Weekly Photo Assignment ~ Somethng Musical THEN: I was quite attached to this transistor radio as a teen. Although this is just an AM radio, (yes, this was pre-FM), if you had a Panasonic...anything...back then, that was pretty cool. Sony ranked up there too. It had an earphone, it wasn't stereo and it was entirely analog but I loved it just the same. The two rock and roll stations I listened to in Detroit were WKNR and CKLW. CKLW broadcasted from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. I got to see WKNR up-close and personal. My father arranged a tour and a meeting with one of their DJ's because I wouldn't stop talking about Paul being dead. Of course we all know this wasn't true. Remember there was no Internet. What you heard on the radio, saw on the news or read in the paper was all you had. What about those stickers? It was customary to adorn things like this with stickers. In addition to the stickers you see here, there was an American flag with a peace symbol where the stars are on the back, a peace symbol wtih my name on it, (remember this was during the Viet Nam war), a Clark gas station sticker, (there was one on the corner), and a sticker from my high school. NOW: My iPod is my 'something musical' that I carry with me. It doesn't bring me the news, pick-up Chicago stations while listening in Detroit (skip), by turning the station dial in the tiniest increments when atmospheric conditions are right, or a Tiger baseball game. It can store thousands of songs of my choosing, has an analog style dial for selecting them, and it's commercial free. I do enjoy it, but I doubt I will smother in love it with stickers. Wondering about 'skip'? Just Google 'skip radio waves' Wondering what a 'transistor' is? You can Google that too. They were all the rage!

I've never been a car modder or audio enthusiast, but this was a lot of fun, and now I want to do more. I'd like to add a small PC or Mac Mini with iTunes and one of those motorized in-dash touch screens instead of this 1/8 cable w/ iPod system. Then I want to figure out some speech recognition stuff so I can request songs without any distractions. It's too hard to navigate the byzantine menu system of the iPod while in LA traffic. It can only lead to crying. I wouldn't mind one dash button that I'd hold down while saying the song/album/artist name, just so I don't have to have the computer continually listening. Otherwise the songs I'm listening to would just call out other songs, which could be kinda cool at first, but eventually would just annoy me.