Item of interest number one:

On Versus tonight they unveiled something called ‘rail cam’. Frankly, it’s brilliant. You’ve perhaps seen the camera at football games that floats over the field? Well this is similar. They mounted a moving camera on the glass, and it can move back and forth with the action. Give the truck a couple games to figure out how best to use it (they seemed to lose sight of the puck a bit too often for me), and you’ll never want to see another game without it. One of the Dallas goals featured Modano bringing the puck up the wing and throwing a perfect cross-ice pass to Lindross for the chippy. Viewers saw it live from what appeared to be just behind the action. Basically, it feels like you’re on the ice. High praise here to the Versus crew for coming up with this one.

Item number two:

The announcers during the Wild game were talking about the physical nature of the game’s play, and one of them jokingly inquired whether or not ‘injurious’ was a word. The other one assured him that it wasn’t, and much joking ensued.

But the Ole in me was saying: hold on a minute!

As we all know, injurious is in fact a word, and is used in the immortal St Olaf fight song, Um Ya Ya. And it really does mean something as simple as ‘causing or likely to cause damage or harm’. So take that, hockey announcer, you’re more literate than you know.

Watch it now before the new Google overlords round up all who watch this to toil in their underground sugar caves…

I love the George W Bush snore, and as much as I love the Daily Show, I’ll admit it – I miss Killby a little bit.

AND… KO’s gonna run another “special comment” tonight on Countdown. I’ll post transcripts and/or videos in the comments section of this post when they’re available.

are you like me, do you like do whatever possible at work to put off actually doing work?  then i’ve got a website for you.  no, not youtube.  not ze frank.  not even the ever-popular simpleprop.  (c’mon, we’ve been writing more lately.)

it’s http://www.80stvthemes.com.

it’s a sometimes fun, sometimes painful trip down memory lane featuring both audio and video clips from 80′s tv show themes and intros.  ooh, there are commercials, too!  you think you don’t remember every word from the webster theme song?  think again.  did bill cosby really say “it’s an explosion of wonderfulness in your mouth”?  yup.

my top five after the cut.

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Mark Cuban has been quoted saying that anyone who buys YouTube is a “moron”.  He does have a good point in that most of the content found on the site is copyrighted.

But Cuban is far from unbiased on this topic.  He is the co-founder of HDNet, and he went out of his way to down play the usefulness of sites like YouTube and “Viral Campaigns“, while touting the great opportunities there are to advertise in mediums like, you guessed it, HDNet!!!

At least Cuban admits that user-generated content isn’t going away.  And I think owners of copyrighted material need to realize that sites like YouTube are a great vehicle for free advertising.  If someone really likes a song or a music video, do you really think they will continue to go to YouTube to watch it?  Don’t you think there is a much better chance that they would come to the source and maybe even purchase it?

Think about the clips from the Daily Show, or Countdown with Keith Olbermann.  If MSNBC or Comedy Central were to sue YouTube do you think that would drive more people to those shows?  In fact I would guess that the negative publicity of such a move would actually drive people from watching.  If anything, the publicity those shows have received from postings on YouTube have probably increased the viewership, and at no cost to the networks.

Dinosaur media needs to get with the program, and fast.  The music industry was on the leading edge of this change, mostly because it’s much easier to download and transmit a 3 minute song than it is to do the same with 45 minutes of network programming, or 90 minutes of a feature film.  But the change is coming.  It’s time to adapt and embrace, or find yourself in the no win battle the music industry is going through which could leave you on the brink of extinction. 

a handful of interesting notes today, but because i’m trying to be less ADD, we’ll stick to one:  happen to catch Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip last night?  sara and i did, although nearly by accident:  we tuned in to NBC at 9, assuming we’d see the season premiere of Medium– turns out that isn’t starting until january.  so, we watched Studio 60 instead.  and it was flat-out  amazing.

firstly, i had wanted to watch this show because of the aaron sorkin connection.  (i’d just spaced the fact that it was on last night, so actually seeing it was fortuitous– that means lucky.)  anyhoo, sorkin and producer thomas schlamme were responsible for sports night and much of the west wing, the former being top five in my all-time favorite shows, and my expectations were fairly high.  when the credits rolled at the end, i believe i started clapping and said “woo hoo,” (and only part of that was the rum) so you know what i thought of it.

i won’t regurgitate the plot– you can read that on wikipedia or imdb.  i will tell you what i thought worked, though:

• dialogue.  this is standard sorkin, but he’s such a master.  you have to concentrate to make sure you don’t miss anything, but it’s so intelligent that it’s worth the effort.
• cast.  check it.  other than matthew perry (and arguably amanda peet), no huge names– but a lot of great actors.  speaking of…
• perry.  i was pretty skeptical of his ability to be anyone beyond chandler bing (or mrs. chanandler bong).  he was chandler-like funny in a couple of spots, but also sold the dramatic bit really nicely.  impressive, and i look forward to seeing more.
• intangibles.  (yes, i sound like mel kiper.)  the music fit the scenes nicely.  and- i rarely notice this- but the camera work was fantastic.  there’s a scene near the end where perry and bradley whitford are about to address the cast and crew of the show, and there’s a 360-degree spin around them that really worked.

if you missed the pilot, you can catch it tomorrow night on bravo at 10…