Thinking digitally, acting analogically

According to my superfluous special days calendar, this Monday, August 12, is National Vinyl Record Day, a day to give your old Monkees album a spin as a sign of respect.

A lot of us grew up with Long Plays (LPs) and 45s, so certain nostalgia goes along with it. Besides the big, readable album covers, you have the tactile thing going on; carefully putting the disc on the turntable and gently setting the needle onto the record. Very analog. You have to work your fine motor skills to listen to the music.

The only records I own are the ones I bought in the 60s, 70s and 80s, although I did pick up a copy of Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2 and a Duke Ellington album at the Safe Harbor Second Hand store a while back. I’m not a collector by any means, but there are hobbyists out there who throw a lot of effort into rare records and stereo systems. I saw a comic strip with a man talking to another about his vinyl collection. He said, “I think it’s the expense and inconvenience I find appealing.”

Anyway, and pardon me for showing my bias, but as a rule older music is better than most of what’s coming out today.

I guess when you get down to it, a good song that may have been recorded 30, 40, or 50 years ago is still, simply, a good song. And yes, they sound fine on a hi-fi.

This trend of everything being replaced by the latest technological advancement reminds me of something the late 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney said, “Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do are things that don’t need to be done.”

The first thing that comes to mind is all the stuff on the average cell phone. In this modern world, we have i-this, i-that, and i-the-other all over the place. And as you know, if it’s not lowercase i, it’s uppercase X, as in X-treme. In case you haven’t noticed, everything has to be extreme in order for it to be better than the rest. Looking around the store you can find X-treme sodas, X-treme music, X-treme vacations, X-treme candy bars, and yes, even X-treme underarm deodorant.

It’s everywhere, and I’m just waiting for someone in the current crop of presidential candidates to start bragging, “Vote for me, I’m X-treme.”

But, back to the phone.

That phone can do lots of things and I won’t get into that labyrinth, but it has one capability that really does come in handy, a GPS tracker. Although I’m die-hard adherent to having an actual paper map in the car, I have to admit it’s difficult to read one when you’re in the process of driving in city traffic on unfamiliar streets in the dark.

Gone are the days when your spouse or significant other suggests for the umpteenth time that you should just “pull over at the next gas station and ask someone for directions.” Instead, there’s this disembodied voice telling you how many miles you are from where you want to go, and then to make a right or left. It’s like the virtual guy at the gas station.

Very handy. I just hope it doesn’t put Rand McNally out of business because people still need maps.

I’m sure you’ve seen little news briefs like “Trucker Follows GPS Directions, Winds Up In Tree,” and “Tourists Following GPS Directions Mistakenly Drive Suv Into Harbor, Witnesses Say.”

I recently read on the news that someone in Illinois inadvertently drove up power pole guy wires because she was following what her GPS told her to do.

I remember a few years ago, a TV crew from Channel 7 got stuck in the snow while trying to get to the town of Dusty, down in southwestern Socorro County. The GPS took them, not by the smartest way, but the most direct route which happened to be over the San Mateo Mountains during a snowstorm.

Instead of going south from the VLA, or going down to T or C and coming up through Winston, they went down 107 and turned off toward Rosedale and got stuck in the snow near Grassy Lookout. It took Magdalena’s Marshal and Sheriff Philip Montoya, along with Shorty Vaiza and Joe Tafoya well after midnight to get them out and down to Magdalena.

City folks.

You’d think GPS gizmos have been around long enough that by this time they wouldn’t lead you wrong, but you still can’t put too much trust in one.

Regardless, the next time you take a drive, remember the old Irish blessing: “…may you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the GPS to know when you have gone too far.”

Or something like that.