Hip to the news

The Statesman did this TV commercial a month or so ago to start branding itself as THE place to get local news first.



Not too bad if you ask me. With all its Twittering, social media-ing, blogging and, oh yeah, hard-working journalism-ing, I think think the paper is doing a fine doing transitioning into the next generation of newspapers. What do you think?

Spin 'round, 'round baby

Julian loves to dance and sing when Ian plays guitar. If you can't get enough of Julian's spinning antics, you can see another video later today over on my YouTube account.

Our evening with My Morning Jacket

My Morning Jacket played Stubb's on Sunday night, and neighbor friend Katie and I gathered the energy that was left after our already intense weekends and headed downtown. Glad we pushed through the 3-hour set, much of which you can see though this set of YouTube videos. A little too ethereal and jam band at times, but in all a fantastic show I'll surely remember for awhile.

Beware the netiraptor

Julian has been feeling under the weather lately. He's had this lingering hack for weeks, and it got juicier over the weekend. His nose has been running and he even had a fever a couple of times. The hard thing about sickness in kids is that with these symptoms (well, minus the cough), it could just be teething. And being in Austin, it could just be allergies. Or it might be something that could lead to freakin' pneumonia! So we're taking him in to the doc to make sure it's not the latter. He's supposed to have a well-check this week (he'll be 15 months in a few days), so we'll do the two-times-in-one-week doctor's visits, which is how it always seems to work, right mommas?

Poor little guy. You can just tell his body's doing
its best to get rid of whatever it's got.

In our collective hazy April state (see Austin allergies, above), talk always comes back around to the neti pot. I hadn't heard of this device until I moved here, which probably says a lot about not only what's in the air in Missouri, but also the traditional approach toward medicine people use. Vince introduced me to the neti when I was living at the Cathedral, and lots of folks swear by them. Next time I'm saddled by a sinus infection, I'll probably go get one of my own. Here's how one guys uses them:



And since I'm YouTubing this post already, here's what Erin does with her inner velociraptor:

Stipeful

Oh, Michael Stipe. How you still have it. I really love this single off their most recent album Accelerate, but I think I love even more that they've posted the original video data online and are encouraging listeners to re-edit the video for "Supernatural Superserious."

REM has been together longer than I've been alive, and even though they are on a major label, they are coming up with some of the coolest stuff in the industry. No, they aren't the first band to do this, but this is right up there with Radiohead giving away In Rainbows.
Users are given an artist's work and encouraged to do with it what they please. REM also agreed to let NPR stations across the country broadcast their show at SXSW last month. And they're even giving great interviews to Terry Gross on Fresh Air. They're all over the place, working the media and letting the media work them.
So. Very. Smart.

Addie's What Not to Wear on YouTube

...well, the first five minutes are on YouTube.



Here's a link to the videos I did while in New York.