A Decade Late: Am I Still Welcome?

Got back to the States yesterday after a 15-hour flight from Hong Kong. Chicklet surprised me at the airport so I didn't have to take the train back. After taking the "scenic route" back to Princeton, I returned the favor by making us dinner. Given that I had just been adventurous for 10 days, I wanted to do something very normal, so I popped in The Princess Bride and watched the movie for about the 35th time. Amazingly, Chicklet had never seen the entire movie before (?!). She seemed to enjoy it, though perhaps she'll publish a more detailed review on her site.

For the first time since Kevin told about this program called Napster at MIT, I'm paying for my music. Not wanting to be encumbered by DRM or locked into a certain subset of music players (my Treo plays mp3s after all), I signed up for eMusic. They give you the mp3s straight up--no catches. I'll get 40 downloads for $10 a month (so as long as I find about 1 new album a month it'll be cheaper than iTunes). Also, when they say you get 50 free downloads they are actually being truthful. I've almost used up all my freebies and they have not charged by credit card. My hesitance about joining before was the lack of an extensive catalog, but I saw they now have the Decembrists. (Chu got several of their songs stuck in my head a couple months ago.)

Their catalog, which you can only view by signing up for the free trial, included several pleasant surprises (Debbie Friedman, Green Day, Carole King), but the best find was Dar Williams. Innumerable people have recommended her to me over the years, but for some reason I had not taken the hint. Well, now I'm hooked. I laughed out loud at "The Christians and The Pagans" and it's my new (temporary) "favorite song." It came out in 1996--okay, so maybe I'm a bit behind the times.