“Happy Birthday! How old are you?” “A decade.”

To my parents, a look, maybe a phrase like “He’s a character, all right.”

President Reagan was in office and I liked none better for the job. What did I know? I was nine and knew little of politics. Only two years earlier, I was as staunch a Democrat as a kid of eight could be. President Carter was from Plains, Georgia, after all. And he grew peanuts. That was enough for me.

But President Reagan conducted himself like a swinging grandfather and loved jelly beans. Also, he was an actor. A Hollywood imagination and a sweet tooth were qualifiers a-plenty.

John Belushi died in March of 1982. I remember that as clearly as I remember hearing of John Lennon’s death a year or so earlier.

Much of my celebrity knowledge was gleaned from The National Enquirer, the favorite periodical of the Addington’s. They were a couple with grown children that accompanied my parents and I on camping trips to Alabama. Eufaula. Cedar Bluff. And by camping, I mean spending the weekend in a motorhome with running water, electricity and television, albeit black and white. And Mrs Addington always had a stack of the latest Enquirers close at hand. She and my mother would gossip about goings-on at church and I’d read about scandals and accusations and assumptions, never really comprehending but remembering the names and faces.

I’d gotten a tape recorder at some point, a Realistic model with the fat red and black combo record/play button. If a song came on the radio that I liked, I’d grab the recorder and punch that huge button, coming away with maybe two-thirds of a track (in mono, no less) if I was lucky. While I was starting to have an appreciation for music, the idea of genres still escaped me. Joan Jett. Hall & Oates. Men At Work. More Hall & Oates. Rick Springfield. John Cougar. Even more Hall & Oates.

I remember calling into a local radio station, one I realized later was all-country, and requesting Olivia Newton John’s “Physical.” I remember a pause of silence, maybe a sigh, then, “No, kid, we don’t play that.”

Hey, it was only the number one hit of the year.

Though locally, Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309″ was the business. 867 was a local prefix around North Georgia and Chattanooga, so I can only imagine the torment suffered by whoever had that number. Yes, I remember dialing it, but it was busy. Every single time.

Later that year, I’d attend the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. I remember very little apart from the stone statues from China, the huge glass pavilions and the way the sunset glinted off the Sunsphere. My mother worked for TVA, so I’d kept a poster on my closet door for most of the year leading up to the visit. That golden ball looked like the future and competed that summer with the Space Shuttle for the embodiment of This Is The Future.

Well, that and my digital watch. An Armitron. It played “Edelweiss.” The strap broke once, but since it was plastic, my Dad fixed it with epoxy.

My hair was still straight as can be. I still smiled broadly and carelessly. All teeth and gums.

And so incredibly skinny.

What would I tell that boy?

“Keep smiling. And don’t worry so much. Junior high is coming and things are going to even out. You’ll no longer be carrying your special lunch to school. But in the meantime, do some homework. Don’t stop drawing, but maybe take a break from time to time to pay attention to your teachers, because they really are trying.

“You’re a good kid.”

But here’s the thing … This ukulele, the Eleuke Peanut, it has an earphone output, an MP3 input and a 1/4″ output jack. One of these is obvious, but the other two …

So here’s how it goes: In this photo, starting around 10 o’clock, we have an earphone jack (an output). Next, counter-clockwise, we have the MP3 input. Then at the bottom of the ukulele, we’ve the most obvious output … a 1/4″ to-amplifier jack in the strap knob.

And now you know.

And so, here’s my very own top ten, a list culled from a glance at my Last.fm charts from 2011, from the playlists I made on Spotify, from my MP3 purchases here and there, and from my own spotty memory.

1. Mutemath – Odd Soul – This one caught me by surprise. I suppose I’d heard of Mutemath, but filed them away under “Yeah, I don’t think that’s my thing.” Turns out, it’s kind of my thing.
2. Adele – 21 – Yes, I know. She’s on everybody’s list. And maybe it’s time to give 21 a rest, but when we all come back to this album in a year or so, it’ll still be really damn good.
3. Phonte – Charity Starts At Home – One of these days, the stars will align and I’ll make it out to a Phonte show. I’ve an almost blind admiration for this profane and talented Renaissance man from North Carolina.
4. Joan As Police Woman – The Deep Field – Not a week goes by without me listening to “Magic” at least once. It’s kind of like therapy.
5. Frank Turner – England Keep My Bones – Thorin Hanson sent me a few tracks on Spotify and I was done and well. It’s punk, it’s acoustic, it’s folk, it’s something that Turner just owns and sells so well. Also, such a great concert.
6. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake – Looking for the soundtrack for the story of 2011? This is it.
7. St Vincent – Strange Mercy – Strange and good music from a strange girl. If you told me that St Vincent was an alien from some small planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, I’d just nod and say, “That makes sense.”
8. James Blake – James Blake – A spare, lonely little album of electronic longing.
9. The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar – Such a brash, noisy, wonderful thing. If you pick just one album from this list to pursue, let it be this one.
10. The Roots – Undun – The best band working today. Still.
11. Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 – I love this album like bacon loves eggs.
12. Gillian Welch – The Harrow & The Harvest – If you need to take a little roadtrip along the two-lane highways of North Georgia, let this be your accompaniment.
13. Lady Gaga – Born This Way – Shut up. You listened to it just as much.
14. Idle Warship – Habits of the Heart – Ten years ago, Res released an album called How I Do. I adored it, every second of it, right down to the hidden jam at the end. I’ve been waiting on a follow-up since. This collaboration with Talib Kweli is the closest yet and while not perfect, it’ll do just fine.

Did I say top ten? I meant top fourteen. If you’d like to take a tour, fire up Spotify and steal this playlist.* (Note: The playlist is missing Adele’s 21, because Columbia is being a touch stingy.)

As usual, if I missed your favorite, let me know. That’s what comments are for.

In 2003, I beta-tested Star Wars Galaxies, the first MMO set in the Lucas-built world of my youth’s fascination. Set in a period between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, players could make their way in various worlds as pistoleers, as crafters, even as entertainers.

While the game proved disappointing in retail, the beta was one of the most rewarding I’ve ever known. Included in this Flickr set are shots from the final hours of the beta. There were fireworks. Well deserved fireworks.

With the release of the newest Star Wars MMO underway, it seems fitting to look back and remember.

However, you can use Spotify on your Kindle Fire. See?

Now, how did I make this miracle happen? Simple.

1. From the main screen, tap the tiny gear in the upper right to access Settings > More > Device > Allow installation of Applications (from unknown devices)> select “ON”
2. From the main screen, select Web and browse to http://m.spotify.com/us/ — from there, select the link to “manually download the application.”
3. It will appear that nothing has happened, but not so fast. Look in the upper left and select the circled number next to the name of your Kindle Fire to access “Notifications” and monitor your download. Once the download is complete, double-tap the APK file, select “Install” and press “Open” when the installation is complete.

Voila. Now you’re Spotify-ing on your Kindle Fire.

UPDATE: Aye, but here’s the rub. Once you start playing, can you stop? Take a look at the photo above. Do you see what I just noticed? The progress bar for the track is at the bottom of the screen, but controls for Play/Pause, Forward and Reverse appear to be hidden behind the seemingly non-dismissable soft-keys (Home, Back, Menu, Search) built in to the Kindle Fire UI. As with the iPhone incarnation of the Spotify app, you can swipe left or right through your queue, but pausing …

Can’t be done? (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)

UPDATED UPDATE: You can pause your current Spotify app by unplugging your headphones. Now, if you want to start it up again, you’ll need to swipe to the next track and back.

I suppose the lesson to this is: While Spotify will run and run well on your Kindle Fire, the Spotify app needs to be updated to accommodate the peculiar tenacity of the Kindle Fire’s ever-present softkeys.

Well played, Amazon. Between this move and the new Flow app, you just keep making shopping (and spending) easier and easier …

(Damn you.)

Often, I’m just too busy with another of these, another production of an out-of-the-ordinary Shakespearean play. So in light of a stack of five to ten paragraphs, here’s the video record of one such night of performance. I’m not in it, but I directed it, and I couldn’t be prouder.

The play? William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1. The setting we chose for this one is the mid 1950s, a choice that should become evident in the second scene.

The show done, we gave the prop a fiery funeral on an aluminum pan pyre. What was it? A gummy ear. Used as a prop. It was a foul thing that deserved nothing less than this fate.

So with no further ado, this is how the farewell went: