TWO TURNTABLES AND A STEERING WHEEL

As you’ll be hearing shortly, Team Def is about to embark on a journey of epic proportions. How epic? It involves car rental in two (2) cities. More on that later.

Anyway, last year when I rented a car, it came with a CD player and satellite radio tuner, the latter of which I had great fun playing with (full report here). These days, of course, the hot item is an iPod dock on the dashboard.

Which gets me all nostalgic. See, when I was in college (which is also the last time I owned my own car), we didn’t have all this fancy whiz-bang technology you kids have today. There was no such thing as MP3s, and satellite radio was something you got from a 10-meter SRO dish and an illegal decoder in the backyard. And the only way you’d get a CD player to work without it skipping constantly was to stick a boom box in the passenger seat.

So what did we have for portable music entertainment on those long drives to the corner package store for Tostitos and Jim Beam?

We had these.



This is back in the days when music came on VINYL, children. We stuck record players in the car that played vinyl records at a super-slow 16-2/3 revolutions per minute, so you could pack an hour of music per side. And we LIKED it.

Okay, sure, we also had C-90 cassette tapes, and a few people actually had 8-track tape players in their cars. But 8-tracks fucked with the sequencing and split songs in two. Go find a copy of Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue on 8-track if you don’t believe me.

So yes, I’m hoping I get an iPod dock with my rental car this year. Though I’ll settle for a satellite tuner. Then I can introduce my mother-in-law to the silly joy that is Boneyard (formerly known as Buzzsaw).

Highway star,

This is dF

DEF XMAS PLAYLIST 2008 (#12 OF 12): YOU CAN’T BUY BEER

Time to wrap up the Def Xmas playlist for 2008, and with Christmas just a few days away, I have just the song that captures the true spirit of the season: Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper’s “Burn Down The Malls”.

Okay, technically it’s not a Christmas song. But if you’ve got all yr shopping done, odds are you feel like Mojo feels. And if not, you will by Christmas Eve. Trust me.

But then I do all my Christmas shopping on Amazon.com, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Lowest common denominator,

This is dF

DEF XMAS: BARBARISM BEGINS AT HOME

Okay, and that just about wraps it up for 2008.

For those of you who don’t already know, Team Def is hitting the road for the holidays in a two-week adventure in the US, the highlight of which will be the Meeting Of The Moms.

You see, despite me having been married to the bridal unit for almost 12 years, her mom and my mom have never met for a number of reasons, many of them logistical and geographical. To say nothing of the language barrier (as KT’s mom speaks little English and my mom speaks zero Cantonese). So this should be fun.

I hope so. I’m not really looking forward to the family portion of this trip – I come from one of those classic families where, if we were complete strangers, we wouldn’t want anything to do with each other. But we’re related, so we have to deal with it.

I’m exaggerating, as usual, but it’s hard figuring out how to fill up yr day with people who don’t share the same interests as you – especially in East Tennessee, which lives up to many of the stereotypes people tend to assume about it.

Pro: beautiful countryside, especially in the foothills of the Smokies where Mom lives.

Con: Dollywood.

[See previous report for terrible details]

On the bright side, I’ll be making a side trip to Nashville (my hometown) to catch up with some old friends, and I’ll also be stopping in Chicago to do likewise on the way back, so that alone will be worth the trip. Still, with KT’s mom in tow, it’s not like we’ll spend it smacked out on whiskey and running around hotel lobbies in our underwear singing “The Mob Rules” at the top of our goddamn lungs.

You know, like we usually do.

Anyway, we leave first thing in the morning, so apart from the occasional mobile post (assuming I can get LifeBlog to work in the states) or trips to public libraries, this is the last you’ll be hearing from Team Def for the next couple of weeks.

Regular transmissions will resume around January 4.

Enjoy yr holidays. You’ve been a swell f-list so far, and we look forward to serving you in 2009.

Transmission ends in 5, 4, 3, 2 ...........................