Best National Anthem Performances - Youtube Roundup

Whitney Houston's performance of the National Anthem at the super bowl in 1991 is the best performance of the anthem I've ever heard/seen. I got chills when I heard it the first time. I came across it again today, and had to post it... and then found a few other youtube anthems worth posting.

#1) Whitney:

#2) Kelly Clarkson -

#3) Jordin Sparks:

#4) Marvin Gaye:

Driving, Painting, Listening... one of these things isn't like the other

I meant to post as soon as I got back in to town, but like the Nebraska legislature found, good intentions don't always count for much.

Where was I, you ask? In New Orleans. I went down to N.O. for a Hornets game with some friends from work (current and former company, both). It's a 5 hour drive from Shreveport, and I was questioning whether it would be worth it - 10 hours in a car over two days (with my stomach craziness) didn't seem like fun, as well as a distaste for bourbon street festivities. I went, though, since live basketball is a great thing, and I had been craving something new and different to do.

We had tickets in Section 119 on row 7 (*mouseover), which was closer than I imagined we would be. It brought me back to being court side at the Louisiana Tech's Men's basketball games, which were some of the best live sporting events I've ever attended. We were maybe 10-15 yards away from the court, behind the goal, and even though the game wasn't a great game, it was a good time.

On the way down, one of the guys I went with, Thomas, was playing music in the car through his Zune (thank you, Camry auxilary port). We got to talking about the virtues of the Zune Pass, and he won me over to the dark, scummy, Microsoft side. I won't be buying a Zune antyime soon (I'm starting to rhyme and I like it), but the sound of a subscription based music service with a large catalog, pre-defined playlists and channels (all of which can be broken into individual downloads) sounded like something I should at least try. So, I'm giving it a 14 day trial.

Previously, I'd been listening to a lot of Pandora, which is great for a while... until you start to get comfortable with it and settle into a rotaiton of a few stations. The same songs keep cropping up, and then you hit the licensing restrictions (no more than 4 songs by any artist in an hour, only 10 or so (by my estimation) song skips per hour, etc.). Granted, I listen at work for a good 3 hours a day, but I usually try to mix up the stations. Anywho, that just got old, so I'm going to try to get my music house updated with some fresh tunes. Hopefully the Zune pass can assist there.

I also wanted to get a question out about why the Microsoft Zune Windows application is designed so much more thoughtfully than iTunes. iTunes makes me angry. It's unintuitive and slow, while the Microsoft Zune application is attractive, less cluttered and fairly responsive. I almost feel guilty about enjoying it. Anywho, it just struck me as odd since Apple is supposed to design mind blowing UI's.

One last note, I'm glad I'm too old for the bourbon street scene. Maybe in college I would've been more inclined to hang out after the game, but I don't find that stuff to be as much fun anymore. Maybe it's the miser in me :-) $7 for a beer? That drink better put a smile on my face and a shine on my shoes for $7.

I told the fellers that I wasn't going to go out, and on the 5 hour drive back, I think everyone in the car regretted their decision from the night before except me. I went back to the hotel (Hilton Riverside) and watched some random cable on the 42" LCD in the room there. That's what a hotel room should be like, by the way. Clean sheets, nice furnishings, flat screen TV... but for goodness sake allow the curtains to be drawn all the way. I woke up at 7 or so with the sun in my eyes and couldn't draw the curtains all the way, the light weight curtains were drawn, but the heavy curtains left three feet of sleep smacking sunshine in.

So, today, in preparation for hosting Pie Night, Katie's family's Wed. night pre-thanksgiving tradition, I painted (along with my Dad). We listened to the Zune songs... most of the time, set to play the Ultimate Sing Along Collection playlist - a pre-selected list of 100 songs or so. Good times. We'll have 20 people or so over tomorrow night for pies, games and all of them will hopefully admire our newly painted living areas.

November '08 at the half

Photo by: gak67nz

November's almost over and I've not made a post this month (unless you count that last one), but quite a few things of note have happened.

First, my wife made an attempt on my dog's life. That's right, she attempted a coup for my affection. With a new pair of nail clippers, and an idea to test them out on a notoriously spastic 80 pound dog while at my parents' house, Katie clipped a nail far too short on Pluto's front right paw. The dog must've lost a pint of blood on various parts of my parents' house (really, it was a surprising amount of blood), and Katie a pint of salt water - feeling bad for being the cause of the dog's impending demise. Death didn't want Pluto yet, though (and I think Death's better for it), and we managed to stop the bleeding with corn starch and pressure (through a sock filled with corn starch, worn by the dog-beast himself, pressure applied by yours truly).

Unfortunately, the dog will never allow his nails to be clipped again. On the other hand, behavior issues are much more easily solved by showing the dog nail clippers when he gets out of line.

On the job front, Katie had a job interview this week for a Director's position within her university. We think that it may be a position that was intended for another person since the application posting period was only a week long (state jobs with short application/interview periods are notorious for being used as a means for fulfilling the public posting requirement without actually getting too many qualified applicants - allowing the predetermined candidate to get the job). There is hope for her, as the people in the university like her, and have showed gratitude for the work she does (and rightly so :-) )... but the hope is slim.

Mentioning the job makes me think to write about the budget we've undertaken here in the Youngster Simpson household. At first, we'd budgeted amounts for each spending category (bills, entertainment, fast food, groceries, gas [which being a Simpson, is normally tied to the fast food category], etc.), but soon realized that we'd probably fail at such a drastic change in spending, and the commitment required in that change. So, we decided to just focus on our Savings goal, transferring money to savings immediately upon getting paid. I think that suits us just fine.

Other random thoughts -

• Rear Window (watched last night) - great movie. Blockbuster is going to be providing us a large collection of classics after being underwhelmed by most recent mainstream comedies (a la, Strange Wilderness, Pineapple Express) and dramas as well (There Will Be Blood). I can sit through a lot, but I stopped all three before finishing.


• I have a strong desire to create, and be creative. I also have little energy these days, especially outside of work. I'm looking for an outlet... and the energy to commit to that outlet


• We need to finish painting the rooms of our house, and find a fix to our TV mounting problem. Anyone have experience mounting TV's on lathe and plaster fireplaces? There are no studs back there as far as I can find (just one out front...me). We need to mount the TV to free up space so we can get another couch and love seat in here...


• If our family (no casualties of the poor economy) is cutting back Christmas and converting from consumerists, I expect the economy to stall for a while.

The mayans may be right

I'm no Mayan apologist... but they may have been on to something with this whole belief that taking a picture steals part or all of your soul.

Proof:

Need I continue?