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Posted on 09.01.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 11:04 pm
A year ago come Oct. 1, I uploaded to YouTube a 31-second news clip titled “Worst Football Play In History” and embedded it on this blog along with two other amazing football videos. The clip I posted was modestly popular at the time but by no means a viral hit. The last time I looked at the stats a few months ago, the clip had been viewed more than 10,000. But it hit the viral big time last weekend when Prep Rally, a Yahoo sports blog, embedded the clip in a story about the latest gridiron embarrassment. Comparing the clip I posted last fall with the new one, the blog concluded: “Amidst all the horrendous bloopers of past years, that Vermont finish seemed like the worst play ever … until today. Even champions have to retire some time, and the Vermont clip will always know it went out to, truly, the worst play in high school football history.” I’ll let you decide the winner after watching both videos below (mine is the first one), but all I care about at the moment is that I’m now the proud digital papa of my first viral video. Thanks to Yahoo, the clip has been viewed nearly 725,000 times. That’s not going to break any YouTube records — the fresher clip currently has more than 1.7 million views — but it’s still cool. Filed under: Sports and Technology and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 09.01.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 8:01 am
About six weeks from now, Americans will get a fiscal wake-up call in the form of a new documentary titled “I Want Your Money.” I love that it’s being released just before the election — the perfect time to remind taxpayers how Washington has robbed them over the past two years — and I hope it’s enough to make voters take a throw-the-spending-bums-out stand at the ballot box. Here’s the trailer to the movie. Spread it far and wide, and invite your friends to go see it: Filed under: Entertainment and Government and News & Politics and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.24.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 9:55 pm
After finding my book, I wandered back to the children’s section to see what our kids were doing. The older two, the ones who know how to read, were looking at their favorite series of books; our youngest, 5-year-old Catie, was at the “Thomas & Friends” station. That’s when it hit me that our last toddler won’t be a toddler much longer. She starts her first full year of school at the Glover Home School this week, and soon she’ll be reading and shopping for books. She won’t have any interest in the “Thomas & Friends” display at Barnes & Noble that has been a part of our family for the past decade. Kimberly and I used to fuss over which of us would stay at the station to watch the kids play while the other shopped for books. Now that my baby is about to be a big girl, I wish I had spent more time with all of the kids. I blinked, and now those days are almost gone forever. I’m thinking we should make Barnes & Noble a regular stop over the next year or so. I’ll let Kimberly shop for books the whole time while I enjoy my baby girl before she gets too big to care about Thomas and his locomotive friends. Filed under: Books and Business and Family and Parenting Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.24.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 6:58 pm
This message is aimed at football fanatics everywhere — except those of us who bleed blue and gold for the West Virginia University Mountaineers. Let’s go … Mountaineers! On a more serious note, Jason Hardin used the video to make an excellent point at his blog, Imagine Man As God Envisioned (IMAGE): “There is an epic reality that must overshadow and define sports as nothing more than meaningless games. Let’s raise our children with that sort of framework. To search for lasting happiness and true fulfillment in the outcome of a game is vanity and a striving after wind.” Filed under: Culture and Religion and Sports and Video and West Virginia Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 08.23.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 10:58 pm
Earlier this year, I earned my 15 seconds of fame in the international spotlight when BBC interviewed me about the meaning of the word redneck. I owe it all to comedian Robin Williams, whose jab at Australia as the home of English rednecks triggered an Australian attack on Alabama. Now Williams is set to tour Australia, and he wants to make sure the Aussies and everyone else involved knows he was just doing his job — telling jokes and making people laugh. “That was pretty bizarre. I was like: ‘Wow! I’ve started an international incident! I don’t want to cause a war between Alabama and Australia — please no!’” Filed under: Entertainment and Hatin' On Rednecks and Just For Laughs and Redneck Humor and Rednecks Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.23.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 10:43 pm
Bad things happen when rednecks “think outside the box” — bad things like Marshall University’s band ending its tradition of playing “Take Me Home, Country Roads” at the behest of unenlightened Athletic Director Mike Hamrick:
Taking “a different direction” than “Country Roads” in West Virginia is like traveling the wrong way on a one-way street. Marshall has gone to the dark side, giving West Virginia University alumni like me yet another reason to despise the Thundering Herd. But that’s OK because no band performs “Country Roads” better than WVU’s band. Now the master musicians in the Pride of West Virginia will have the tune all to themselves. I hope they play it with an extra dose of passion when we beat Marshall on the Thundering Herd’s home field come Sept. 11.
Filed under: Music and News & Politics and People and Redneck Music and Sports and West Virginia Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.23.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 6:51 pm
Here’s some helpful advice for tea partiers who will be visiting the nation’s capital in coming weeks for various political events:
The warning reminded me of a scary experience I had not long after moving to Washington. While I was in graduate school at American University, I had to interview one of the leaders of the Libertarian Party for a paper, so I arranged an interview at the party’s headquarters. I soon wished I had conducted the interview by phone because party HQ was in one of the worst part’s of Washington. I had worked in Washington for a couple of years by that point, but I lived in Virginia and didn’t really know much about the city. I generally only knew how to get to work by Metro and how to get to the most famous sites so I could play tour guide when family and friends visited. None of those areas seemed particularly dangerous, even to an easily intimidated small-town boy like me. But I knew Southeast was the wrong part of town when I noticed all of the graffiti and the bars on every business’ windows. I really became scared when my cab driver tried to convince me to let him drop me off on the wrong side of the street from the Libertarian Party’s office and about a quarter-mile past all the businesses. I demanded that he make a u-turn and drop me at the office. After the interview, which was in late fall, I was horrified to realize that there wasn’t a cab in sight for me to hail back into a safer part of town. I had to walk to the nearest Metro station, which was two or three blocks away. It was the spookiest walk of my life. When I told my classmates the next day where I had been, they all thought I was nuts for going to Southeast. I wish they had been so forthcoming about D.C.’s bad neighborhoods before the interview. Filed under: Culture and Travel Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.21.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 11:18 pm
Facebook generated online buzz this week with the release of Facebook Places, the social network’s location-based service that lets users “check in” at stores, parks and other spots and tell their online friends they are there. I’ve been playing Foursquare and Gowalla, two of the more popular check-in games, on my iPhone for the past few months, so initially I was excited to hear that Facebook had entered the games market. But as I learned more about Facebook Places and its privacy implications, my enthusiasm quickly waned. The aspect of Places that bugs me the most — and the one that sent me rushing to my Facebook profile to change the privacy settings — lets other people check in their friends if they are at the same place. That’s a feature made for mischief, as explained in this video: I would never check someone else in at a location without his or her permission, and I wouldn’t want anyone doing it to me. Friends just don’t let friends check them in. That possibility is one of a few reasons parents should be concerned about their children using Facebook Places. They could be opening themselves to potential harm. Filed under: News & Politics and Parenting and Technology and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.21.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 10:29 pm
Young people (and, sadly, too many adults who’ve never matured) say and do a lot of foolhardy things on the Internet that are likely to haunt them in one aspect of life or another some day. How will they ever escape the online mistakes of their youth? Here’s an interesting and entirely plausible thought from Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
But trying to hide your past could be more problematic than having it exposed. Just because an embarrassing picture, video or statement isn’t attached to a name doesn’t mean it never happened. If someone remembers a face but can’t place a name with it, he may try to connect the online dots. And if he succeeds, a mere embarrassing moment could be exposed as an attempted cover-up. Public figures especially would be susceptible to such revelations, but they could impact anyone. The better course of action is to monitor and limit young people’s access to social networks and to teach them how to behave online in the first place. Filed under: Culture and Technology Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.19.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 6:37 pm
As a kid, I always hated it when my Dad began his lessons-in-life lectures with the admonition, “There’s a right way and a wrong way to [insert chore here].” But as I matured, I came to appreciate his wisdom. There really is a right way and a wrong way to hold a broom or a shovel if you want to work efficiently. Well, here’s a life lesson every enlightened redneck needs to learn: There’s a right way and a wrong way to position toilet paper in the holder. To quote Australian blogger Jason Jordan, “Over is right, under is wrong.”
I read the same advice from Ann Landers or Dear Abby (or some other advice columnist) when I was a teen and took it to heart. But I never really understood why over was better than under until I saw Jordan’s illustrations and explanations. Click the picture to see the rest of them, and you’ll be a top-roll TP convert, too. Filed under: Culture and Human Interest Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.13.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 12:19 pm
I have no particular reason for posting this video other than the obvious — it’s a tiger riding a horse! You just don’t see that every day, so enjoy seeing it today on this blog: Filed under: Entertainment and Human Interest and Video and Wildlife Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.12.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 12:26 am
Here’s a sample of the praise being heaped upon the man who brought to life the message of “Take This Job And Shove It“:
That’s right, act like a child and commit a crime in the act of quitting your job and you, too, can be a global hero. Or how about this spin? “It’s refreshing when someone decides to flourish his way out of a job instead of taking the now-cliche mass-murder suicide route.” Have we sunk so low that the only two options for quitting a job are mass murder and obnoxious, self-indulgent behavior? I behaved that way once. The band director in high school rightly scolded a few classmates and me for talking out of turn on the field at the end of practice. I had been ready to quit band at the start of that season anyway and was surprised and embarrassed by the lecture. So when the band director publicly invited any of us who couldn’t stop talking to leave and not come back, I walked. I thought I was so cool at the time. A few of my classmates did, too. But most of them knew what I refused to see until years later when I recounted the story to my wife and she enlightened me as to what I really had been: a stupid 17-year-old kid and a disrespectful punk. Filed under: Culture and Human Interest and Media and News & Politics and People and Pets and Sports and Video Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 08.08.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 8:47 pm
Last month at Coxsackie-Athens High School in Coxsackie, N.Y., an 18-year-old girl who rose to the top of her graduating class embraced her valedictory speech as an opportunity to deliver a pointed message to the educational system that molded her. “School is not all that it can be,” Erica Goldson told her teachers and school administrators, her peers and their parents. “Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.” Her speech has created a minor buzz online. I don’t agree with every gripe Goldson voiced. Most children need educational goals to excel, and tests are the best way to gauge student progress toward those goals. Based on the awkward delivery (see the video below), I also doubt that Goldson spoke from her own inspiration. I suspect that an adult who hates authority, structure and the “evil corporate world” unduly influenced her. But as a whole, her speech is worth a read. Here are some of the high points:
Filed under: Business and Culture and Home Schooling and News & Politics and People and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.07.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 2:32 pm
Last month at First Things, I learned that I have some work to do if I want to live a good life. I can do many of the “50 Things A Man Should Be Able To Do” but not all of them. I can make a budget, change a diaper, cook a signature dish, type with more than two fingers, and perform CPR and the Heimlich maneuver (I actually had to perform it on my mother not long ago). I can even hug another man without embarrassment. But I can’t maintain my car, push-start a car with manual transmission or navigate an unfamiliar city, and I definitely can’t help someone who is throwing up without also barfing myself (ask my kids.) I also don’t yet know whether I can get a prostate exam without crying. And I have no interest in innocently flirting with a woman twice my age, conversing with people who bore me to tears or planning for a zombie apocalypse. The good news is that I’m fairly certain my wife can’t do everything on First Things’ list of “50 Things A Woman Should Be Able To Do.” Here are a few that pose challenges for her: Filed under: Culture and Family and Human Interest and Religion Comments: None |
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Posted on 08.07.10 by K. Daniel Glover @ 12:01 pm
“To be determined” — sounds like a great name for a news outlet. And it is. TBD.com, a local news venture funded by the same company that built Politico, will go online in the Washington region next week. I was immediately intrigued when the talk of the as-yet-unnamed TBD started in media circles several months ago. TBD had big money in the bank (from Allbritton Communications), and it had a digital news visionary at the helm (Jim Brady, who built washingtonpost.com). I also was ending a contract job at the time and eager to work in local journalism again, so I tried mightily to join the TBD team. Alas, with so many qualified journalists in the Washington area looking for work, I never made the cut. So like many others, I’m relegated to watching from the sidelines as TBD tries to win the game of media innovation in a changing marketplace. I like what I’ve seen and heard so far. For the past few months, TBD has been focused on building a network of more than 100 local bloggers whose work will supplement TBD’s original reporting. And yesterday, TBD shared more of its plans for rewriting the future of news. Here’s a recap by tweet from Steve Myers of Poynter Online: Filed under: Blogging and Business and Media and Technology Comments: 2 Comments |
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