Rollin' with the Homiez (and William Shatner)

There is a disturbing lack of respect in certain quarters for my taste in music. Actually, almost everyone in the world other than my wife thinks I have good taste in music. It is a source of some sadness for both of us. She has never gotten over the fact that I missed out on the superhip (in her mind, at least) "Grunge" years because I was in Italy when it was all going down. I won't even stoop to make fun of that genre because it is too easy. Seriously, making fun of the body odor, plaid shirts, and unintelligible lyrics is like shooting fish in a barrel. I am strong, so I will resist.

I think that the root of the problem (the problem being her disrespect, not my bad taste) is that it is quite difficult to make sense of my music. Walk by my office during the day and you may hear Handel, Christina Aguilera, the Beastie Boys, Snoop Dogg, CCR, Jose Carreras (but not that no-talent a** clown Pavarotti [may he rest in peace] and for that matter not Michael Bolton either]), the Chili Peppers, or William Shatner. I am an omnivore. So what radio station should I listen to when I am driving? They are all nice some of the time. But when you really get to jonesing for Boston or Erasure, how do you find them on the radio before the urge passes and you want to listen to Robert Earl Keen?

It turns out that this is what iPods were invented for. My car doesn't have a line-in jack on the dash for iPods, so I needed to do something clever. I found a solution on eBay in the form of a kit specifically made for my car. It is called the Dension Ice Link Plus. You have to pull off the dash around the radio (about a five minute job) and then plug it into the back of the radio. The kit tricks your radio into thinking your iPod is a cd changer. In fact, it translates commands from the radio buttons for your iPod, and these are passed along to the iPod so that it skips songs, etc. I mounted the iPod mount on the dash in a blank space. It looks pretty darned good if I do say so myself--a pretty sanitary installation. After a bit of difficulty with the initial setup, it works great. I couldn't be happier.