Your Music Collection: Rent or Own?

The latest NAPSTER commercial offers the following comparison. On top, there is a single iPod. The cost to fill it, Napster says, is $10,000. Beneath it are three MP3 players: the Dell Pocket DJ, the Creative Zen Micro and iRiver's new H10. With Napster to Go, the commercial says, you can fill all three with almost any song you can think of and you're out only $15.

Next to that, in tiny print, are the words "per month."

Ordinarily such a lopsided comparison would make me cringe and conclude that it was aimed at the gullible. But this one made me re-examine my life.

Napster to Go is the latest edition of Napster's legal download service. (Although it was previewed to the public last fall, the software allowing small portable music players to work with it has become available only in the last few weeks.) A vast majority of the available tracks - Napster says 1.3 million - can be downloaded by subscribers without paying additional fees.

What makes Napster to Go different from other subscription services, like Rhapsody ($10 a month) from Real Networks, is that you can load these tracks onto a compatible player and hit the road. As long as the player reconnects to the PC every month to verify your subscription, it feels just like the more common alternative, the one-time à la carte cost of $1 per track or $10 per album.

Of course, the commercial doesn't say you will lose access to music if you stop paying. And Napster's $10,000 reckoning also assumes that everything on an iPod is purchased at the iTunes Music Store. In reality, you could have plenty of MP3's already, from ripping CD's and dredging the Internet.

But the commercial raises a good question: Will you rent albums the way you rent TV programming? If it makes financial sense - and if, armed with that knowledge, you can avoid the competing allure of iPod style and the Apple brand - you just might.

Since Apple opened its iTunes store at the end of 2003, I've purchased 504 songs - that's 21 albums and 224 loose tracks. That means my music diet, excluding a dwindling number of old-timey CD purchases, comes to roughly $30 a month.

Most of my spending has been satisfying: new releases from U2 and Jack Johnson are simply essential, and impulse buys like the Postal Service's "Give Up" and Better Than Ezra's "How Does Your Garden Grow?" have become staples of my week. But many hunches and recommendations got old fast.

More frustrating still, there are hundreds of tracks I've just been too cheap to check out. Even though I have a permanent collection of about 7,000 MP3's - compatible with any service and player - $15 a month is still less than what I spend discovering new music.

Parents with children ages 10 to 20 know how costly the digital music revolution can be. If you look the other way as they download music using ... let's call them gray-market techniques, your PC becomes irreversibly crippled by spyware. But when you try to encourage them to pay for music instead of stealing it, you quickly discover that even a two-album-a-month allowance adds up.

When used to its fullest extent, Napster to Go lays iTunes flat, financially speaking. For the $15 monthly fee, you're allowed unlimited downloads. You can put them on up to three compatible portable players, and log in and listen on up to three PC's. (Napster to Go does charge by the song, however, to burn music to a CD.) Sure, there's an initial investment, and in homes with more than three listeners they'll have to share, but for a low fixed price they can all download as many songs as they want, most of which they will soon forget about anyway.

The value proposition is in place. I know I can get tons of music, but can I get tons of good music? There are bands not yet online at all, like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. But with Napster to Go there is a new discrepancy: songs you must purchase outright, ones that aren't part of the all-you-can-have subscription deal.

I hit Napster thinking that maybe half of the tracks I'd want would be "buy only." To my amazement, it was less than a tenth. Heavies like Paul Simon, Pink Floyd, Prince, Bruce Springsteen and even, yes, Metallica have made their entire catalogs available for subscription download. The subscription service makes sense for Pearl Jam, which has posted over 80 separate live recordings. Sure, some people bought them before, but now even those without Eddie Vedder tattoos will have a chance to check them out.

I'm not saying that you won't stub your toe against tracks that don't budge until paid for individually. But between your own music collection and what is available, it's easy to see how to build up your core library.

The magic of the subscription plan is that music you don't know is also covered. I got to see if I liked new cuts from the Killers (yep) and Gwen Stefani (nope). Sitting in judgment didn't mean sitting in front of a computer screen, either; I could do it in the driver's seat of my car.

The trouble is, that thing next to me wasn't my trusty iPod. A switch to Napster means kissing your iPod, or any prospect of getting one, goodbye. The Napster-compatible players, at the moment, are the ones from Creative, iRiver and Dell that I tested, as well as others from Samsung, Gateway and Audiovox, ranging in price from $180 to $500. What they have in common is a piece of hardware allowing this sort of subscription content to be used under a Microsoft-powered secure-content system.

I could easily dismiss the players friendly with Napster to Go, but most of my gripes merely translate into this boilerplate: They're not iPods.

More substantial are my complaints with Napster's PC software, which tends to jerk the user around in a very unstable fashion. It takes its sweet time reacting to mouse clicks, and mundane maneuvers make it freeze for minutes. Players often ominously "stop responding" in the middle of something important. It's possible to load the same tracks onto a player twice (an act iTunes most sensibly prohibits). Once you get the hang of the Napster service, a smart move is to use the more stable Windows Media Player 10 as your music manager instead.

For the most part, however, the software and the players do their jobs. So let me ask a question that some may consider heresy: How necessary is the iPod?

I recently discovered (with some horror) that I could live without TiVo. Time Warner Cable offered a box with better picture quality at a better price - about $9 a month with nothing up front. Compared with TiVo, the new box's interface is medieval dentist painful to use, but I use it and I don't look back.

If I could jump from TiVo to Time Warner, a switch from the iPod to the Creative Zen Micro ought to be easy by comparison. Yes, the iPod is a beautiful symbol of how cool I am, but an iPodectomy is scientifically possible.

Thankfully, an iPodectomy may not be necessary. Buzz on the Internet and in the industry suggests that Apple may be planning a retaliatory move, an iTunes to go. There are also good odds that Yahoo and Real Networks will soon join the melee.

Though it seems like a lopsided deal - paying less than what Target charges for a CD and getting almost any musical wish granted instantly - the record industry is lobbying hard to make subscription services the next phase in the digital revolution. The labels are using them to get the attention of 15- to 25-year-olds, the group most responsible for the sharp decline in CD sales over the last few years (not to mention the rise of illegal file sharing).

"We are very pleased to welcome this group into paying for music again," says Adam Klein, executive vice president for strategy and business development at EMI. Mr. Klein also tipped me off to another source of industry optimism: early research has shown that people who pay monthly to sample all music are still likely to pay extra to own some of it outright.

At the moment, that makes sense. Pay a nominal fee to taste everything, then spring for the stuff you can't live without. But in a future in which renting music is standard practice, this concept of ownership may become silly.

And though you may not be able to switch cable operators, you will be able to switch subscription music plans when a better price or a cooler program comes along. Switching may require a new player, and an afternoon to redownload the content you still want. The remaining question is, who will get your $15 a month? Let the real contest begin.


Thanks to Wilson Rothman and David Pogue.

The SegueVox Shuffle Project

Hey y'all I've got a brand new little site, the SegueVox: (Click here to go straight to SegueVox!) It's dedicated to my collection of transitions and segues for all you Shuffle freaks to add some meaning to your so called random lives. Add these groovy little audio gems to your iPod Shuffle and experience the true meaning of random yet inspirational wisdom. Get ready to fire your shrink and 86 your Fortune Teller. With the addition of these SegueVox transitions to either your Shuffle or your iPod your life is guaranteed to be more interesting and you're certain to surprise everyone (including yourself) with these dead-on perfect little transitions. You'll truly be amazed at the 8-Ball like accuracy of these seemingly random transitions - because, as we all know - everything happens for a reason, and the SegueVox collection is no exception.

To date, The SegueVox Vault contains 1500+ audio segues complied over the past 25 years from various audio fanatics, speakers of Truth and yes, Guardian Angles! (More on these folks later). These audio gems range from chants, forgotten and rescued vintage thrift store vinyl, subliminal messages and prayers, shortwave grabs, old answering machine junk to radio grabs from foreign lands, alien transmissions, vintage radio commercials, tags and jingles, drunk people reading quotes of inspiration, hidden microphone gaga to a bunch of other impossible to categorize little treasures.

SegueVox!

We'll be uploading files almost daily so feel free check back whenever you need a fresh random hit of subliminal inspiration.

If you simply can't wait, you can PayPal 6 Bux U.S. to kahuna@grandecom.net and we'll hook you up lickety-split. Volume One release date is May 09, 2005.

SegueVox is a subsidiary of Totally Bitchin' Recording and The Tiki Room Experiment

Revenge of the Right Brain

Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion.

When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA.

Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment.

But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads.

Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.

Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.

Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.

To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding.

OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect.

The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance.

Asia

Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it's not just tech work. Visit India's office parks and you'll see chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for US hospitals.

The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We're not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber-optic cable, that's where the work will go.

But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain kinds of white-collar jobs - those that can be reduced to a set of rules, routines, and instructions. That's why narrow left-brain work such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that's also why plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less routine work - programmers who can design entire systems, accountants who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better.

Automation

Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left brains - they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.)

Consider jobs in financial services. Stockbrokers who merely execute transactions are history. Online trading services and market makers do such work far more efficiently. The brokers who survived have morphed from routine order-takers to less easily replicated advisers, who can understand a client's broader financial objectives and even the client's emotions and dreams.

Or take lawyers. Dozens of inexpensive information and advice services are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an uncontested divorce for $249, less than a 10th of the cost of a divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, the Web is cracking the information monopoly that has long been the source of many lawyers' high incomes and professional mystique. Go to USlegalforms.com and you can download - for the price of two movie tickets - fill-in-the-blank wills, contracts, and articles of incorporation that used to reside exclusively on lawyers' hard drives. Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over. Consequently, legal abilities that can't be digitized - convincing a jury or understanding the subtleties of a negotiation - become more valuable.

Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. "In the old days," legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, "anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines." The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence.

Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres.

Abundance

Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker's knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents' youth. Their lives were defined by scarcity. Ours are shaped by abundance. Want evidence? Spend five minutes at Best Buy. Or look in your garage. Owning a car used to be a grand American aspiration. Today, there are more automobiles in the US than there are licensed drivers - which means that, on average, everybody who can drive has a car of their own. And if your garage is also piled with excess consumer goods, you're not alone. Self-storage - a business devoted to housing our extra crap - is now a $17 billion annual industry in the US, nearly double Hollywood's yearly box office take.

But abundance has produced an ironic result. The Information Age has unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.

Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life. And that will only intensify as the first children of abundance, the baby boomers, realize that they have more of their lives behind them than ahead. In both business and personal life, now that our left-brain needs have largely been sated, our right-brain yearnings will demand to be fed.

As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and the Information Age on people's left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people's right hemispheres. We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.

But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's no longer enough.

To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.

Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won't be easy for everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our caveperson ancestors weren't plugging numbers into spreadsheets or debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape.

Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.

Adapted from A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, copyright © by Daniel H. Pink, to be published in March by Riverhead Books. Thanks to wired.com

Charlie Does Surf

 

Yo. Check out Charlie Does Surf from rickshawrecords.com. It's a surf Clash tribute that truly rocks. Click the above graphic to check out "Straight To Hell" by CHUM.

Thinking May Not Be All It's Thought to Be

In 1962 Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi, stated in Irving Good, The Scientist Speculates that "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." Which to me, puts into words the secret formula for innovation and fresh ideas in general. It's the justification for a nice long walk instead of a forced brainstorming session, the long weekend at the beach instead of the office and simply taking a left where you generally take a right. It's up to you. Why, as the Material girl put it, "Strike a Pose." when you know deep down that it's much more interesting to Juxtapose? John Schwarts focuses on two recent entries to the cultural fold and came up with this nice little chunk of food for thought...

Feel the ripple in the zeitgeist? Two new slogans are busily burrowing their way into popular culture.

Steven P. Jobs introduced one last week: "Life is random." It's attached to the iPod Shuffle, Apple's teeny new music player. The second comes from Malcolm Gladwell, a writer known for seeing revolutions in small things. The slogan is "Blink, don't think," and goes with his new book, "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking," which argues that our instant decisions can be better than those born of long contemplation.

These two marketing aphorisms - ad-phorisms, if you will - pull so insistently at the brain that they feel more like an affirmation than a pitch, and bear a slight tang of wisdom.

The iPod Shuffle is, like other Apple products, sleek and inviting - that characteristic yin/yang blend of hot and cool. Smaller than a pack of gum, the $99 version stores just 120 songs, a fraction of the capacity of a full-fledged iPod. But that's part of the point.

Sure, you can program the Shuffle intricately via the computer, your inner disk jockey drawing up precise playlists so that, say, if you are suffering a happiness drought, you can tell the little stick to play Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," and then the even sweeter version by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, the enormous Hawaiian ukulele legend - who blended it with "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" - and then demolish those remaining blues with the punk-rock version by Joey Ramone. (It's like downing a shot of serotonin with a Dexedrine chaser.) But clever Apple knows that most users will simply want the gadget to grab songs out of the main computer's library and then play them in an order of its choosing. Random. Like life.

Apple, with the attitude of an artist and the eye of an anthropologist, has asked: How do we listen to music? What do we want from it? A response from the company, and its millions of customers, is that music is a kind of ambient grace, which blocks out the cellphone jabber on the train, the honking horn on the walk to the grocery store. And the result is that little white earbuds have become ubiquitous around the country.

"Blink" is also a creature of the moment. It says that a snap judgment is often smarter than a considered one. Mr. Gladwell speaks of a "second mind" that "sends its messages through weirdly indirect channels, like the sweat glands on the palms of our hands." He adds: "It's a system in which our brain reaches conclusions without immediately telling us that it's reaching conclusions."

Both slogans speak to the feeling that there's too much data and not enough knowledge, too many choices and not enough good ones, says Seth Godin, an author who focuses on marketing issues. "This desire to completely control the environment has started to unravel in the past five years," he said.

The shock from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in part explains that development, he said, but so do the billion Web sites and millions of blogs, tens of thousands of books in the store and hundreds of television channels. This cacophony, he said, has led the culture to the belief that, "You couldn't control all the choices; you couldn't control all the noise."

The alternative offered by Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gladwell, is not quite, "Don't worry, be happy," but a slightly more nuanced: Relax. Yes, life is random. But you can enjoy the ride.

These two products come from different eras - the book from the prehistoric world before silicon, and the music player from five minutes ago - but both suggest to consumers that there is a way to remain thinking, feeling people in a world overgrown with data, options and demands, said David Bennahum, who writes about technology issues for the online magazine Slate and for Wired magazine.

"They are two things that say your rational process of making sense of things is a model that may be obsolete," he said. " 'Life is random' is a really great way of shrugging your shoulders in a Buddhist way of nonattachment."


Intuitive improvisation is the secret of genius.
Unknown

Ob La Di Ob La Da.
Well Known: Lennon McCartney

That's Right,

HMK


Thanks to John Schwarts at The New York Times

IPod Shuffle Sparks Stampede

Well, It's official. As of January 11, 2005 about 10:43 CMT Steve Job's uttered his trademark "And there's one more thing..." The new flash iPod from Apple! After some uncharacteristic delays on the Apple site, I finally confirmed my order for my 1GB iPod Shuffle literaly 9 minutes after it was anounced to the world. So did Reagan, my business partner. (For the record, I ordered mine a few minutes before he did. That's Right!) Delivery date is set for no later that 01.28.05. It seems that I wasn't the only one ready to jump on the latest must have from the company that truly knows what we all really want in regard to technology, funtionality, elegance and stuff that simply works. Here's the latest from Wired at Macworld.

SAN FRANCISCO -- To see the mob at the San Francisco Apple Store late Tuesday morning, you might have thought U2 was in the house. But the actual star of the day was the brand new iPod shuffle, a $100, 512-MB music player and Apple Computer's shot across the bow of its competitors in the low-end MP3 player category.

Just minutes earlier, at the close of his Macworld keynote address at Moscone Center, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had said he'd "heard a rumor" that the iPod shuffle was available at the nearby Apple Store, two blocks north. That set off a rush of more than 100 people who couldn't wait to get their hands on the new product.

"I'm here because I'm scared that they'll be sold out if I wait until tomorrow," said Steve Salos, an employee at the nearby CompUSA store. "At CompUSA, I get my (employee discount, but the Apple Store is) the only place you can get" the iPod shuffle.

In recent years, keynote attendees were treated to wireless internet connections and were able to order whatever product Jobs had just announced online. But this year, there was no working Wi-Fi in the auditorium, and so, perhaps by design, frantic would-be iPod shuffle buyers had little choice but to try to beat the crowd to the Apple Store.
"It was mass hysteria," said Paul Spalek, who was canvassing outside the Apple Store for the Fund for Public Interest. "There were pretty much people from every depth of the street who were taking pictures.... Everyone was in their own little head because of this."

Anthony Kolb, an Apple Store employee, said he was just returning from his lunch break when he saw the mass of people descending on the store. "It was pretty insane," Kolb said. "I had to swim through people to the back. It was a lot of fun."
Kolb also said that, due to the secrecy that always surrounds new Apple product launches, he and other store employees had not known what the big Macworld launch would be. Thus, he said, he had no advance sales training.
"You're going to know when the customer knows," he said he was told. "So you're going to have to learn (how to sell it) as fast as possible."

Meanwhile, inside the store, employee Michael Lyen was handing out iPod shuffles as fast as he could pull them out of boxes. Many people were taking two and three at a time. It had the feel of someone handing out freebies on the street. Such is the lure of being one of the first to shell out $100 for a music player that is shorter than a pen. Stefano Scalia, who was standing in line to buy one, said the whole experience was an exercise in being a part of what he called "Steve Jobs' reality-distortion field."

"Anything he says, everybody buys it," Scalia said. "I just wanted to run out and get one even though I'm on a tight budget.... I'm a die-hard Mac user, and basically, everyone's going to have one. I need to have one." It's not just Mac users who are buying iPod shuffles. Like the rest of the iPod family, the new devices work with either Macs or PCs, making it clear that Apple intends to take over what little of the music player market it doesn't already control.

Given the iPod shuffle's placement as the final announcement at Jobs' keynote, it is becoming apparent that, regardless of the name of the show, the iPod is Apple's standard-bearer. That doesn't necessarily sit well with everyone. "I like the Mac for the operating system and the computer," said Kolb. "The iPod is cool, but the Mac is cooler. I would hate to see the iPod take over the company."

Kolb shouldn't worry. On Jan. 22, Apple will begin selling its new Mac mini, Jobs' other big announcement of the day. With the Mac mini priced at $500, Kolb will probably have to swim his way through a sea of Mac buyers.

Thanks to Daniel Terdiman @ Wired

Podcasting: Finally!

I've been recording my favorite NPR segments for 14+ years. (And i've been grabbing stuff from the radio waves with reel to reels, 8 Tracks and cassettes since the early 70's). Needless to say, the idea of recording stuff to later compile for future listining and share with others has been with me for as long as I can remember, and now that we're officially in the Wired Age it's got a name: Podcasting.

The Podcastings formula takes us one step closer to an idea that's been bouncing around in my head since my first reel to reel recorder I got back in 3rd grade, 1969. My version of Podcasting, or the way I like to think of it - is a subscription based programable satelite radio that offers an ala-carte style menu of all things audio. The cool part would be the fact that it would not be a stream but a daily, selfcontained program. So, instead of me having to go to the NPR web site and hit the various featured programs, (This American Life, Morning Edition, Selected Shorts, The World, Fresh Air, just to name a few of my favorites), the daily Stardate segment or today's forecats, I'd have all of my favorites in my own custom radio program automatically downloaded to my iPod each morning and ready to play before I've even had my first cup of coffee. That's right, no commercials, no daily body count from Iraq, just the positive stuff that makes me happy to be alive. (I save the the real world perspective for Sundays NY Times.) Now that's something I'm willing and ready to pay for.

Here's Wired Magazine's take on one of Podcastings forefathers, Adam Curry:

Although he’s famous for having been an MTV VJ, Adam Curry is better known these days as one of the fathers of podcasting, a rapidly growing technology that allows anyone to subscribe to and automatically download audio content feeds to an MP3 player.

Curry's own podcast, Daily Source Code, is one of the better known shows in the young genre and is often cited by aficionados as an example of everything that's great about the technology.

Yet on his show, Curry is known for occasional fumbles with the microphone, pregnant pauses and sundry hiccups in what is otherwise seen as a valuable daily look at the latest and greatest in podcasting. The question is, if he's having a bad-equipment day, could he lose his audience?

"Everyone has a different level of karma," said podcaster Dave Slusher of the dangers of producing imperfect podcasts. "He has a lot banked up, but most people don't. In fact, as we started (Evil Genius Chronicles), the whole reason that I edited out the stuff he leaves in was because I figured that while people would listen to him do it, no one would when I did."

In October, a Google search would have returned fewer than 6,000 results for "podcasting." Today, that number is 744,000, and it seems nearly that many podcasts are available. But as with blogs, a sharp divide exists between the relatively small number of good podcasts and the vast number of bad ones, or at least ones that weren't around long enough, or don't update often enough, to attract an audience.

To some, podcasting is too new to judge, especially in the context of a medium that could be attractive to the mainstream. "To me, it's sort of like evaluating an ecosystem when there are three blades of grass pushing up through the dirt," said Doc Searls, a popular blogger and podcasting evangelist. "I think it's the future of whatever the people will replace radio with.... It's a way for the demand side to supply itself."

The medium's nascence contributes to the feeling that in order to get an audience, podcasters almost have to be one of the cool kids. "Content-wise, it tends to be very cliquey and cultish," said Carl Franklin, co-producer of the widely listened-to podcast DotNetRocks. "There's a huge underground feeling to the shows that are popular right now."

Still, while the bulk of podcasts focus on technology or politics, a growing number cover other worthwhile topics, even as the roster of bad ones grows exponentially.

"The things that grab me," said Slusher, "are some combination of interesting subject, amusing delivery and voice, uniqueness and candor or honesty in emotion." He said he enjoys The Rock and Roll Geek Show, produced by San Francisco musician Michael Butler, in which Butler talks about the life of bands and other music topics.
Slusher also said he regularly listens to Reel Reviews, Mike Geoghegan's podcast about movies. "Every so often, he picks a movie, announces it upfront and gives people time to re-watch it," Slusher said. "He does a super in-depth show."

Andrew Leyden, president of PenguinRadio, which maintains PodcastDirectory.com, said he particularly likes Whole Wheat Radio, a Northern Exposure-esque show produced by a married couple who talk about life in their small Alaskan town, as well as play and review music.

Leyden also touted the comedy talk show The Dawn and Drew Show. "They're definitely outrageous," he said. "They definitely show you why the FCC does not regulate podcasting. They sometimes go over the top a little bit."
Corie Schlegel, who writes PodcastReviews under the name Kirowan, said he enjoys Indie Feed, which has two hosts who intersperse songs from independent bands with brief commentary.

For core podcasting fans, the most recommended podcasts include the full complement of IT Conversations, Curry's Daily Source Code, Slusher's Evil Genius Chronicles and Kevin Devin's In the Trenches.
Searls said In the Trenches is "down in the bowels of some IT organization, and he talks about his racks and servers, and it's great. All the interesting (IT) stuff is being done by the rank and file. It's not being done at the top of the company."

In any case, podcasting still has a long way to go, given how many of its practitioners fumble with their equipment, bore their audiences and fail to produce regularly. Yet many of those interviewed for this story think podcasting is at the heart of audio broadcasting's future, especially given that recording technology is getting cheaper and podcasting technology will only continue to get easier to use.

"It's a matter of time before it ... changes the nature of speech," Searls said, "because everything (can) become a poddable cast." Franklin agreed, and said given how young podcasting is, it's important to look beyond what's available today to see a day when it will be widely used by public radio, churches, universities, families and anyone else with a microphone.

"Most people misjudge the usefulness of the technology by judging the content," said Franklin. "(They) say, 'Why would I want to listen to this audio blog?' When in fact, the future of the technology has nothing to do with audio blogs."

Thanks to Daniel Terdiman at Wired

iPod Beats Satellite Any Day

Ok - it's cold and almost raining and I'm getting in my car and on my way into the studio. This kind of weather always reminds me of my art school days in Boston where I'd have my Walkman qued for my brisk 20 minute walk to class from Park Drive to Mass Art. I still have the two cassettes I made specifically for walking around Bean Town - one for nice days, the other for not so nice days. Nice day toons are mostly songs from my younger, late 70's Spring Break compilations that range from Joe King Carrasco's "Baby Let's Go To Mexico", The Beach Boys "Surfin'" to Van Halen's "Beautiful Girls." The not so nice day mix consist of the new stuff, 1987 and beyond stuff I discovered via WFNX, WBCN, friends I met while working on Lansdowne Street and in the know school chums - Pixie's "Gouge Away", The Wedding Present's "Brass Neck", Treat Her Right's 'I Think She Likes Me", and some Sleep Chamber stuff I'm dying to get in digital form, among others. Today, those tapes are in the form of Playlists on my iPod and they still serve the exact same purpose of being the on-demand soundtrack to my so called life. Meanwhile, I've got a few friends that are all over this new portible satellite radio idea. The same freinds that tell me "I used to have that album..." (Of course, they sold all those albums long ago). While it is a cool idea and a nice change from the bland Clear Channel broadcasts, for anal music freaks like me, it's got a long way to go before it'll replace my iPod. It would be rather sweet if I could access my 200 GB+ Audio Vault with one of these new radios, but I really don't see that happening any time soon. Anyway - Eliot Van Buskirk, CNET's mp3 insider seems to be on the same, Close, but no cigar, page:


In the early days of digital music, we optimists looked forward to the day when we'd have instant access to every song ever recorded from a wireless, portable device--called the "celestial jukebox."

Since then, just about every step forward in digital music--MP3 players, online music stores, P2P, ring tones and so on--has led us toward this vision.

Last month, XM and Delphi took us even closer to the celestial jukebox with the release of the Delphi XM MyFi, the world's first handheld satellite radio receiver.

The phrase "never say never" became a cliche because it's often good advice. But when you're talking about technology, it's practically an axiom, especially if you're a tech executive addressing the press.
There is one place satellite radio makes sense to me: the car.

To wit: I attended the first XM announcement at the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show, where the company unveiled the Delphi XM SkyFi Radio. It consists of a small receiver module that can be swapped between a boom box, home and car kit but can't be used on its own.

As CNET's portable-audio guy, I had only one question for the XM official who made the announcement: When would they make one small enough to fit in my pocket?

The XM exec told everyone at the press conference that handheld satellite radio was impossible, because pulling in the signal took more power than a portable could ever supply. Less than four years later, I have the Delphi XM MyFi sitting right here on my desk. Like they say, never say never.

We are all narrow
Granted, you can't pick any song you want using the MyFi, but the "celestial" part of "celestial jukebox" is in full effect, since the MyFi broadcasts music that's bounced off satellites. But although our national waistline is off the charts, we are all still very narrow in terms of our musical taste. Broadcasting music doesn't work anymore; narrowcasting does.
How am I supposed to know what Ethel sounds like?

I tried time and time again to find something I wanted to listen to on XM's 68 music channels but never found "my" channel. Instead, I ended up listening to stand-up comedy and news. One reason for this is that XM's music channels have names like "Fred" and "Ethel" (seriously). How am I supposed to know what Ethel sounds like?

Another reason I didn't rely on the MyFi for music is that, like most people, I have fairly specific taste in music. Not even the most ingenious programmer could come up with a station that's perfect for me.

Actually, I take that back--I can and have programmed such a station. It's called my iPod, and it has exactly what I want to hear on it.

More like 'WhyFi'
I took the MyFi around San Francisco for a day, testing various environments to see how the reception stacked up. Not so good, it turns out. Here are a few of the places XM's channels turned into a moment of white noise, followed by more than a moment silence (digital signals are either 100 percent there or 100 percent gone):

• The subway

• My living room

• Parts of my hallway

• Most of the CNET Networks headquarters

In addition, it appeared to interfere with my cell phone, so every time I wanted to make a call, I had to turn off the MyFi (this happened only a couple of times, so it admittedly wasn't the most scientific test in the world).

Either the dodgy reception or broad programming would have been enough to make me prefer my MP3 player, but once you add the fact that XM's compression sounds worse than a 128kbps MP3, there's no way I'd switch to XM.

There is one place satellite radio makes sense to me: the car. Highways have an unobstructed line toward the sky, so the reception's perfect. Plus, I'm in more of a mood to troll around programmed channels on a long road trip than I am on a short commute.

I know this for a fact, because I've rented cars with satellite receivers, and it's always worked out great. Factor in Howard Stern's switch to Sirius in 2006, and there's a good chance I'll opt for a satellite receiver in my next car.

As for the portable MyFi receiver, perhaps that XM executive should have stuck with his original thinking and stayed out of the portable market entirely.

Go Spurs!

Steroids. Basketbrawl. The NHL lockout. Desperate Housewives. There aren't a lot of positive headlines in the sports pages these days, even by today's standards. It's almost as if a giant black cloud has descended over the sporting landscape. No great team or superstar seems immune to questionable ethics or character.

Then there are the San Antonio Spurs.
They not only win big; they seem to do it without any of the negative stuff that crops up everywhere else. No public feuds. No drug busts. No players griping over contracts or swearing at fans. "That's just the way it is here," Spurs forward Malik Rose says. "We've got a good group of guys."

With an NBA-best 15-3 record, and as clean a reputation as can be found anywhere in sports, San Antonio should be the talk of the league right now. In Tim Duncan they've got one of the best players and citizens in the game. In Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili they've got two of the game's most creative and entertaining players. In coach Gregg Popovich they've got a hard-nosed no-nonsense disciplinarian coach who knows his X's and O's and doesn't take guff from players.

Isn't this what we Americans say we want in our sports teams? A superstar who went to college all four years, stays out of trouble and plays fundamental basketball each night? A coach who represents old-school values? An unselfish team that plays together and isn't afraid to do the dirty work on defense?

Yet the Spurs' 22 national TV appearances (not counting NBA TV) trail the 24 games sexier clubs such as Shaq's Heat or Kobe's Lakers will play in front of the nation. San Antonio ranks in the top 10 in merchandise sales, but still behind the likes of long-ago champions such as the Bulls and the Celtics. One TV talking head even recently called the Spurs "boring."

Quick trivia question. Which team in the four major U.S. pro sports has been the winningest (in terms of percentage) over the past seven years? If you guessed the New York Yankees, the New England Patriots or the Detroit Red Wings, you're wrong.

It's the Spurs.
Since 1997-98, the year Duncan arrived, the Spurs have racked up a record of 394-166 (.704) to go with their two NBA titles. The Red Wings (.673), Yankees (.625) and Tennessee Titans (.619) each lead their respective sports, but none has won at a higher clip than San Antonio. If that's "boring," there are a lot of NBA fans in Atlanta, Chicago and New Orleans right now who would love to be put to sleep like that on a nightly basis. "I think it's a reflection of what you see in everyday life," says Popovich, when asked why his team doesn't get more recognition for winning the right way. "Turn on the news and you're going to see the negative. It reflects society. People pay more attention to those things. It's not specific to sports. It's across the board."

Popovich, an Air Force grad, takes pride in the fact that his team has been able to thrive without sullying the franchise's image. Though realistic enough to know that it's talent that wins games, he believes there is a benefit to having good people in the locker room. It's no coincidence that the Spurs over the years have had so many high character guys such as Duncan, David Robinson, Avery Johnson, Sean Elliott and Steve Kerr. "Those guys are consummate leaders, great professionals, great people," Rose says. "They weren't just great basketball players; they were great people to be around. ... [This organization] has a knack for finding them. It's nice to have great people, but you've got to win games. They've found a way to do both."

San Antonio, with few exceptions, has found a way over the years to walk the tightrope between big-time success and off-the-court shenanigans. The next time you're fed up with all the jerks and prima donnas in sports, try watching Duncan and the Spurs. If you can find them on your TV, that is.

Marty Burns covers pro basketball for SI.com.

Eye Appeal: An Ad With Walls

Teven Gilliatt, president of G2 Worldwide, a leading brand development and design consulting company in New York, recently had an up-close-and-personal demonstration of the increasing power of eye appeal in retailing.

"I was buying an iPod a couple weeks ago and there was a feeding frenzy at the store," Mr. Gilliatt said, referring to the Apple Store in SoHo, where customers jostled one another to buy the special edition iPod loaded with music by the rock group U2. "I was there as a civilian, but I'd been converted from consideration to purchase," he said, borrowing jargon from marketing mavens.

Mr. Gilliatt's response to the innovative design of the Apple Store — so cool it is now being described as a "singles mecca" in The New York Post — indicates the importance of intangible elements in selling goods ranging from apparel and personal-care products to entertainment merchandise and housewares. The product's design, the packaging and even the style of the store are now weapons in the marketing arsenal, as much as traditional tactics like television commercials and print advertisements.

"There's a lot of competition out there, and everyone needs to be differentiated," said Erik Ulfers, senior vice president for environmental design at Jack Morton Worldwide in New York, which specializes in what it calls "experiential communications," which range from the NBC Experience Store in Rockefeller Center to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Athens.

The goal is to generate "an emotional moment between a consumer and a brand," Mr. Ulfers said, adding: "It sounds a little goofy, a little abstract, if you talk about it too much. The big challenge is to dimensionalize the aspects of a brand — what a brand is, who it wants to be — and use the visuals to support the story about that brand you want to tell."

Eye appeal has become more crucial in the last five years, said Jim Lucas, director for planning and research at Draft in Chicago, a direct marketing agency, part of what he termed the "popularization of design," or "design for the masses," brought to life by name-brand designers like Michael Graves and Philippe Starck for retailers like Target.

"What has started to happen as a result," Mr. Lucas added, "is that people have come to expect a certain level of design from their products than before," citing iPod's success and the Mini Cooper.

"Design works at different levels, not just on functionality," Mr. Lucas said. "It also works at a visceral level, as the color, the shape, attract one's attention, not just as eye candy but in a more reflective, associative way."

The store itself is now "one of the key elements of the marketing mix," Mr. Lucas said, as retailers like Wal-Mart seize more power from the manufacturers who once had the upper hand by running advertising that drove customers into stores.

"Retailers now are the choice editors, whereas in the past the manufacturers were," he added, naming chains like H&M, Ikea and Pottery Barn. As a result, a store's environment is acquiring an importance once reserved for, say, the script of a commercial to be run during the Super Bowl.

"The outside is the new inside," said Peter Arnell, chairman and chief executive of the Arnell Group in New York, an advertising agency that has branched into design. "It's all about sensory experience. The retail theater closes the deal," said Mr. Arnell, who once studied architecture with Mr. Graves.

For one advertising client, Reebok International, the Arnell Group designed a flagship store in Philadelphia meant to personify the company's new Rbk footwear and apparel line by converting, as Mr. Arnell put it, "the beats and rhythms of sports into a three-story retail space."

And Jacob Arabo, a k a Jacob the Jeweler, the purveyor of bling-bling to the hip-hop aristocracy, is getting an Arnell Group design for his first store, at 48 East 57th Street in Manhattan, which is intended to invoke the interior of a gem mine.

For the Sharp Corporation, the Wieden & Kennedy agency in Portland, Ore., sought to offer consumers a three-dimensional version of a global brand campaign for Sharp's Aquos liquid-crystal-display television sets. So the agency conceived the Aquos Project, a public gallery that is open through Dec. 24 at 137 Wooster Street in SoHo in Manhattan.

The gallery, managed by Lime Public Relations and Promotion in New York, features the works of an artist, Kenzo Minami, and a design studio, Tronic, which are partly displayed on — of course — Aquos televisions.

"It comes down to a membership program, if you will," Mr. Ulfers of Morton Worldwide said, "making a brand's constituency feel like members with a sense of inclusion."

For all the interest in eye appeal, conventional advertising "is not going to go away, certainly not in our lifetimes," Mr. Gilliatt of G2 said, because it is "important for getting people in the store."

Still, "marketers are recognizing there's a huge opportunity," he added, "for making design, packaging, lighting, display and other in-store elements, work harder at the point of purchase to create emotional connections, so all our contacts with the consumer are more focused and powerful.

"Let's put it this way," Mr. Gilliatt said, "in the Apple Store, there was a lot of emotional connecting going on."

Thanks to Stuart Elliot

The Digital Music Revolution

Pros with Macs - Interview: David Was and the Digital Music Revolution

Permit us to turn the clock back to the early 1980s when Ronald Regan was President and the Cold War was still raging; Rock had survived Disco, but a New Wave assault was underway; Madonna was still shocking, and Prince still had a name.

Somewhere in the mash of MTV, Album Rock, and New Wave, a Detroit duo -- David Weiss and Don Fagenson -- replaced their last names with "Was," dropped their studio musician jobs, and started a band. Over the years they generated a handful of dance hits -- remember "Walk the Dinosaur?" -- and churned through the most eclectic roster of guest artists you can imagine. (Who knew that Bonny Raitt and Mel Tormé once sang with the same band?) David and Don Was remained friends after the band broke up, and both have continued to work as producers, arrangers, composers, and all-round music doctors.

David Was is this week's Pro with a Mac. We tracked him down because we'd heard he uses a Logic-equipped Mac for all of his studio work. While he expressed a deep satisfaction with the platform, he hardly came off as a Mac zealot. It quickly became clear that he views the Mac as nothing more or less than the best tool for his job as an artist. Indeed, it was art, rather than the tools he uses to create it, that we spent most of our time talking about.

In two hours of discussion, Mr. Was argued both sides of nearly every question we posed. (At one point he quoted a critic of his: "This guy could find two sides to a billiard ball!") Along the way, though, he dropped countless crumbs of music-related gossip, venom, and wisdom, and below we reproduce as much as we can fit.

David Was, Mac User
From the beginning, David Was was aware of developments in digital music technology. He had a Mac II with a one-in, one-out MIDI interface and Digidesign's Sound Designer II. "It's like B.B. King claiming he learned guitar with a broomstick and a piece of piano wire," he brags. Today he works on a PowerMac Dual G5, but he still keeps his old Mac IIfx, and it still contains his old samples.

In a characteristic digression, what starts as a history of his experience with the Mac quickly melts into a nostalgia trip. "All these astonishingly powerful programs" are at his fingertips, he says, contrasting the '80s editing software as a "Wright Brothers plane" to modern software's "rocket ship." "You'd have to have your head examined, but I actually miss it [making music samples by hand]."

In the last few years, David Was has also started using Final Cut Pro HD, extending his artistic interests into digital video. Still, his admiration of the platform itself is purely practical: "It's becoming a standard," he says.

Music Downloads
Not surprisingly, Mr. Was's music is available on the iTunes Music Store, along with countless songs that he has helped to create. So what does he think about digital music distribution?

Mr. Was: I think it was amazing that Apple, which I've always equated with a kind of rebel, anticorporate kind of company, that they could step into the fray between the record business and the filesharing community. I think it was a propos that it was Apple.
TMO: Some bands (take Metallica as the stock example) have resisted having their music sold on the iTMS, especially as singles. What do you think about that?
Mr. Was: You know, I think it's a funny thing. I'm definitely a hippie capitalist. I love the serendipity of getting paid for sitting in a dark room and writing some rhymes. You are so grossly overpaid for the effort you put in. These guys got paid a thousand times over for what their estimable talents deserved. When I get my royalty check I might see seven dollars less because someone decided to steal my song, but I'm glad a million more people can experience my music.

However Mr. Was, as usual, shows a sensitivity to the counterargument: "If you made a good album," you've created a work that is "political, personal, spiritual." You intend "to sit people down and force them through the process of sitting there for an hour. That's your fantasy. But on the other hand, you can't stop this juggernaut."

Apple, the Great Democratizer
That "juggernaught" is the move to legal digital music distribution, which Apple has pioneered. So what effect is Apple is having on the music industry? The mild, wistful tone of his voice breaks.

Mr. Was: At this point I think it's pretty huge. If you'll allow me to go on a brief diatribe about the music business, I realized at a certain point that this is a business that evolves out of organized crime.
Mr. Was says this with a tone of perfect calm and perfect seriousness. He names standard demands to which artists and small club owners bow, under threat of blacklist, like block booking and free performances for radio stations. With great enthusiasm, he suggests that the hard-edged, frequently corrupt world of bars and clubs has become institutionalized in the record industry. Ultimately, he continues:

Mr. Was: The artist has never gotten a fair shake. When the filesharing era started, I thought, 'This appeals to the rebel in me, even if they're stealing from me.' There was something about sticking it in the eye of these guys who had been ripping off the public.

Then comes the dénouement, where he admits, "Of course, I also have an eye on my own piggybank, and I realized the danger." He ends with the words of a centrist ideologue: "In the end, I think it's healthy in the sense that it's made this business famous for its corruption tighten its belt."

Mr. Was also admires the economic democratization of the digital revolution. An all-digital studio is far less expensive than its analog predecessors, and twice, first in reference to digital music and again in reference to digital film, he quipped, "You can make hurt happen in your bedroom." Of the democratization of music he declares: "I think it's as good for art as it is for commerce."

Digital versus Analog
Can the digital revolution be bad for art? There's a long history of nail biting and name-calling over the migration from analog to digital sound. Audiophiles trumpet the better sound of analog equipment, while the general public enjoys the flexibility of digitized music. Mr. Was happily squats directly over the ideological fault line.

Mr. Was: If you're an audiophile, I'm all for it. [People] clucked and wagged their fingers when the Beatles started using multitrack. I believe the same clucking and finger wagging is going on now with the digital world. I defy anyone except these super technocrats to tell the difference.

When I was in 10th grade I met a dancer, just a beautiful young woman. I had fine [stereo] equipment in my room, and I was real conscious of that crap. And I'd blast stuff like Berlioz with one speaker in each ear. [Once] I went in to this girl's bedroom and she played me a Beethoven piece on a scratchy five-inch speaker, and she was transported farther than I'd ever gone, on the wings of the music alone, not the sound of it. She was milking the soul of the music whole.

You have to bring a soul to feel the soul. There's probably someone out there, who's capacity to feel is equal to their capacity to discern. But that's rare. It's like bringing a bucket to a fire. It's good if the bucket doesn't leak, but it doesn't have to be made by Tiffany, either.

The real question is, 'Does it feel like it happened.' I'm less interested in a live musician who's not a consummate artist than I am in a programmer who can make you get out of your chair. In the hip hop world, it's all programming. They've brought drums to the forefront in a way that no one else could have done. I don't want to hasten the obsolescence of live music, but...

At the end of the day, though, Mr. Was doesn't spend his time making classical music, or hip hop. So how has the digital revolution changed his own process in the studio? What does he do differently now than when he worked in analog?

Mr. Was: On the one hand, the process is exactly the same. [I have to make] mixing decisions about where to place things, where to pan, about echo, delay, compression. But these luddites who are married to the analog world will find something [wrong with it].
I don't believe you have to succumb to the perfection that all this audio hardware and software offers you. I want it to sound like you poured a stiff glass of bourbon on the hard disk, so it comes out feeling like there's a human hand in it. [I want] to get the loosey-goosey feeling [of] a one-AM Chicago session.

And with that, we'll leave you with our usual grab-bag of finishing questions.
Five for the Fans:

1. What computers do you own and what kind of computer speakers do you use?
17" Powerbook with Altec Lansings and a PowerMac Dual G5 running Logic 7.0 and Final Cut Pro HD. Output is through MAudio board, a Mackie 32 track mixer, and Hafler monitors.
2. Of all the artists you've partnered with, who was the most fun?
Bob Dylan, recording "Under the Red Sky." He cites "the privilege of going into the boiler room of genius...to see the naturalness, and the monumental struggle involved in doing something as an adult that as a kid you did just out of youthful exuberance....Being able to experience this guy's natural instinct and experience, combined with his wit...going to the studio every day was like visiting with Einstein or something."
3. Among the bazillion musical decisions you've made, what's the single best?
The hook ("Boom boom, acka lacka-lacka boom") to "Walk the Dinosaur," which was "As silly and successful as I've ever been in my life."
4. What's the best album of all time?
Miles Davis records in the mid to late '60s. "This was the best classical music that was being made in the world at that time."
5. What's the greatest instrument you never learned to play?
Cello. If the alto sax can sing like a woman, the cello sings like a man.

Thanks to Ricky Spero & David Was

Don't Trash Blanky!

Tom Cox, a correspondent of The Times Guardian, tells us why he's sold his vinyl collection to make space for an armchair. That's Right wants to know - has he Souled out?

ONE of the odd things about moving house a lot is that you expect it to make you more likely to get a hernia, but the truth is exactly the opposite. The fact is that if, like me, you’ve heaved your whole life into a van eight times in six years, you can’t help but get an instinctive, self-preserving feel for the weight of objects. These days I can glance at a chest of drawers and tell in a second how many balding men with bottom cleavage are needed to lift it. A neat skill to possess, though sometimes a bit of a dampener on impulse purchases, it has made me look at material goods in a new light. It also led me to sell my record collection.

Actually, the living hell that is moving is not the only reason that I’ve decided to discard, with the help of eBay, the three or four thousand vinyl albums that catalogue my musical life; it’s just a very big one. Records are the most belligerent of transient objects: unnaturally heavy, unaccountably multiplying as you move them off shelves and into boxes. So far, none of the friends and professional removers who have assisted me and my wife in our accidental nomadism have complained about the huge trunk that serves as testament to my grandfather-in-law’s wartime travels, although plenty have grouched about my exhaustive collection of Sixties psychedelia. But there is more to it than that.

All this time I have viewed it as an essential part of me, as if I would melt into a heap on the ground, Wicked Witch of the West-style, if I didn’t lug it from house to house. But it has occurred to me that I might just, ever-so-slightly, be kidding myself. Certainly my favourite songs define who I am to some extent, but let’s face it, as someone who has written a book and countless newspaper articles about rock music a good third of my collection is intrinsically of the own-it- because-you’re-supposed-to kind — Sun Ra’s Space is the Place. I mean, get real.

You wouldn’t exactly call my vinyl furniture — although a couple of my cats have an unaccountable fondness for stretching out on top of ABC’s Lexicon of Love, but over the years, I have tended to deploy it in the same way that more sophisticated people might a Picasso or an Eames recliner.

Sure, it is essentially there for my personal use, but I can’t deny that I’ve enjoyed the way guests drink in its majesty. The look of all those spines together has good associations for me, leading back to the joss-stick fuelled living rooms of my parents’ hippy friends in my childhood. The sleeves, with their often wonderfully pretentious cover art, are much more aesthetically generous than their CD equivalents and much more responsive to the touch. Leave them lying around in a heap and they still look great.

That’s the way I used to feel about them, anyway. Now I’m not so sure. These days, as I stare at that heap of wax and cardboard in the corner of the room, I can’t help but think that armchairs might look better in the same place. Perhaps it is the mark of a male kind of growing up that hits you as you gradually stop pinning culture so firmly to your chest as a badge of character, but I don’t find it depressing. I am, after all, using the proceeds to fund something as exciting as any number of rare first-pressing Jimmy Webb albums: a fully-integrated system based on the iTunes programme on my Apple Mac. It will let us listen to 40,000 songs, at random or in an order of our choosing, in nearly every room of our house, with a few taps of a keyboard.

In a few weeks, as the walls come down in my new Sixties house and speakers disguised as wall hangings are installed, a whole new space-age retro interior fantasy will become reality. The music will all still be there (though possibly not Space is the Place), the only difference will be that you won’t be able to see it. And if, by some twist of fortune, we have to move again, I find it reassuring that the whole lot can be packed into a box no bigger than a briefcase.


HMK: All I can say is that my albums are the closest thing I've got to a security blanket. I take pride in the fact I can tell folks that I still own most every LP I"ve ever bought or borrowed. I'd like to ask TRom this - Do you really want to spend the rest of your life saying "Man, I used to have that album".... Do you? So Tom, Dude, please don't trash your Blanky!

That's Right,

HMK

10x10

10x10
Originally uploaded by H. Michael karshis.

Hmm. Let's see - ten times ten equals 1000, a picture is worth a thousand words, oh, I get it! Check out this fresh news site offering a cool and ultra visual way to keep up with what's going on in our crazy busy world.

10 X 10!

That's Right,

HMK

There Is No VH In Team

Legendary Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth has
stopped "runnin' with the devil" to do God's work - riding ambulances
in gritty neighborhoods throughout the city to become a paramedic.
The famed rocker has cut his trademark blond mane and dropped his
celebrity persona so he can ride unrecognized with ambulance crews in
The Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn several nights a week.

Several weeks ago, the charismatic crooner saved the life of a Bronx
woman who had a heart attack by shocking her back to life with a
defibrillator.

The Post caught up with Roth last week as the 1980s icon grabbed a
slice of pepperoni pizza after sitting for hours in an ambulance
waiting for a call.

Just three days earlier, he had played to an adoring rock-'n'-roll
crowd in Minnesota.

Roth, 49, initially expressed reservations about discussing his
latest endeavor because he felt publicity "would diminish what I am
trying to do here."

But the following day, he told The Post more about his new passion.

"I have been on over 200 individual rides now," Roth told The
Post. "Not once has anyone recognized me, which is perfect for me."

"It has been an eye-opening adventure," said Roth, who asked The Post
not to disclose which "very colorful neighborhoods" he works in
because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself or his
colleagues.

Linda Reissman, Roth's EMS consultant and tutor, said she didn't know
what to expect of her famous pupil at first, but "he has probably
turned out to be one of the best students I have ever had."

"I am amazed," said Reissman, who is training Roth for Brooklyn-based
company Emergency Care Programs Inc.

Reissman described Roth as very studious, punctual and hungry for
knowledge.

"He is very serious," she said. "You would never know you were
dealing with a rock-'n'-roll guy, his commitment really is touching.
He wants to help people."

The singer, who is used to being onstage in a packed arena, sees at
least one similarity in his two careers.

"I am a member of a team again, and that's what a rock band always
was," Roth said.

Thanks to ERIKA MARTINEZ, NY Post

Art Is Not A Loaf Of Bread

Wilco
Originally uploaded by H. Michael karshis.

Giving away an album online isn't the way most artists end up with gold records. But it worked out that way for Wilco.

After being dropped from Reprise Records in 2001 over creative conflicts surrounding Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Chicago-based band committed what some thought would be suicide -- they streamed it online for free.

The album's subsequent release on Nonesuch debuted higher on the charts than any of their prior releases. That success gave both band and label confidence to try new internet forays: the first-ever MPEG-4 webcast with Apple, as well as more free online offerings of live shows and an EP's worth of fresh tracks. The band's 2004 release, A Ghost Is Born, hit No. 8 on the Billboard charts -- their highest position to date.

By conventional industry logic, file sharing hurts the odds for commercial success. Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy disagrees. Wired News caught up with him during his current tour to find out just what makes Wilco so wired.

Wired News: What sparked the idea of offering your music online for free?

Jeff Tweedy: Being dropped from Reprise in 2001. They weren't going to put out Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the way we'd created it. They wanted changes; we weren't willing to do that, so they rushed a contract through their legal department to let us go. It was the fastest I'd ever seen a record company work. Once they let us go, we were free to do with the album what we chose.

We'd been noticing how much more important the internet had become -- once information is out there in the world now, anyone can get it. Since that was beginning to happen with the record anyway, we figured, OK, let's just stream it for free ourselves.

WN: Did you minimize the quality of the files you offered online, so that people would be encouraged to pay for a higher-quality "real thing" when you signed to a new record label?

Tweedy: We didn't go out of our way to make it sound low-res. MP3s are poorer quality anyway. That's part of why the record industry's argument against file sharing is so ridiculous -- nothing out there on P2P networks sounds as good as the original CD or vinyl record.

WN: Did the free online release make it hard for you to find a new label home?

Tweedy: That's why we ended up with Nonesuch. They weren't intimidated by the fact that hundreds of thousands had already downloaded it.

WN: What was your reaction when copies of A Ghost Is Born started showing up online this year, before the official release?

Tweedy: Something interesting happened. We were contacted by fans who were excited about the fact that they found it on P2P networks, but wanted to give something back in good faith. They wanted to send money to express solidarity with the fact that we'd embraced the downloading community. We couldn't take the money ourselves, so they asked if we could pick a charity instead -- we pointed them to Doctors Without Borders, and they ended up receiving about $15,000.

WN: What are your thoughts on the RIAA's ongoing lawsuits against individual file sharers?

Tweedy: We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.

WN: You don't agree with the argument that file sharing hurts musicians' ability to earn a living?

Tweedy: I don't believe every download is a lost sale.

WN: What if the efforts to stop unauthorized music file sharing are successful? How would that change culture?

Tweedy: If they succeed, it will damage the culture and industry they say they're trying to save. What if there was a movement to shut down libraries because book publishers and authors were up in arms over the idea that people are reading books for free? It would send a message that books are only for the elite who can afford them.

Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.

WN: How do you feel about efforts to control how music flows through the online world with digital rights management technologies?

Tweedy: A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that's it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it's just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.
People who look at music as commerce don't understand that. They are talking about pieces of plastic they want to sell, packages of intellectual property.
I'm not interested in selling pieces of plastic.

WN: Your critics might say that it's easy for you to say that, given that you're already a commercial success.

Tweedy: I'm grateful that I've sold enough to have a house, take care of my kids and live decently. But that's a gift, not an entitlement.
I don't want potential fans to be blocked because the choice to check out our music becomes a financial decision for them.

WN: How do you feel about some of the new kinds of rights management alternatives some are proposing, instead of our current copyright schemes -- for instance, Creative Commons licenses that would allow your fans to remix your material for personal, noncommercial use?

Tweedy: Commercial use is one thing, but I have no problem with fans tinkering with it on their laptops, then sharing it with their friends -- that's just a new way for them to listen.

WN: Wilco is involved in a lot of non-music projects -- you published a book of poetry called Adult Head this year, the band was the subject of a 2002 documentary film, and the band just released a new book of photos, art, essays and previously unreleased tracks on an accompanying CD -- The Wilco Book. Is there a link between all the multimedia exploration and the relaxed attitude you seem to have about what happens to your music in the digital realm?

Tweedy: We're a collective of people who live to create things. When we released A Ghost Is Born, we decided to do that in an enhanced format for a number of reasons. We get to deliver more art that way. It's also a concession to the fact that we're artists who do work within the industry infrastructure. This offers something more than a downloaded MP3 can.

WN: What's next from Wilco in the way of online experiments?

Tweedy: Every few months or so we put a new live show on our site for download. And between YHF and AGIB, we released some tracks exclusively on our site for free. We've been encouraged by the response.

This has just become part of the way the band interacts with our audience. It's part of what we do now, and I don't think we're going to stop anytime soon.

Thanks To Xeni Jardin

Hawaii 5-O Film Is Still On!

Hawaii 5-0
Originally uploaded by H. Michael karshis.

STAR-BULLETIN
Jack Lord was Steve McGarrett in TV's "Hawaii Five-O." The star of the movie version has yet to be named.

Thirty-six years after "Hawaii Five-O" debuted on CBS, Warner Bros. Pictures confirmed yesterday that it will co-produce the long-awaited feature film based on the hit series.

"After winning a highly competitive challenge for the (movie) rights, the studio will co-produce the film with George Litto (Productions)," said a Warner Bros. official who requested anonymity.

The tentatively titled "Hawaii Five-0 the Movie" "will be a gritty, realistic cop drama set in the lush tropical setting of the Hawaiian Islands," the official said.

Jeff Rubinov, Warner Bros. president of production, was "the powerful force in getting this project to Warner Bros," according to the official.

Litto, an agent for Leonard Freeman, who created the "Five-O" series, owns the rights to the title. The film, which is expected to cost about $100 million, will be executive-produced by Andria Litto, George Litto's daughter.

"Ocean's Twelve" screenwriter George Nolfi will write the story.

"Ocean's Twelve" -- also a Warner Bros. film -- stars George Clooney, who has long been rumored to be one of Litto's choices for lead character Steve McGarrett. Clooney has not spoken publicly about whether he has been offered the role. But Nolfi has "a close" personal and professional relationship with Clooney and "Ocean's Twelve" director Steven Soderbergh, a source said.

The film's star and director will not be selected until the script is completed and then approved by the studio and producers, which Litto hopes will occur this fall. If that happens on schedule, the 80-day Hawaii filming could begin late next spring for a summer 2006 release, Litto said.

"We are in discussions with a major director and have been in negotiations for some time with a major star, which will be ongoing until the script is finished," Litto said.

In earlier interviews, Litto said he could also see the McGarrett role played by Mel Gibson, Michael Douglas or Harrison Ford.

A Warner Bros. spokesman emphasized that while the project is considered "a hot property in Hollywood ... all there is now is a good idea."

After Nolfi's script has been accepted, a budget will be determined, then casting will take place, the spokesman said.

"Then the studio will determine whether the cost benefit works out in our favor," the spokesman said. "Is there a market for this film worldwide, and, if not, is there enough gross domestically to make it worth doing?

"If it comes out on the balance sheet, then we green-light the film and move forward to begin pre-production."

Roger Towne wrote the original screenplay, but Warner Bros. executives wanted to take "a different approach" that was approved by Litto.

Nolfi wrapped up a two-week Hawaii visit earlier this month after scouting locations. While here, Nolfi met with law enforcement officials on each island and visited several airports. According to sources, a major part of the film could be a statewide chase involving some neighbor islands.

Two islands certain to be locations are Oahu and the Big Island, though other islands might also be used, Litto said.

The producer said he had offers from "every studio" in Hollywood, including Dreamworks SKG and Spyglass Entertainment, to co-produce the film. Litto selected Warner Bros. after nearly five months of discussions with WB's Robinov, who initiated the partnership.

Litto, who hopes to create a franchise with "Hawaii Five-O" akin to the James Bond films, would not disclose the financial terms with Warner Bros., only saying they are "comparable to the other studios' offers."

"But there were other considerations as to how my company and the Freeman estate would have a meaningful voice in the film's creative elements," Litto said.

That's Hollywood jargon for script, director and casting approval, a source said.

Dan Lin, a Warner Bros. senior vice president of production, will oversee the "Five-O" project for the studio.

"Hawaii Five-O," the longest-running police show in the history of television -- 1968 to 1980 -- was the subject of a rights dispute between CBS and Freeman's estate. But producer Litto and Freeman's widow, Rose, prevailed in January 2000.

That's Right,

HMK

Thanks to Tim Ryan

Vote!

Vote!
Originally uploaded by H. Michael karshis.

Remember: If you don't vote - don't bitch.

That's Right,

HMK

20 Ways to Monkey with Telemarketers

Some people have made an art of playing with the telemarketers and getting a few chuckles along the way. Here are a few of my favorites.

Have I got a deal for you
Interrupt the telemarketer's sales pitch and ask them if they would like to buy something from you (could be anything that you're selling). That will usually get them to end the call.

I do
Ask the telemarketer to marry you. Seriously, this will probably shock them and they won't know what to say.

You have reached my voicemail
Say: "Hello." (Wait on them to start talking.) "I'm sorry we can't come to the phone right now. Please leave a message. Beep."

Funny you called
"You know, I was just thinking about (doing, buying) just that very same thing. So, I said to myself, 'Self, why don't you just (do, buy) it and get over it.' To my amazement, self replied with a loud, 'GO FOR IT!'" (Keep talking to take control of the conversation, never letting the telemarketer speak so he or she can't actually try to sell you anything.) "Well, me and myself will discuss it more and we'll get back to you."

From a country song
"I'd love to, but my wife just left me, she cut the tires on my truck, I had to bury my dog, and I only have half a Bud Light bottle left. I'm not worried about the rest, but if you start selling beer, give me a call."

Have you planned for the future?
When I see "out of area" on the caller ID, I answer the phone with the name of a made-up insurance company. Then I try to sell the person life insurance. I'll ask questions like, "What if something happened to you?" or "Are you sure your final needs can be met?" Usually, they end up hanging up on me.

Reply in gibberish
Answer the phone in a pretend foreign language.

She's not … here
I have told people that the person they were asking for was hideously mangled in a train wreck. If they ask for my wife, I sometimes say that she recently left me, then tell the caller she sounds cute and ask her out.

And you are?
I'd love to hear more about why you are calling me, but I'm in the middle of dinner right now. Why don't you give me your home number so I can call and irritate you in the middle of your meal?

Keep talking
Rather than find creative ways in which to hang up on telemarketers, I decided many years ago that I could provide a public service by keeping them on the phone for as long as possible. The longer they spend with me, the less time they have to call other people. Often, they'll hang up on me before I can hang up on them!

What did I win?
Sometimes I'll act as if the sales call is one to inform me that I've won a prize. I'll exclaim, "I've never won anything in my life!" Then I'll ask for details on when and how my prize will be sent to me. And no matter how many times it's explained to me, I will never quite understand that I've won nothing and instead am being asked to buy something.

I'm already connected
If I'm being offered a loan or mortgage refinance, I'll ask if it can "fly under the radar," because I have a large loan at a very high interest rate from "family" who would become very upset if I obtained loans elsewhere. I'll suggest that we meet somewhere discreet to discuss details.

Phone flirting
I am big on the phone flirting. Use your best Joey voice from "Friends": "How you doin?" or, "You sound really attractive. Do you call here often?"

How long do you have?
Say: "Sorry to interrupt you. I really want to talk to you, but can you hold on for a few minutes? I just need to finish up the call from the last telemarketer. He called me about an hour ago."

What's it worth?
"Now before I listen to your pitch, there are a few things we need to cover. My minimum rate for listening is $35 an hour. Of course, I can offer you upgrades that give you additional benefits, as well as a greater chance that I may buy what you are selling. The deluxe package is $55 per hour and offers a 2 percent chance of purchase, and the super-deluxe package is $75 per hour, and offers a 3 percent chance of purchase. Now before we get to that, I will need you to send in an application as well as a minimal application fee of $55. You will also need to include with your payment a $35 payment for a credit report. Once your credit has been approved, I will be able to accept your non-refundable good-faith security deposit, which I require, of $100. After closing, and you have paid my standard closing costs of $250, we will then be able to proceed with your sales pitch. Can I sign you up?"

It's good enough for Cuba
I always get them to scream, "Show me the money!" like in "Jerry Maguire."

That's Right!

Thanks to Amy C. Fleitas • Bankrate.com

Is This Wrong?

Fowl Ball shirt
Originally uploaded by H. Michael karshis.

Ha Ha NY

Ha HaTee
Originally uploaded by H. Michael karshis.

Curse? Whatever. The Cardinals are a great team and it looks like it's over considering we're up 3-0, but knocking the Yankees out of it was So Sweet!

That's Right - Ha Ha!

HMK

Go Sox!

Go Sox!
Originally uploaded by H. Michael karshis.

SAN JOSE, Calif -- During Tuesday's U2 event in the California Theater, Apple CEO Steve Jobs not only anounced (at least in the abstract) that he too is a Boston Red Sox fan, he also announced Apple's first iPod accessory, the iPod Sock. The socks come five to a package, with one each in green, purple, orange, pink, and blue.

Packaged just like normal socks, the accessory is intended to keep your iPod warm, or so Mr. Jobs quipped during his presentation. Those in attendance offered Mr. Jobs a round of enthusiastic applause when it became clear that this was indeed a real product.

iPod socks will be priced at US$29, and are expected to ship in mid-November, well after the curse is reversed.

Go Sox!

That's Right,

HMK

We're Going Streaking!

There’s no doubt the fact that the Red Sox have won six playoff games in a row is the most improbable October event since Black Tuesday crippled a nation. It is the streak that most folks have got first and foremost on their minds, with Boston just two wins away from its first World Series title in 86 years.

But this has truly been a postseason filled with streaks. Consider:

* St. Louis’ 6-2 loss last night in Game 2 was the Cardinals’ fifth straight road loss of the playoffs, in which they have lost six of seven games this month. The Cardinals were an NL-best 52-29 on the road during the regular season, but have had the challenge of playing the Astros at Minute Maid Park, where Houston never lost the last two months, and the Red Sox at Fenway, where Boston compiled the AL’s second-best home mark.

* While the attention was focused on the fact that Manny Ramirez went seven straight games in the ALCS without an RBI, everybody has missed the fact that he is in the midst of a 12-game postseason hitting streak, batting .346 for the month.

For the 12th straight media session, an out-of-town reporter asked Johnny Damon about his hair.

* Closer Keith Foulke, probably a close second to David Ortiz in the ALCS MVP voting, has made eight straight appearances these playoffs and has yet to be charged with an earned run over 10 2/3 innings.

* On the flip side of things for the Birds, they have won all six playoff games at Busch, where St. Louis had a mark of 53-28, just one game better than its away record. The Red Sox were 43-38 on the road, where they struggled for much of the first half of the season.

* Mark Bellhorn has not homered in one straight game.

* More remarkably, Mark Bellhorn has not struck out in two straight games.

* Oh, and that football team has won something like 21 in a row too. Not bad, eh?

That's Right!,

HMK

Thanks to Eric Wilbur of the Boston Globe

iPod News Flash!

I've been saying this since the beginning of 2004 - The only thing missing from the iPod family is an inexpensive, groovy little flash drive micro-mini-pod: A 1-2 GB flash based music player about the size of a business card that holds 250-500 songs, comes with earbuds, fire-wire cable and dock. Price it at around $100US and nobody will be able to touch Apple's mp3 player domination. And why not? C'mon Steve - make it so. All I'm saying is if the Red Sox can make history by winning the World Series this year - then my wish for an Apple FlashPod in my stocking this Christmas should be really simple, right?

That's Right,

HMK