Melissa Mikkelsen's bio:

Full time model/Lingerie Football League Player/TV Host/Reality tv star/Go go dancer/Student/Entertainment and Sports Manager/Ready to take this world by storm.

I thought I was busy, but Melissa has me beat. There really is a Lingerie Football League, which this fall will have Melissa playing center for the Denver Dream.

P.s. Does anyone know if VideoSift supports the MetaWeblog API? I would like to compose my weblog entries in Windows Live Writer, which is easier than writing them in a browser.

A blogger on the sports community weblog SportsFilter has collected some links related to the Hillsborough Disaster, a deadly crush that killed dozens of British soccer fans on April 15, 1989:

Hillsborough Disaster Recalled 20 Years Later: Twenty years ago today, 96 fans were killed and 766 more injured during an FA Cup semifinal between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, England. Public memorials were held today marking the event that came to be known as the Hillsborough disaster. "Given all the evidence, it's impossible to believe or bear 20 years on no one is held responsible for one of sport's biggest disasters," says Peter Joynes, whose 27-year-old son Nick was among the dead. Some government officials are calling for the release of all government documents related to the tragedy, believing the role of police and rescue officials has never been fully examined.

The tragedy was reminiscent of the Who Concert tragedy in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1979, in which 11 people were killed.

I attended a Barack Obama campaign event last fall, and as the crowd numbering in tens of thousands got bigger and bigger, I moved aside rather than moving up and packing in closer to see him speak. Large crowds in small spaces freak me out.

Blog post by Kanye West in response to South Park:

SOUTH PARK MURDERED ME LAST NIGHT AND IT'S PRETTY FUNNY. IT HURTS MY FEELINGS BUT WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM SOUTH PARK! I ACTUALLY HAVE BEEN WORKING ON MY EGO THOUGH. HAVING THE CRAZY EGO IS PLAYED OUT AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE AND CAREER. I USE TO USE IT TO BUILD UP MY ESTEEM WHEN NOBODY BELIEVED IN ME. NOW THAT PEOPLE DO BELIEVE AND SUPPORT MY MUSIC AND PRODUCTS THE BEST RESPONSE IS THANK YOU INSTEAD OF "I TOLD YOU SO!!!" IT'S COOL TO TALK SHIT WHEN YOU'RE RAPPING BUT NOT IN REAL LIFE. WHEN YOU MEET LITTLE WAYNE IN PERSON HE'S THE NICEST GUY FOR EXAMPLE. I JUST WANNA BE A DOPER PERSON WHICH STARTS WITH ME NOT ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE HOW DOPE I THINK I AM. I NEED TO JUST GET PAST MYSELF. DROP THE BRAVADO AND JUST MAKE DOPE PRODUCT. EVERYTHING IS NOT THAT SERIOUS. AS LONG AS PEOPLE THINK I ACT LIKE A BITCH THIS TYPE OF SHIT WILL HAPPEN TO ME. I GOT A LONG ROAD AHEAD OF ME TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE I'M NOT ACTUALLY A HUGE DOUCHE BUT I'M UP FOR THE CHALLENGE. I'M SURE THE WRITERS AT SOUTH PARK ARE REALLY NICE PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE. THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO DRAW MY CREW. THAT WAS PRETTY FUNNY ALSO!! I'M SURE THERE'S GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN THIS... THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW IT'S ME!

-- found by Celebmonkey

The Blockbuster chain that was once a dominant force in the movie industry could be close to shutting its doors, according to Two Way Web on Twitter:

Today the video-rental giant admitted that if it cannot complete the financing deals that it is currently working on, there is a good chance the company may be forced to shut its doors. While the company last week said it was in the process of getting a $250 million revolving loan from creditors, that may be in jeopardy.

Why? The loan apparently has some conditions to it, and Blockbuster is now not sure it can meet them. Even worse, whether the loan goes through are not, it is not even sure that would be enough to save the company.

As a former Blockbuster member, I hope that loan has confusing and excessive late fees.

A couple years ago in Slate, Edward Jay Epstein wrote about how Blockbuster was doomed by two bad decisions -- one on not sharing profits with movie companies on new DVD rentals, and the other on not buying Netflix for $50 million:

The other shoe dropped with the emergence of Netflix as a major online competitor for what remained of the rental market. (Blockbuster turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix for a mere $50 million, instead entering a disastrous home-delivery deal with Enron.) Netflix signed up over 3 million subscribers by 2005 by offering DVDs that could be kept as long as renters liked for a monthly fee. To compete, Blockbuster had to do away with its single biggest profit-earner: charging late fees to customers who kept videos past the due date.

These days, with Netflix, pay-per-view, DVR and Internet viewing of new movies, driving to Blockbuster to rent a movie is becoming as antiquated as popping a tape into the VCR.

Here's a wild one: The American science fiction author Bruce Sterling and his Serbian wife Jasmina Tesanovic are having trouble convicing U.S. authorities they are legitimately married, which means she faces deportation:

Although we have been married for four years now, the American Immigration services can't find any paper trail for the two of us.

We have no joint bank account, no insurance accounts and no joint children. The authorities therefore suspect that our marriage is a phony "Green Card marriage," and they would like to have Jasmina deported from the USA.

This is not too entirely surprising a mistake, since we're an Internet couple. By our nature, we just don't generate much paper. ...

We must therefore implore your help. Have you ever witnessed the two of us hanging around together? Were you convinced that we're the real deal, spouse-wise? Do you have solemn, impressive, legal-looking letterhead? For instance, are you some kind of American federal agent yourself? Lord knows we know some.

Surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have joined an effort to get one million children to meditate, according to a story this morning on ABC News:

For the first time since the death of George Harrison in 2002, what's left of the Beatles sang together Saturday at a Radio City Music Hall concert -- "Change Begins Within" -- to promote transcendental meditation.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr joined a new generation of stars to support the David Lynch Foundation's goal of teaching 1 million at-risk children the practice developed by the Beatles' guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who died in 2008.

After they have recruited a million-strong army of meditating children, they will turn them into merciless attack ninjas who kill music downloaders.

As I experiment with the blogging tools on VideoSift, I thought this alphabet tattoo was worth sharing:

I found it on FlickrFan Stan.

There's an interesting story on TechDirt about two bands that aggressively promote themselves at concerts, even to the point of meeting the crowd after they play:

Ian Rogers of Topspin ... writes about two bands he recently saw who clearly understand the value of selling (and, as he notes, neither band is using Topspin, so he's not promoting his own partners here) by actually realizing that selling merchandise is part of their job. He describes how one band, Halestorm, was opening for another band, but rather than being just a typical opening band that fades into the background, they made sure that people knew about them, first by putting on a great show and then by making it clear that (a) they have affordable merchandise for sale and (b) the band itself will be hanging out with the crowd and wants to meet everyone. ...

As Ian notes: "I'm not worried about these guys at all. Even if the record doesn't work at radio (it may) they're going to do just fine building their audience one show at a time." The band is doing everything right. They're using every opportunity to connect with fans, while also giving them a real reason to buy. They're not waiting for their record label to get them on the radio or MTV. They're doing everything they can to actually build up a rabid supporting fanbase from the bottom up.

If more bands did stuff like this at their concerts they wouldn't need the revenue they're supposedly losing to downloaders. I can't recall the last concert I went to that offered anything interesting to buy for fans of the band, beyond T-shirts.