And the Shuffle Sez...

by Pa Rock
Music Fan

Sister Phillipia (Mary Syracuse Harmon) "tagged" me on Facebook yesterday with a challenge to shuffle my music playlist, copy down the first fifteen songs to pop up, and send that list to a group friends asking each of them to do the same and to send a copy of their lists back to me. (A chain-letter type of thing without any monetary risk.) I try to not use Facebook because it is too complicated for my simple mind, and I'm not sure that I have a group of friends - so I decided to do my list and post it here. If anyone wants to shuffle up their own list and send it to a group of friends or back to me, be my guest!

My iPod currently has 3,341 songs, a very eclectic mixture as you are about to see. It (the iPod) is certainly the best investment that I have made in years. I have a docking station at the office and at home, and headphones for the gym. My time on the treadmill has quadrupled since I started marching to my tunes!

Here is Pa Rock's first fifteen after the shuffle. Make of them what you will:

1. Daydream Believer (Anne Murray and Nelly Furtado)
2. 10,000 Miles (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
3. The Blue Danube Waltz (Andre Rieu)
4. They Can't Take That Away From Me (Rod Stewart)
5. The Dark End of the Street (Linda Ronstadt)
6. I Ain't Got Nobody (Preservation Hall Jazz Band)
7. Don't Say Goodbye (Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young)
8. This Ole House (Bette Midler)
9. Blue Reverie (Benny Goodman)
10. Monday, Monday (The Mamas and the Papas)
11. It Is No Secret What God Can Do (Elvis Presley)
12. The Name of the Game (Abba)
13. Are You Sure Hank Williams Done it This Way? (Waylon Jennings)
14. Volunteers (Jefferson Airplane)
15. She's Got a Way (Billy Joel)

I have six Beatles albums on the ole iPod, and not a single Beatles song made the front fifteen!

Nights at the Edgewood Drive-In

by Pa Rock
Shameless Reminiscer

There was a time in America when the term drive-in referred to an outdoor setting where people went on warm nights to park in a field, hang a speaker on their car window, and watch movies on a giant screen. Often there was a playground for the kiddos up under the large screen, and a snack shack that served a full menu of popcorn, cold drinks, hot dogs, and other movie fare. Drive-in theatres are mostly a thing of the past now, with the occasional holdout that manages to stay open more as a curiosity than anything else.

The drive-in theatre of my youth was the Edgewood, located on busy Highway 71 just south of Neosho, Missouri. From the highway it appeared to be a fine old southern plantation mansion with a two story white facade framed by magnificent white columns. The owners of the Edgewood liked to brag that it was the most beautiful drive-in in America, and my mother would note, with a sense of pride, that she had traveled to many places and never seen one that was any nicer.

When I was very young my parents owned a truck stop in Goodman, MO, with my mother's sister, Christine, and her husband, Bob Dobbs. My mother and aunt ran the restaurant while my dad and uncle managed the gas station and garage. It was the kids' job - me, my sister, and our two cousins - to stay out of the way. We played hard!

It was the 1950's. Many people had television, but it had yet to reach out and control our lives. The age of wonderful radio programs was just coming to an end. Movies were the most popular form of escapism at that moment in history. Neosho, just ten miles up the road, had the closest movie theatres. The same family owned them both - the indoor Orpheum for winter viewing, and the Edgewood for outdoor viewing during the late spring, summer, and early fall. It was always a very big deal when the drive-in opened for the season.

Drive-in's originally charged by the car, regardless of how many people were crammed into the vehicle. Each car only took up one space and used one speaker, and the more people - the more refreshment sales. Toward the end of the era, many started charging on a per person basis - causing legions of flexible youth to enter the premises in the trunk of a car, and hoping, of course, that once they were past the gate their friends would let them out!

A typical night at the Edgewood consisted of a cartoon and two or three movies, separated by intermissions where everyone ran to the restrooms and snack shack, and the kids headed to the playground. The Edgewood playground was surrounded by very large plywood cutouts of Disney and other cartoon characters. It housed several swings, slides, teeter-totters, and a merry-go-round that the big kids kept running wickedly fast!

A nice thing about drive-ins back in the day was that the management didn't go nuts if you brought in your own food. My mother would have the cooks at the cafe pack us an evening meal to eat in the car while we watched the movies. One night she couldn't decide what type of sandwich she wanted, and told to cook to just surprise her. She was surprised alright when she bit into her sandwich later that night and discovered that it was a potholder slathered in mayonnaise between two slices of bread. From then on whenever anyone mentioned Florine's surprise sandwich, everyone in town knew how it was made!

Drive-ins began to disappear in the 1960's as the concept of daylight savings time came into vogue and caused the sun to stay out longer. (The shows couldn't be seen on the screen until after dark.) I remember going to the Edgewood on August 5th, 1962, with my sister and mother. I know the exact date because when we returned home we learned that Marilyn Monroe had died that day. The very last time that I can remember going to the Edgewood was in sometime in 1969, and I suspect that may have been its final season. I was home from college and a group of friends and I were there to watch Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower. Actually we were there to visit and drink beer, but Cactus Flower was a nice diversion.

The Edgewood has been closed for decades, and the fine old plantation mansion facade was bulldozed many years ago in the name of progress. Today the site is occupied by a business that sells cattle trailers. But I can't drive down that stretch of highway without fondly remembering the place that was such an important fixture of my youth.

I doubt that drive-ins will ever make a comeback because there are so many other diversions available in modern life. But those of us who wax nostalgic for the good old days still have the option of parking in a field and watching movies on our iPods!

No, no, they can't take that away from me!

Of course machines can think...but do they have souls?

by Pa Rock
Barstool Philosopher

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! This posting deals with ascribing human characteristics to machinery, including the ability to think and the ability to choose between moral and immoral behavior. If you are a tightly wound Christian Fundamentalist, please leave this site at once. You have been warned!

Two decades ago I was teaching Intro to Psychology to a group of college students who were basically my age or older. One of the questions for discussion at the end of a chapter was this: Can animals think? Surprisingly, there were no varying points-of-view on that question because everyone agreed that of course animals could think. The discussion came when students started boasting about the things their pets could do, and whose pooch or kitty was the smartest. They were quicker to brag on their pets than their kids!

Basically the argument about whether animals think or not has been resolved to most people's satisfaction. Oh, there are enclaves of know-nothings here and there who take pride in believing that they represent God's vision and intent for the planet, but most of them are much closer to hogs languishing in the mud of ignorance than they are to the intelligent end of the humanity spectrum (with sincere apologies to hogs everywhere!).

Of course animals think and reason. There is a grackle (an Arizona crow with an acorn-sized brain) that flies over Luke Air Force Base every morning looking for my car. When he spots it, he swoops in and makes noisy demands for his share of our breakfast. A half of a mile south of the base a scroungy orange tomcat roams a trailer park looking for handouts. He drinks from my birdbath and knows just when and where to show up for his grub. I realize those aren't great examples. Most creatures learn to get their needs met, but not all humans seem to be able to rise to that challenge.

Kicking that can on down the road, I would argue that if humans are endowed with souls, and so far there is no credible scientific evidence to back that idea up, but if humans do indeed have souls, chances are good that all of the earth's living and breathing creatures are also thusly endowed.

Humans have had a deep and abiding relationship with animals, basically out of necessity, since they (humans) crawled onto the shore - or dropped out of the trees - and began walking upright. But during the past century or so, man has begun forming relationships with machines that quickly replaced their old dependence on animals. The twentieth century witnessed mankind being subsumed by cars, radios, televisions, and personal computers - just to note the high points. This trend is accelerating in the in early years of the twenty-first century.

Tonight, for example, I am typing this post on my laptop computer several hundred miles from home. I am connected to the Internet with an "air card," an electronic device that allows me to access the net from virtually anywhere. I have a cell phone in my pocket, and my iPod is within easy reach. I can communicate quickly and easily by email or by cell phone with my children who are widely scattered over three states - without a land line to either of my communication devices, and I can listen to musical selections from several hundred music CDs that are in my music library back in Arizona. Oh, and there is a big, flat-screen television playing in the background - and I am wallowing in air-conditioning!

Many would argue that while we benefit greatly from all of this technology, machines simply function as they are programmed to do, and do not possess the ability to think independently. They may concede that Artificial Intelligence is on the horizon, but deny that machines currently have any ability for independent thought.

I beg to differ. I have ascribed the term "evil" to treadmills in the past, perhaps unfairly because certainly all treadmills, like all humans, are not evil. In fact, the deaths and maimings that are inflicted by treadmills may entirely be the fault of the humans who are walking (or, Allah forbid, running) on these monsters when they should be parked somewhere in a shady bar drinking a tall glass of beer and stuffing down happy hour snacks. It's not fair to blame the results of bad human choices on machines.

Cell phones also bear close scrutiny. Those handy little gadgets have ended more marriages than Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna combined. Again, however, their evilness may be due primarily to the stupidity of the primates who use them text their lovers and email racy photographs.

Some machines, however, do have the capability of thought that is entirely independent of human involvement. My iPod is a case in point. It is a small sucker with a great deal of memory - capable of holding over nine thousand songs. It is currently programmed with my entire CD collection totaling 3,250 songs. I keep it set on "shuffle" so that, in theory, I will hear a completely random selection of music. Generally, it works as it should, and the selections bounce from Van Morrison, to AC/DC, to the Beatles, to Hank Junior or Senior with wild and unpredictable abandon.

But it gets more complicated than that. I have a "station" at home and at the office where I can plug Mr. iPod in and listen to music without the headphones - much like a radio station with the world's greatest playlist. The iPod generally works as it should when I am present, but the moment that I leave the room it begins to do its own thing - and it's thing is Rod Stewart's An American Songbook, a jazzy collection of old American standards including many duets with legends like Elton John and Cher.

An American Songbook is a four-CD set that contains about 40 songs - 40 out of 3,250. Whenever I leave the room and return a few minutes later, Rod Stewart is playing wall-to-wall. It has become obvious that my iPod loves the sandpaper-voiced Brit singer. The iPod usually tries to atone for this indulgence by coughing up some kick-ass country as soon as Rod finishes his current selection.

And it doesn't end there. Today as I was flying into San Antonio, gliding through the wild, blue yonder in an over-sized tin can, Mr. iPod kicked in with an instrumental version of San Antonio Rose, a selection that I hadn't heard before and can't find on the playlist. Oooh-weee-oooh!

I do not pretend to know how many or what types of machines possess the power of independent thought, but of this I am certain: my slick little iPod has a mind of its own. And if it has acquired the power of independent thought, can the acquisition of a soul be far behind?

If my laptop has a soul, what happens when it dies? Will Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut be able to pick it up on the other side and begin blogging? Will Leonardo daVinci take it apart and try to put it back together? Will Michael Jackson use it to compose music - or pull up child porn?

The concept of machines having souls makes the idea of a next life infinitely more interesting. There's got to be more to an afterlife than bad Baptist hymns and harp concerts in the clouds. Bring on Rod Stewart!

Good night from San Antonio, Rose.

An Old Boy with a New Toy

by Pa Rock
Happy Camper

It's been a few days since I have written about the new love of my life, a slight that needs to be addressed. I am speaking, of course, about my iPod, made even more accessible and friendlier by the addition of a docking station. I am listening to it now, as I type, without the encumbrance of headphones. In the last fifteen minutes I have been treated to Michael Buble, Meatloaf, Simon and Garfunkel, Harry James, and now Elton John.

My entire CD collection now resides in the iPod - 257 albums, or 3,040 songs, or 7.3 days of different selections. The little silver wonder is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but only about one-third as thick - and it is just 20% full!

Listening to the music coming from the docking station is like having my radio tuned to the best station anywhere, with no static or interference, no commercials, and no music that does not rise to my high standards!

The Doobie Brothers have finished serenading me, and now Waylon Jennings is banging out a country tune.

I just learned something else - the iPod is charging while the music plays! How cool is that!

Gotta run. The Beatles are here singing about A Hard Day's Night - and the Moody Blues are on deck!

Me and Hank Sr. Do Best Buy

by Pa Rock
Shameless Consumer

Sunday afternoon I was at the gym marching to Pretoria on the evil treadmill when my iPod up and quit. After playing with it most of yesterday, I finally gave up and decided to find a twelve-year-old to help me get it up and running. So today I took the little silver monster to Best Buy where a lovely girl named Jennifer showed me how to reset it.

Easy, peasey! That's one more thing that I now know how to do with an iPod. I am getting to be such a techie!

So after the free lesson, I told Jennifer that I would buy a base from her. It turns out that what I wanted was a docking station - a "base" goes back about forty years to my days of selling CB radios! She took my little iPod, hit the shuffle function, and popped it into a docking station. Poor Jennifer's eyes got as big as silver dollar pancakes when Hank Williams, Sr, started belting out some country hit from the 1950's.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Don't you like hillbilly music?"

"Oh, yes." She stammered. "I like all kinds of music."

Nice recovery, Jen!

Vegas Redux

by Pa Rock
Desert Sage

I'm back in Las Vegas and booked in at the Tropicana less than two months after my last visit. This time I flew to the Sin City instead of taking the long drive up through the desert. The flight time from Phoenix to Vegas is 30 minutes, less time than it took me to drive from my apartment to the airport this morning, and barely long enough to force down the complimentary peanuts, pretzels, and soda provided by Southwest Airlines. (That's right! Southwest has free snacks and drinks - and your bags are checked free!) But, even with those inducements, I think that I will drive again next time. The desert between Phoenix and Vegas is magnificent, with giant saguaros, Joshua trees, craggy vistas, and Hoover Dam!

Packing for travel seems to be getting more complicated. Some of it is due to age - making sure that I get all of my various pills, the insulin, and a few syringes - as well as my trusty bifocals. And some of it is due to the techno-age in which we live: Remember when packing a camera didn't involve charging the battery? Now we have cell phones and those have to be charged as well - ditto for my new iPod. After everything is charged, the battery has to go back in the camera, the telephone has to get inside of my pocket along with the iPod, the headphones have to be packed - along with all adapters so that the whole mess can be recharged during the trip - and don't forget the laptop with its adapter and air card!

So far the only thing that I appear to have forgotten is the book that I have been reading. Just as well, I guess, because keeping all of my toys charged wouldn't have left me much time for reading anyway!

My kids will start drifting in later this afternoon. Our purpose in being here is to support Tim as a movie based on a short story that he wrote competes in the Las Vegas Film Festival. That entry, The Dying Western, will be shown on Sunday afternoon. If you would like to know more about my youngest son, check out Tim Macy on the Internet Movie Data Base (www.IMDB.com).

The Strip awaits...

My Pod and I

by Pa Rock
Head Banger

The iPod adventure continues. I have now mastered loading the beast and have over 600 of my personal favs only a click or two away. As I type this update, I am listening to some kick-ass Hank Williams, Jr, while loading Jerry Jeff Walker from CD into iTunes.

I am ever so slowly learning how to use the control wheel on the iPod, mostly through trial and error. I especially like the "shuffle" feature, constantly being surprised by what the Apple Gods cough up for my listening pleasure. The one thing that I haven't figured out yet is volume. I stick those stupid ear buds as far down into my ear canals as is humanly possible, but the max volume that I get is too low. Today I premiered it at the gym, but could barely hear the music over all of the straining, grunting, and wheezing. I can't exercise any quieter, so the music has got to get louder!

One person responded after my last pissy iPod post saying that I should get an Apple computer and then it would all be very simple. I suspect that is right, but I am at least a year or two away from my next computer, so I will have to suffer through with what I've got.

But I am learning. If anyone can explain how to increase the volume, get in touch.

Tonight I will give up and try reading the manual.

My Pod

by Pa Rock
Music Lover

When Miss Carla and I were in New York this winter she let me play with her iPod. I'm not very techie, but I knew at once that I wanted one of my own. Well, a fool and his money are soon parted, and this past weekend I took the plunge. I'm now the proud owner of a silver "Classic" (like me, another silver classic!) that I understand can accommodate my entire extensive collection of music CD's.

I tried to make it go last night, but quickly realized that I should have purchased the deluxe version - the one where they send a thirteen-year-old kid home with you to show you how to operate it. I finally gave up and set the shiny gadget aside.

Today I pulled up the manual on-line and learned a little, then after work I took a trip to Best Buy and picked the brains of one of their adolescent salesboys. With what I learned from Skippy, I was able to come home and charge the battery on my new toy. I have also successfully "ripped" ten CD's into the Windows Music Library. Tomorrow night I will see if I can figure out how to transfer them from the library onto the iPod.

If anyone reading this knows about iPods please respond to this post or drop me a note at pa.rock.macy@gmail.com. One of my questions is how many CD's can I "rip" to the Windows Music Library before my computer freezes up or lays an egg or something? Can I place my whole library (250 CD's or more) in the Music Library, or do I have to dump some every so often? Do you have any special hints on how to transfer from the computer's Music Library to the iPod. (Yes, I can read about it in the manual, but I'm not much of a manual person. If you attempt to teach me something, keep it very simple!)

I'm still dragging myself to the gym most evenings and it continues to be a very boring experience. Perhaps by this time next week my iPod will be loaded and I will be walking on that evil treadmill while "sweatin' to the oldies!"