Resurfacing after a bad case of the Swine Flu (nah, just a bad cough), it's time for me to drag out a little pet peeve of mine. Just recently a fan-made video of "Surprise, Surprise" was posted on YouTube and has really taken the fan community by storm. Depicting the birthday of a young girl, the video goes overboard in "happy, shiny people" images and clichés in a way that's just incredibly charming and hilarious. While it does make a little fun of the song's lightweight nature, it actually makes you appreciate the song for what it is: A fun diddy and a damn good one, too.

And here's where my pet peeve comes out. Do you realize that if you were fan of Prince or REM or any Warner Music artist, a similar fan-made video would have been gone probably before it was even uploaded? Why? Because those artists, represented by their record companies, don't appreciate fans using their music for free. They don't allow this kind of human creativity and bursting inspiration. They don't approve when music does to you exactly what music is supposed to do to you and what it did to these kids: Make you so inspired that you go out and spend a day putting together an awesome video that brings joy to thousands of people. Oh no, we just can't have that, can we?

Well, fortunately Bruce has not taken this kind of stand. Yet. One can hope it's deliberate and that he and his organization can see what a huge backlash it would mean if they asked YouTube to pull a video like this. But one can also fear that it's only because it's flying under their radar and that they just haven't gotten around to dealing with stuff like this yet. What a great shame and a great sin it would be. Instead Bruce should invite these kids backstage at the next show in their town and tell them how wonderful it is that they took his music and made it even better.

OK, rant over. Here's the video: