Super Bowl XLIVL: Saints Coach Sean Payton takes Bill Walsh approach

In 1982, when the San Francisco 49ers traveled to Detroit to play the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XVI, Head Coach Bill Walsh dressed as a hotel bellman helping his team with their bags. The idea was to loosen up the Niners as it was their first Super Bowl.

Today, in 2010, we have the New Orleans Saints in their first Super Bowl against the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIVL. And its apparent that Saints Head Coach Sean Payton saw the NFL Films movies of the late, great Coach Walsh. According to the NFL Network today, Coach Payton dressed as a hotel doorman along with several members of the Saints organization as the team was coming off their bus.

All to keep the Saints relaxed.

It worked for Bill Walsh and the San Francisco 49ers in 1982; the Niners won Super Bowl XVI 26 to 21. But 2010's a generation away and Coach Walsh wasn't up against the Colts Offense in Super Bowl XLIVL.

Stay tuned.

Herb Caen lives through the SF Chronicle and New Media

Carl Nolte's take on Herb Caen is a worthy read, but for San Franciscans who've never heard of him - and the numnber's growing year-by-year - it's going to reach a small audience and then be quickly forgotten. That's sad, because Herb Caen is very much alive.

Herb Caen is alive in those of us who wanted to be like him, and still do. Who wanted to share how they saw San Francisco with the World. In the past, media wasn't fragmented; today it is. But because of that, he's everywhere.

Had he lived, Herb Caen would have still been a columnist, but a grouchy one, because his minders would not have had any idea how to get him plugged into New Media, and he most certainly would have resisted for a time. But his young fans would save him.

Herb Caen is alive. He lives in the people who use camcorders and cell phones to capture moments in San Francisco. Remember the Muni Driver who was getting a massage? The person who recorded him had Herb's sprit. Even the Oscar Grant Murder had Herb Caen's involvement in the form of the people who held up cell phones and camcorders to capture it as it was happening. And Herb Caen is very much in me. I had him in mind when I created this Golden Globe Awards video:



And this video on New Media, which was a tour of San Francisco, featuring talks with San Franciscans, including Mayor Newsom:



But if you're thinking I'm trying to say I'm Herb Caen - no, not exactly. We're all Herb Caen. I'm trying to show that we are him, today. We just need the proper vessel to show it and Herb Caen's sprit.

Herb Caen is alive. The problem is the San Francisco Chronicle hasn't figured out how to reassemble him today. Here's how.

Using YouTube's "direct" feature and a special web page, SFGate can have a new section called "I am Herb Caen: Herb Caen's San Francisco." The idea is to go to places that Herb would have either gone to or may have if they're new and make videos about them and what the person sees and upload them to the page. The result over time will be a powerful platform of San Francisco from his point of view as San Franciscans and visitors see it, expressed in videos.

In fact, here's an idea: each video should start with the title "I am Herb Caen."

Stay tuned.

Ecuador President Correa takes doctors to Haiti, no donation, blasts donors

On Friday, January 29th, Ecuador President Rafael Correa went to visit earthquake damaged Haiti, with 12 doctors, and while making no monetary donation, blasted donor nations.

"There is a lot of imperialism among the donors. They donate first, but most of it goes back to them," Correct said at a joint press conference with Haiti's President Rene Preval.

That's the kind of politics Rafael Correa's known for. To mask the fact that Ecuador's not giving money to Haiti, Correa blasts those countries who have done so, which includes the United States.

To hide the fact that Rafael Correa wants to nationalize oil production in Ecuador, he asks for money to avoid oil extraction and production in what is considered an Ecuadorian biological preserve, then when he doesn't get the money, makes plans to do so with Ecuador's state-run oil company.

If Ecuador wanted to help Haiti, they would have spent money. With an economy projected to grow in 2010 and a budget in the billions, Ecuador could afford at least a few million for Haiti. And if Ecuador really wanted to protect the Amazon, it would not work to produce oil in it, itself.

Stay tuned.

Oakland's iGrow weed Superstore in video

CNN's Dan Simon pays a visit to the new Oakland iGrow Superstore. The weed house is 15,000 square feet and just next to the Oakland Airport on 70 Hegenberger Drive. iGrow is developed for medicinal marijuana cultivation and they have a doctor in the building.

At iGrow, you can learn how to grow marijuana, get a cannabis card, and by all the equipment you need to have a growing crop of marijuana.

With this, and the blessings of the City of Oakland, America has taken one more step toward the eventual full legalization of marijuana.




Stay tuned.

Green Day wins Grammy Award for Best Rock Album

Green Day, who's American Idiot musical is set to debut on Broadway, won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. At the Grammys, Billie Joe Armstrong and the Berkeley-born Green Day band did "21 Guns," from their album 21st Century Breakdown, which won the Best Rock Album Grammy.

Here, CNN captures the band practicing for their performance at The Grammys.



Green Day took the 2004 hit American Idiot and turned it into a popular play here on the West Coast. According to Wikipedia, American Idiot is about..

The album's protagonist, Jesus of Suburbia, emerged out of Armstrong asking himself what sort of person the title of "American Idiot" referred to. Armstrong described the character as essentially an anti-hero, a powerless "everyman" desensitized by a "steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin". Jesus of Suburbia hates his town and those close to him, so he leaves for the city.

As the album progresses the characters St. Jimmy and Whatsername are introduced. St. Jimmy is a punk rock freedom fighter. Whatsername, inspired by the Bikini Kill song "Rebel Girl", is a "Mother Revolution" figure that Armstrong described as "kind of St. Jimmy's nemesis in a lot of ways".

Both characters illustrate the "rage vs. love" theme of the album, in that "you can go with the blind rebellion of self-destruction, where Saint Jimmy is. But there's a more love-driven side to that, which is following your beliefs and ethics. And that's where Jesus of Suburbia really wants to go", according to Armstrong.

Near the end of the story, St. Jimmy apparently commits suicide. While the singer did not want to give away the details of the story's resolution, he said the intention is for the listener to ultimately realize that Jesus of Suburbia is really St. Jimmy, and Jimmy is "part of the main character that pretty much dies". In the album's final song, "Whatsername", Jesus of Suburbia loses his connection with Whatsername as well.

Stay tuned

Taylor Swift wins Album of The Year at the Grammy Awards

The 2009 fairy tale story that is Taylor Swift continues in 2010. While Beyonce took home more Grammys than any female artist in Grammy history, Taylor Swift got three awards, including Album of The Year for the awesome Fearless.

Last year is seemed Taylor Swift could do no wrong, as she scored every award, major and not, that was in sight, including Country Music Entertainer of the Year.

At the Grammys, Taylor may have expected her long ride to end; it didn't. That should explain her wonderfully enthusiastic reaction to her award. (The video from that is not yet up as of this writing.)

Taylor Swift also had another dream come true when she got to perform with her childhood favorite, Stevie Nicks. The two performed songs from Fleetwood Mac and You Belong with Me, from Swift's Fearless album.



Stay tuned.

Stephen Colbert's Opening Speech bombs at Grammy Awards

Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report is hilarious and his show is an American Cultural treasure. But Stephen Colbert's opening speech at the 2010 Grammy Awards just plain bombed. Either Stephen Colbert was before the wrong audience or he had the wrong material.

Whatever the case, watching Colbert struggle through his almost four minutes of his common "let's play the out-of-touch conservative trying-to-be hip, but not" character hurt as much as having the needle of a flu shot driven into your arm.

It was that bad.



The only part that saved Stephen Colbert from being a totally awful opening was pulling his Apple iPad out of his suit. "Does this make me cool?" He asked Jay-Z, for whom he slightly annoyed with his "What up, Z?" question at the start of the disaster. The look on Jay-Z's face was enough to make Stephen Colbert's skin crawl, and that's where it went bad. Stephen Colbert never recovered from that.

Yes. The fact that Colbert was bombing was the "in joke" but it ventured too far into his bombing actually not being funny. Colbert's humor is perfect for events like the White House Correspondents Dinner, but it wasn't a good idea to have him give the opening speech at The Grammys. Watching someone who's so talented just major league bomb at The Grammys was not fun at all.

Grammy Awards 2010: Beyonce performance wows the crowd

Beyonce's militaristic, head-banging performance was the Twitter talk of the 2010 Grammy Awards. Escorted by a group of black armored suit wearing dancers, Beyonce looked more like a super hot drill sergeant than a pop singer.

The design of Beyonce's performance brought up memories of Michael Jackson in This Is It performing HisTory. And it was very much like Emimen's 2002 MTV Music Awards performance of Slim Shady when he walked into Radio City Music Hall with an army of white men all dressed and cut to look just like him.



One thing you have to say: Beyonce is hot. No question about it. She's also the hottest Grammy winner, taking home six Grammys, the most by a female performer in one year.

Grammy Awards 2010: Miley Cyrus greeting fans with her mom

YouTube user Michalyse was one of the fans at the Red Carpet for the 2010 Grammy Awards, when superstar singer Miley Cyrus walked in and came over to sign autographs.

Miley Cyrus, wearing a short black cocktail dress, was with her Mom Tish, and not her boyfriend Liam Hemsworth. (They're not engaged, but reportedly they are still dating. Still one wonders where he was.)

You can hear the crowd, which sounds like her demographic of females 13 to 17, screaming her name. It's a very good video uploaded rapidly.



Miley was a presenter at the 2010 Grammy Awards.

Lady Gaga and Elton John get Grammy's started

The rumored and much anticipated Grammy Awards pairing of Lady Gaga and Sir Elton John happened, and go the Grammys off to a rousing start. Lady Gaga and Elton John are both piano wizards, so it was fitting that they produced a piano duet of a number of songs from past and present:

MTV Shows

Sir Elton John had his own signature glitter glasses and both had a kind of "soot' makeup. Elton can still jam on the piano. It was cool: young and old, past and present, both massively brilliant.

Other performances that will be featured are Beyonce Rocks doing Alanis Morissette's 'You Oughta Know', Pink literally "up in the air" for 'Glitter in The Air', Taylor Swift And Stevie Nicks singing the Fleetwood Mac song Rhiannon, and Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me from her album Fearless.

Stay tuned.

Zennie62 Widget beats SFGate Widget, approaching NY Times Widget

Last year, my friend Steve Kloft (who's a consultant to several top New Media companies), came to me by my surprise having already created a widget for me called "The Zennie Abraham Widget". The best thing is I never asked for it or even thought of it. It was Steve's creation; his idea to promote me.

That's a friend.

Steve was then and still is now a consultant to WidgetBox, which I later featured in a video on the firm here:

YouTube has President Obama's full State of The Union Address

Thanks to The White House and YouTube News and Politics Editor Steve Grove, YouTube has the full, high-definition video presentation of the State of The Union Address President Barack Obama gave on Wednesday, January 27, 2010. If you missed it, you can watch it right here on video without leaving this post:



The speech was one of the greatest President Obama has made in history because it came at a time when he, and America, needed a great speech. Obama needed it to reset the course of his young presidency. The United States needed it to establish a vision of a possible, full employment economic recovery.

The problem America has suffered under is that while America's economy has grown at a three percent rate in the 2009 third quarter and at 5.1 percent in the 2009 fourth quarter, unemployment is still at high levels.

This is so because before the last two quarters of growth, America's economy was on a steady path of recession for almost two years. Job production has not yet followed this growth and credit is still tight.

The result was a feeling that America was not on the right track. But President Obama's State of The Union Address changed that. According to a CBS poll, 83 percent of Americans supported the proposals President Obama described in his speech.

The full text of the speech is presented by the New York Times, here.

Stay tuned.