One of the reasons Willie Nelson has persevered in music, despite being a nasty looking old fogie for pretty much my entire life, is that he’s made an active effort to transcend cheesy country and play, well ‘Willie’ music. He’s done a pretty darn good job of doing duets with most of the new hip artists.
But on his Willie and Friends ‘Alive and Kicking’ album, he does a duet with Wyclef Jean on ‘To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before.’ I hate to say it, but it just doesn’t work. They’ve got it set to a pretty hard reggae beat, and Willie has about as much rhythm as I do. Typically, his wandering voice does a great job of portraying emotion; in this setting it falls.
Ah, well, such is life. At least I could listen before I bought the album. Great tracks on the disc with ZZ Top and Eric Clapton may get it downloaded.
Speaking of beer, I just packed up a cooler of Lone Star Light (in cans!) and apple juice drink boxes for tomorrow morning. Jake and I are going down to the coast to fish and look for hermit crabs…
There’s a thermos full of chocolate milk, and another waiting to catch hot coffee for the drive down. Not quite sure where we’re going, but it ought to be fun. Probably hit the Academy in Galveston when we get down that way to pick up a map.
I’ll admit that I’m late coming to the party, so maybe this is an inside joke I missed, but technically the BackPorch tag line should be: “Things that matter, more that don’t”
One gripe I’ve got regardless of the OS or program that I’m using is that there are about a half dozen volume controls in most modern systems. For instance:
At home: With iTunes, there is an iTunes volume control on the program window, then a master system volume control in the Menu bar, and since I’m still running a speaker system from a couple of computers again, there is a speaker volume control, and the subwoofer has a separate volume control. Four ways to make Tribe Called Quest come booming out the speakers.
At work: WMP, MusicMatch and Real Audio all have volume control built into the program, then there’s a Windows master volume control in the system tray, and another dial on my speakers.
I suppose I can deal with the speaker volume control, but probably should move up to a newer set of speakers with one volume control for both subs and satellites. But would it be too much to ask software designers to tie a program specific volume control to the master volume control (or at least offer it as an option?).
Now that I’m griping, I can understand that if you’re dealing with more than one program that uses sound how individual volume controls would be useful, but it at least ought to be an option for us luddites who turn on music and want just one place to go to make it louder/softer.
I really hate conspiracy theory, so I am hoping the suppositions in this article at Salon today are not true. “Activists on the left and right — including a 71-year-old Milwaukee nun and an art dealer who told other passengers that President Bush “is dumb as a rock” — have long complained they were being hassled by airport security. After months of silence, the federal government says: It’s true.“