Year: 2007

Forgive me, I’ve been drinking with librarians, but I’d like to amend my earlier post where I put down a list of musicians who I was happy to have met while I worked in the music industry. Let me please add Dave Wakeling of The English Beat to the list. He came to visit us with his new incarnation of the band, and you could not hope to meet a friendlier, more down-to-earth guy who genuinely wanted to talk about music and life and get to know people in a non-star, real kind of way. Top bloke. Diamond geezer.

I’m thinking about Dave Wakeling because, as I mentioned, I’ve been drinking with librarians and I came home to an episode of VH1’s “Bands Reunited” on my Time Warner Tivo equivalent, and I’ve just started watching it. I guess the point of posting now, after only watching for five minutes, is to say I don’t care what happens in this show, if you don’t know The English Beat you should download or otherwise get into your possession their album “I Just Can’t Stop It.” Generally I try to be forward-looking, but despite roughly one brazilian listenings in the past 25 years, I never tire of that album.

Forgive me if I’ve written about this before, but The English Beat came through Carrboro five or six years ago and I went to see them, and I think it was actually my birthday. I had been a bit overserved, and I started to dance, and before I knew what was happening I remembered my move. I had completely forgotten that a quarter century before, when I regularly danced to The English Beat, I had a move. It involved some kind of foot-sweep-behind-the-leg motion that was very tight and very ska. It came back to me only in the heat of battle, as it were, like a mist descending over my eyes and taking charge of my reason. Right now, sitting on my living room floor, I can’t quite remember what the move was. But I know it would come back if I went to an English Beat show.

I get the Prius. I’m good with the Prius. I am in favor of the Prius and other hybrid vehicles. Don’t talk to me about the price differential and how the extra money you pay for one will never be made back in gas cost. Despite the practical merits of that argument, it just doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. First of all, maybe the numbers don’t add up at current gas prices, but what about a year from now, or two or three? Would you have thought five years ago that gas would be over three bucks a gallon in 2007? What’s it going to be in 2010? But more important, the people who buy hybrids are doing something. Whether it makes the most practical sense or not, each one of them is putting less crap into the air than if they were driving something else.

But here’s what I don’t get; this evening on my way home I saw a guy in a Prius doing the best he could to burn rubber away from a stoplight. On a trip to DC a few weeks ago, me and The Mrs. were passed by three or four Prii doing 90+ and weaving in and out of traffic like the other murderous idiots on I-95. Now that I don’t understand. If you’re going to buy a Prius and drive it like a leadfoot jerk, then you might as well buy a Corolla and spend the extra money on carbon offsets.

Now, if you really want to hear a radical idea, consider the one proposed by my cousin-in-law Brett when we were having this same conversation over the July 4th holiday. If you truly want to buy a car that has the least impact on the environment, buy a used car instead of a new one.

The latest issue of Wired has an extensive how-to section, with tips on everything from mastering Guitar Hero to taking better photos. I’m intrigued by their suggestion that if I am able to get to the back of my car stereo, I may be able to attach an RCA cable and plug my iPod into the other end. After examining “what I thought were” all the different, complicated, expensive and ultimately unsatisfying ways to do that, this is a pretty compelling idea. It sounds like a weekend project with at least a 50 percent chance of ending in a Monday morning drive to the Mazda dealer with my dashboard on my lap.

You have to admire Wired’s chutzpah for including tips on how to jump off a building and how to maximize your MPG by getting behind a truck and turning off your engine.

I’m now carrying two mobile phones around with me; one from work and my own. Those of you who know about my obsession with phones and other shiny objects might think I’d enjoy this, but it’s actually kind of annoying, and might just push me over the man bag threshold.

One of them is on Verizon, which has a news section in its mobile web browser. To fit in the limited real estate of the mobile screen they have even fewer words to play with than a newspaper editor, so the headlines are terse, often to the point of incomprehensibility. And they can only fit two on the screen at a time. Here are my favorite recent juxtapositions:

Congress Returns
Mice Overrun Lake Area

Space Shuttle Leaves Dock
Taliban Occupies Area

Heatwave Continues
Pre-teen Sisters Accused