) be heard here. While Isle's fans are no doubt pulling their hair out this morning and calling Wang a mad man, I choose to think of him as a pioneer. From now on, if a franchise goes more than a decade without winning a playoff series, it should become a sports-wide by-law that the team's worst player becomes General Manager. Can you say Humberto Cota Pirates fans?