Good news from SMITH contributor Patrick Sauer: He’s going to sort through all the online video sites and tell you what to watch. Well, him and his army of video monkeys at a new website, The Daily Tube, a spot that sends out the best video clips from the Web. The site offers categories (politics, sports, humor, etc.) and shoots you the best of the vids three days a week. Our man is handling “Late Nite,” which means you can go to bed and wake up with links to the Colbert highlights in your in-box.

Says Sauer: “It’s sort of like a daily newspaper, except without all that laborious reading or ink-stained fingers.”

Check it out and sign up for email delivery of the things you like to watch.

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Introducing DomeNation, a new weekly show on YouTube in which a D and an R set up a makeshift studio a few hundred yards from the Capitol and talk about the intersection of technology and politics and people. It’s raw (so what else is new on YouTube?) and unsexily earnest (which makes it more appealing, in a way).

And then there’s this, the seemingly inevitable conservative YouTube.

This week’s question:

Spring is in the air and the film fest is in Tribeca. What do you remember about your very first movie date?

Next week’s question:
The tiff between a MySpace user and the Obama campaign made us wonder— ever felt screwed by a social networking site?

Gawker came, saw, concurred that David Boyer’s Bachelor Party Confidential book, excerpted here, rocks.

Gawker shots here (bonus points if you can find me mauling a SMITH contributor). SMITH shots here. Congrats to David on a book that will turn heads—these two ladies above cannot get enough of the storied author.

Celebrities, watch out—well, celebrities who drive gas-guzzlers or skip out on recycling had better watch out.

There’s a blog out there called Ecorazzi, the gossip site for green celebs (and those who aren’t so much). Great, just what I need… like I don’t already spend most of my morning reading up on the stars both here and across the pond (god, I love Posh and Katie + Peter).

If you want to know which actors and actresses have gone green, then definitely check out the site. It’s actually quite cool—besides dishing on Clooney’s electric Tesla Roadster, Woody’s hemp, or Halle’s shopping spree for organic wears, there are links to other green sites, celebrity sites (yes, Leo DiCaprio has his own website dedicated to saving Mama Earth), upcoming events, and of course, non-green gossip blogs (think Perez Hilton).

Go to ecorazzi.com and read up on your favorite celebs guilt free. Hey, it’s green!

I must say, it takes a lot to impress me these days. So, when I read this article in The Christian Science Monitor about Mike McCann, an eighth grader from Massachusetts, I was actually floored.

Mike is a 14-year-old bugle boy who plays taps at military burials—when he isn’t doing his homework.

And the kid already has one heck of a reputation around town, too.

“Mike is very poised and well-disciplined. An awesome kid. He does a great job,” says Chief Petty Officer Christopher Lazenberry, who has attended a half-dozen services at which Mike (more…)

I’m just back from New Orleans, where I attended a little inspirational celebration of Big Easy music, food, and culture called Jazzfest. Jazzfest has been on my life list for years, but honestly I had no idea exactly how special an event it is. For eight hours a day the music flows: 10 stages ranging from jazz, blues, gospel, cajun, bluegrass, country, rock, and all sorts of hard-to-define combos, like The New Orleans Bingo Show, a local band that’s a cross between Tom Waits, Hedwig, and a naughty circus act—one of the city’s many homegrown treasures.

Pictured above is the real life meeting of two of the A.D.’s stars, Leo and The Doctor, who mingled in real time at a Jazzfest party hosted by Cree McCree. Cree, a SMITH writer (she wrote the diary about returning to New Orleans after Katrina), artist, vintage clothing and costume maven, and 18-year Jazzfest veteran, can now boast one more talent on her resume: Big Easy-approved gumbo cook, as deemed by The Doctor, who knows from N’awlins cooking. (more…)