CRITICAL MASS : Emptying out travel bag filled with good intentions
Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Good intentions are no excuse for indifferent results, but resources and attention spans are finite. My desk overflows and the calendar pages whip away as in an old black-andwhite newsreel: Time marches on. So I’ll do this from time to time — a column about all the things I’ve meant to write about and haven’t.
I was planning on writing a piece on traveling with electronics, because it seems that’s how I roll these days. I’ve got a new laptop, a white Apple MacBook with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 160-gigabyte hard drive ($ 1, 299 ), and I often carry an iPod Touch ($ 299 for the 8-gigabyte version, which is perfectly adequate for my calendar, e-mail and even a couple of in-flight movies ) and sometimes a second iPod — an older 80-gigabyte model I use mainly to record interviews. I go on a lot of overnight and two-night trips, and like everyone who flies more than occasionally I carry my bag on. After a decade of stubbornness, in which I tried various combinations of rolling satchels, attaches, and small shoulder-strapped duffels, I finally embraced the cult of the backpack.
The trouble is, most of the backpacks I’ve used — admittedly most of them promotional giveaway models — didn’t seem to hold up.
But lately I’ve been using the Veloce Travel Pack ($ 79. 95 ) from Rick Steves Travel Store (travelstore. ricksteves. com ), a big bag with a padded laptop compartment that’s easily accessible for the inevitable security check unsheathing. It also holds far more than I need for a weekend, which usually includes more clothes than I could possibly wear, a couple of Moleskine pocket notebooks ($ 10. 95 ), a novel or two and all the aforementioned electronic paraphernalia.
It’s a tough bag with logos that are so subtle you have to search to find them; it’s maybe not the best-looking backpack (although I appreciate its lack of flash ), but it’s supremely comfortable to wear and more functional than anything else I’ve found. And while it won’t fit in the overhead compartment of an Embraer jet fully stuffed, it will slide under the seat in front of you.
Somewhere down the line I want to write about putting together a home office — in part so I can talk about Boynq’s very nicely designed line of USB / Firewire accessories, including their toaster-shaped Toastit memory card reader ($ 29. 95 ) and Alibi speaker webcam ($ 79. 99 ), which I’m using even though I couldn’t get the webcam to work with my desktop iMac (I have the iMac model before they started including a built-in camera ) because I don’t really know what I’d do with a webcam anyway. And their Sabre iPod stereo docking sound system ($ 99. 99 ) is getting frequent use around our house, mainly because I’m too lazy to set up wireless remote speakers on our deck.
Another subject I meant to spend an entire column on is the music of former Sudanese child soldier turned rapper Emmanuel Jal, whose album Warchild (Sonic 360 / Fontana / Universal ) will be released next Tuesday. Jal’s story is extraordinary; he doesn’t know exactly when he was born because he was given up to Sudanese rebels by his father in 1987 when he was either 6 or 7 years old. He’d fought in two civil wars by the time he was rescued by Emma McCune, a British aid worker, five years later — she smuggled Jal into Nairobi, Kenya, where she meant to rear him as her own. But eight months later she was killed in a car crash and Jal’s cause was taken up by her friends. He took up hip-hop as therapy, eventually moved to England and in 2005 released his first album Gua (peace ) in a mix of rap in Arabic, English, Kiswahili, Dinka and Nuer. The title track became a No. 1 hit in Kenya.
Warchild is an extraordinary document, a kind of sonic autobiography that’s alternately thrilling, harrowing and uplifting. (I missed the movie about Jal — War Child — at the recent Tribeca Film Festival; I did catch the documentary about former Ugandan child soldier turned champion boxer Kassim Ouma. )
I don’t want to forget to say something about a few Arkansas artists who’ve released new discs. The reliably popsmart Michael Jukes has an Internet-only release called Bright Room ($ 10, www. jukesmusic. com ) I’ve been enjoying, and poet-professor Marck Beggs has another edition of his ongoing Americana rock Dog Gods project, I am large; I contain multitudes ($ 12. 50 ), this time with the help of additional musicians. (See www. myspace. com / doggods for more information. ) And the XNA All-Stars — a Northwest Arkansas recording project that involves Earl and Ernie Cate, Jimmy Thackery and a lot of other familiar names — has an eponymous CD of blues covers that’s well-wrought and tasteful, a graceful and light album that holds up under repeated listenings. (Check it out at www. swingindoorrecords. com / xnaallstars /. )
While we’re talking about local musicians’ musicians, singersongwriter-guitarist Robert Hill has lived in New York for the past 20 years, but he grew up in North Little Rock and still draws on the state for inspiration. His excellent blues album My Corner (SOR, $ 12. 97 ) — which features some fantastic acoustic guitar work as well as Hill’s crafty rootsy originals — has been in rotation in my car for a couple of months now.
(The CD’s packaging deserves a mention: Hill says the sepiatone photograph that adorns the front cover is of his father as a boy, circa 1930, outside a Hot Springs barbecue stand. The back cover photograph dates from the early 1900 s; it’s of Hill’s grandfather in the doorway of his Pine Bluff advertising company. )
On the reissue front, one of my favorite albums from the 1980 s, Australian eco-rockers Midnight Oil’s 1987 classic Diesel and Dust ($ 21. 98, Sony / Legacy ), is being re-issued today, with the addition of “Gunbarrel Highway,” a track left off the original U. S. release because it was adjudged “too strong” for American audiences, and a DVD of concert performances from the band’s 1987 “Blackfella / Whitefella” tour.
I couldn’t figure out a way to write a real column on Michael Gooch’s — the director of human resources for Pilgrim’s Pride — highly entertaining book on people management, Wingtips With Spurs: Cowboy Wisdom for Today’s Business Leaders ($ 24. 95, Multi-Media Publications ). So I’m putting in a plug for it here. You can find out more online at www. michaellgooch. com.
I’m taking Phil Strongman’s Pretty Vacant: A History of U. K. Punk ($ 16. 95, Chicago Review Press ) on my next airplane ride. I’ve already scanned The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars ($ 22. 95, Chicago Review Press ) and on the basis of the Joe Meek entry decided it needed a place on my reference shelf.
Now all I’ve got to do is watch every single one of those DVDs stacked up in my office. And I will. At least, that’s my intention. E-mail pmartin@arkansasonline. com
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