Slow Holiday Aggresposting
No, I'm not scampering off for the holidays, but the lack of hours in the day might mean rather sporadic blogging. In the event our paths as blogger & reader fail to meet prior to Christmas, consider this a Merry Christmas greeting.
A few good reads over the slow news week do actually exist, however. Read on ..
» NYT: "American Idol" (Gary Hart)
Spooled for printing, but I'm guessing some good will come of the one-time-hot-commodity-that-would-be-President reviewing the latest hot commodity that could be President.
» "How Americans Can Stop genocide" (Michael O'Hanlon)
Provocative article here by O'Hanlon that advocates the creation of a Genocide Corp within the Army with a dedicated purpose. I'm inclined to think it's a great idea ... not dissimilar from Thomas Barnett's concept of a nation-building force. But the concept alone doesn't address the key, critical functional weakness of American power - the commitment to pulling the trigger when it comes time to commit troops to the effort. I'm not averse to flipping the UN off over this. As O'Hanlon notes, they've been nothing short of useless in the case of Sudan. There's a huge difference between an indispensable nation and a well-intended world body in this case. Perhaps for reasons such as this, I've never fully understood the complaints about the US being considered the "world's policeman." If we aren't, then I'm sure someone else would love to step in and play the role of "world's warlord."
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In other, less newsworthy news, I happened to get my SanDisk Sansa 4GB toy for processing MP3s and video. Perfect fit for me, I think. As impatient as I am, the video processing is a bit of a chore. And I now realize the necessity of cleaning up some ID3 tags on my tunes. But I think this toy fits my mix of audio and video needs, which still looks about 75% audio - 25% video. The screen's not as big as the iPod screen and the hard drive doesn't compare. But for us boring PC dweebs who rightfully consider anything Apple to be inferior, this is a good alternative.
Reminds me ... several years back, my boss at the time got all the employees together, gave us a wad of cash as a Christmas gift, gave us an hour off late in the day, and told us to report back for show and tell based on what we bought with the money. Back then, it was enough for us all to splurge on DVDs, video games, or (in my case) CDs. What we realized when we got back was that every gift had the same basis: a disc of data ... and with similar casing. After my own gift-giving to myself this year, I found myself with a new cell phone, a new external hard drive, and the Sansa ... all small rectangular black boxes to store data with. Weird how the techie gift-giving all tends to lead toward such similar packaging.
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Last night was a blast at the Continental Club "district." I tested my Sansa's ability to record in a loud club. No dice ... the mic can't handle it and Jennifer Ringwald's rant about the need for the band to have two drummers and how nobody cares if the band is led by her able substitute is now lost to the ages. For the record, though, it's not the same for me if Rebekah is leading the band.
Afterwards, I caught the Light Rock Express and have to marvel at one element of their talent in particular. Can't remember the song, but at one point they did a fade out of a song ... the kind you hear on recorded songs, ya know. But it was live. And it was impressive. It's also not the sort of thing you see every day.
While on the topic of Beebes, the Chron did a nice sendoff of David Beebe (and Sara Cress has a podcast interview of him), who's retiring from the Houson music scene after years and years of essentially defining it. I first caught the El Orbits back in 1999, which was kinda late in the game. David's bands will be performing a series of final shows with him over the course of the week. I'll be at the Continental on Tuesday night to watch the Aqua Velvas, Houston's premiere B-52s Tribute Band. I'm not a fan of the B-52s in the slightest, but the chicks on vocals are awesome and there's two Beebes in the band. That, my friends, is a winning combination. The El Orbits do the New Years Eve thing at the Continental if you're looking for a cool way to kick in the new year. I'll be celebrating that with a rather cool band at church, though.
Oh, and Merry Christmas y'all!!!