Unstirred

One more leftover from my Vegas trip:

So while I was in Vegas, I happened to run into none other than James Bond.

Now, Vegas is no Monte Carlo, but, you know, Bond wasn’t totally out of place there. You could kind of see him hanging out somewhere like the Venetian. In fact, that is where we saw him standing around.

Now, sure, he could get a decent meal and a drink at any of the casinos, but where does James Bond go when he needs cheap eggs or a greasy burger?

Why, the Casino Royale Denny’s, of course.

Even before I saw the Bond wax figure, I had already gotten a picture of the Denny’s. Given the spirit of the movie, it struck me as an amusing dichotomy.

A Little Bit Country

And so, my journey to the dark side is complete.

As I’ve mentioned before, two years ago, I didn’t care much for country music. In fact, disdain was probably a not inaccurate word for my feelings. I was starting to thaw a little by that point; I liked the Lori McKenna and the Johnny Cash and … well, maybe a couple of individual songs here and there. But, in general, the bias stood.

I’ve written on here before about the gradual evolution of my tastes — friends giving me stuff and insisting that I listen to it, with various results; fairly extensive exposure for a while a year ago; more directed advising over the course of last year; and a series of concerts, including Sugarland, Trace Adkins, Sara Evans and Sammy Kershaw, among others. (As I’m typing this, I’m adding a few previously missing Rascal Flatts songs to my iTunes.)

But today, I crossed yet another line. It’s been a while since a CD came out that I just had to have the day of release, but I’ve actually been waiting for a while now to buy the new Lady Antebellum CD, Need You Now. iTunes has been releasing the singles for a while now, and I’ve been enjoying them rather much. While, for the record, I’m not expressing or endorsing need for any person, I do loves me the title track rather much. Play it again, Sam.

This weekend, I compared the offers on iTunes, the band’s Web site, Best Buy and Target to figure out where I wanted to get it. I generally prefer physical CDs, unless there’s a compelling reason to buy something digitally.

It turns out, in this case, there was. I got a tweet this morning that you could buy Need You Now on Amazon for $4, which isn’t bad at all. So by 6:30 this morning, I’d already bought it, put it on my iPod and burned a CD for the car.

So far, good stuff.