New Book: Hollywood Station

I just finished reading the paperback of "Hollywood Station" by Joseph Wambaugh. It was a great read. It was one of those books that I was able to finish in about two days. Wambaugh is a former LAPD officer and has written numerous books about the department. This book is full of humor and drama, one moment you're laughing out loud and the next you're almost in tears. There were a few scenes in the book that I actually could not stop laughing at. He populates the book with quite a large cast of characters, but by the end you feel like you know a little about all of them, including the bad guys.

If you like police procedurals or jut want to read a good book give it a try.

Amanda Shaw

Amanda Shaw has just released her new cd on Rounder Records, her first with a major label. It's called "Pretty Runs Out" and is in stores now. Amanda is a 17 year old fiddle player from my side of the lake in New Orleans. She's been playing since she was old enough to hold a bow. She's released two albums on independent labels before her major label release. Her last one was "I'm Not A Bubble Gum Pop Princess" and was a great cd. The first clip that follows this one is an interview with Amanda and the second is an actual clip of her performing. She is amazing live, she gives it her all.

Does He Have Time For Another War Before He Leaves Office?

373 Days left for W. in office and counting. Why do I feel like he's going to get us invovled in another war before he leaves office.

President George W. Bush said on Sunday that Iran was threatening security
around the world by backing "extremists" and urged its Gulf Arab allies to
"confront this danger before it is too late."

Just like before with Iraq when he insisted that we went in because of WMD, which later turned out not to exist and what was worse was that he knew it, he keeps insisting on Iran's threat as a nuclear threat, despite his own intelligent reports that state the country is not.

The Bush administration has kept up a campaign of rhetoric despite a U.S.
intelligence report in December that concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear
arms program in 2003.

I'm not trying to say Iran is not a mess of a country and no friend to the USA, but I don't believe the answer is to invade yet another country. We've done such a great job in Iraq, you'd think he'd learn a lesson. But like many of the same people W. criticizes and takes to task for fighting a "holy war" our President believes he is on his own mission from God and he is fighting his own "holy war."

That's what scares me.

Soaring

This is a picture I took from one of my trips to Alaska.

A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far Away....

This is one of those old pictures I found. This is from when we were closing down Service Merchandise and I had hair. Notice the jewlery counters are empty, everything was gone by this time. We were just putting the finishing touches on the end.

VOICES TO HEAR

I have added a few new Spotlights over on the Voices to hear page. I Spotlight the gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama and Country singer Kelly Willis. Go over and check them out. I've got a lot of new features planned for this site and hope that people check some of these great artists.

Basil

I've been cleaning out my work area and going through my desk and trying to get rid of stuff I don't need. I found this picture on a disk with some other old pictures I might share. It's a picture of my dog before Buffy. His name was Basil. I inherited him from some friends when they moved and couldn't bring him with them. Basil was small but he was one of the meanest dogs I've ever seen. He wasn't afraid of anything. There were only about half a dozen people in the world that he would be nice to. He would always need to be sitting in my lap when I was home or when I slept he would have to drape himself across my leg. For some reason this is the only picture I have of him.

Writers Strike

I haven't been on to post about the Writers Strike, so I need to make up for it.

Did I Really Write That Much?

Looking back on the year I wrote 1751 posts. And that was with me not writing much towards the end of the year. I look back at that and wonder how I wrote that many. I'm definitely not off to a start to match that output this year. Still we'll see, you never know.

The Year of my Dad

This is one of my favorite pictures of me and my Dad. It was taken from the Christmas before last. It was his last Christmas and the last real time I got to spend with him before he went in the hospital. It wasn't long after Christmas that he fell and broke his shoulder and ended up in the hospital and never came home. This was a good Christmas. My brother and niece and nephew all were there, so we all were together. My Dad was feeling pretty good, he wasn't jumping through any hoops but he was getting around and was pretty much his old self.

It's strange how thoughts of my Dad can come on me at the oddest times. I can be thinking of something that has no connection to him and suddenly my mind will flash on him. Many times I'll think of what he would say about something. I just bought one of those digital picture frames and I was thinking how much he would like it. My Dad always liked the newest gadgets.

It's still hard for me to write about him. You think missing someone would get easier with time, but it doesn't. You just find a way to move on.

Another Name In The Wind

2007 ended with death.

Back in the early 90s when the Internet was still in a state of semi-flux I was a member of Compuserve. For a small monthly fee I got to sign on Compuserve and use them much the way I do Yahoo today for free. Back than it seems there was Compuserve and AOL. Compuserve had forums from all sorts of interests and one of them was for comic books. I signed on immediately and soon found myself in a world of fans and pros. This was before everyone and their brother was on the net and not all the pros were on the computer. This was before MySpace and blogging and Face Book and all the other stuff that we all associate with the Internet today.

One of the first people I met online was Paul Grant. Paul was a frequent visitor to the Comic Book Forum on Compuserve. He was a lawyer for Ford Motors when he wasn't writing reviews of comic books on Compuserve. I remember many a conversation with Paul online. He had a way of making you feel right at home. I was still feeling my way around the whole online thing, heck even the comic writing was just really getting started at that point.

Not long after that I went to the Chicago Con in...well, I think you can figure that part out. This was back before Wizard bought the con and turned it into whatever it is today. This was when the convention was still at the Rosemont Hotel and a lot of the tables for the artists and writers were set up in the hallway. This was the first convention I ever attended as a "Pro" and have a table and everything. I was sharing a table with an artist that I was working with at the time and have over the years, Terry Pavelt.

It was at Chicago I met Paul in person. I can still remember it. I had went out for some food, and was trying to navigate my way behind the tables and along the wall and between all the other writers and artists back to my spot which seemed all the way at the other end. I was trying not to spill anything and not to step on anyone when I heard a voice call out my name. I looked up to see why Paul used the name Zeus online. He was a big bearded bear of a man with a huge smile. I did almost trip and he told me to be careful. It's funny how some things stick in your mind. Somehow that meeting has stayed with me over the years.

I can't say that Paul and I were that close. We talked, some at the convention and a lot more online. Compuserve was bought out by AOL and became a shell of itself until it finally disappeared. I drifted away from comics for awhile and didn't hear anymore of Paul.

But most of you reading this can understand what I mean when I say you can make real friends online. I've done it since I started blogging. I may not have met a lot of you, but I've come to conisder quite a few of you as friends.

So it was something of a shock to read around the end of the year that Paul Grant had died. It took me by surprise. I hadn't really thought of him in years and now to hear that he was dead. I wish I had some witty or profound saying here to tie all this up in a neat little bow, but there's not much I can add except that Paul was a good man and I considered him a friend.

And One More Thing About The Ipod....

You've seen the commericals where the person looking for a song on the Ipod flicks through the covers. I have to admit it's a cool gimmick, instead of scrolling through a list you get to flick through the actual album covers themselves What you don't see in these commericals is the albums that Itunes can't find to load. I have around four hundred albums downloaded in my Ipod and almost nintey albums have no covers. That's close to a fourth of all the albums. Instead of the album art you just get a box. I can understand the problem with some of the albums, I do have some fairly obscure albums. But they couldn't find the Greatest Hits of Bob Seger, Bettye Lavette's newest one...quite a few that I figured they should have. And on some multiple sets they show the cover to the first disc and than nothing on the second disc. At least it corrected the problem when it was showing Faith Hill's Greatest Hits on about six different albums. So while this is a pretty cool feature they still have a ways to go with it.

The Ipod Shuffle Blues

I love my Ipod. The first Ipod I bought was the First Generation. It was one of those that had controls above the wheel. I got it as they were transiting from the First Generation to the Second Generation and it was a display model at Best Buy, so I ended up getting a pretty good deal on it. It was a 20 G model, which meant it held around 5,000 songs. The most songs I ever managed to get on it was around 3,000.

Since than I've purchased a newer model. It's the 160 G model. It will hold around 40,000 songs and is in black. I've been downloading music on it since I got it and am now just crossing the 5,000 song point.

The cool thing about this is that now instead of cluttering my car up with cd cases from all the cds I had to have in it in case I wanted to listen to something I just need the Ipod. I hook it up and it plays through my radio. And anyone that knows me knows I could really pile up my car with CDs to listen to. And my stero at home has a docking station where I can plant the Ipod and just listen to it. If I put it on shuffle, which is usually how I keep it, the Ipod will just go through the 5,000 songs and pick out something to play. So I get a wide variety of music to listen to. Or if I'm feeling like a particular album all I have to do is scroll through the menu and find it and than I can listen to it.

It's a win/win situation.

Except for one thing. Anyone that has an Ipod knows that your music from your Ipod is loaded onto the Itunes page and they sync up. But if you lose this page, or switch computers - which is something I did recently - there are no songs on your computer and if you try to sync it up with your Ipod you lose all the songs on the Ipod. Now it took me awhile to fill up that Ipod with 5,000 songs and I didn't really look forward to having to go through all that again.

There is software out there that you can buy that supposedly will help you retrieve your songs from your Ipod and put them back on your comuter where everything can sync up and everyone is happy. I've went through three different pieces of software and could not get any of them to work.

I was getting desperate. My music was safe on the Ipod, but only as long as I was satsifed with just the songs I already had downloaded. If I tried to add anything to it I would end up erasing the songs already on it.

While I was at the bookstore trying to use a gift card from Christmas I noticed a small book called the Pocket Guide to Ipod & I Tunes. I picked it up and started flipping through it. I didn't hold much hope, but maybe it could point me in the right direction. Than I saw it....a chapter about forcing your music from your Ipod back onto your computer.

The book only cost $9.99, which was twenty dollars cheaper than each of those software programs cost, and I had already spent my gift card, but there was no way I was leaving that book in the store.

Basically Apple has made your songs from your Ipod inivisible on your computer and by following the instructions in the book I was able to pull the music from my Ipod and put it back into the Itunes folder in my computer.

Believe me when I tell you how happy I was. Actually at the time I only had about 4,000 songs on the Ipod. The last couple days I've spent going through some old cds and stuff and adding another 1,000 songs.

I plan to break out the phonograph player that converts vinyl to cd out and start going through my album collection. I have some albums that have never been issued on cd and probably never will, but I would love to be able to listen to them on my Ipod.

It's funny, but I hardly ever use the earbuds to listen to the Ipod. It gets its greatest use in the car.

A New Post Finally

It's been since Dec 28 since I last blogged on here. That's the longest time between posts I've went for a long time. I didn't plan on going that long, in fact in my last post I talk about posting some pictures from Christmas and that was my intention. I'm not sure what caused the delay, it's been busy...my Mom just went back home last week, the after Christmas rush, the LSU win, all things that made life busy. I just haven't been able to get up the motivation to sit down and blog. I want to say I'm back, but let's see if I keep it up again or disappear for a couple weeks again.

Happy Birthday Stan Lee

Stan Lee is 85 years old today. Stan is the co-creater of Spiderman, Avengers, Ironman, Hulk and many other great Marvel comic book characters.

Ho Ho Ho

Christmas has come and gone. It's been a crazy season, but hopefully things will calm down shortly. The next few days are pretty busy with returns and such. Just wanted to post a note and thank everyone that left me good words for this first Christmas without my Dad. It meant a lot to know that there are so many good people out there thinking good thoughts for me. Thank you all.

Christmas was a good time for all. Mom enjoyed it and many gifts were exchanged. My brother went all out with the meal, cooking a turkey and ham. I hope to post pictures this weekend.

I hope everyone else had a great Christmas and that the new year will be good for everyone.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Mom's Coming

My Mom's driving down from Tennessee tomorrow to spend Christmas with me and my brother. She's going to spend a few days here and than head across the lake and go to my brother's house. I'm glad she's coming down. My Dad loved Christmas, he was like a little kid waking up early on Christmas morning, so this is going to be a hard holiday. I know I haven't been posting as much as I normally do or visiting everyone, but this time of the year is so busy with my job and I think it's just been extra hard with this being the first Christmas without my Dad. I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but this year I promise to get back to blogging and visiting everyone more.

Christmas Music: Beatles

Buddy Miller at VOICES TO HEAR

I know I missed a week, but I'm back. Over at VOICES TO HEAR we feature Buddy Miller this week. Go check it out.