ASHINGTONPosted on 04/10/2005 9:09:14 PM PDT by RWR8189
ASHINGTON
Between his return on Friday from Pope John Paul II's funeral in Rome and his meeting today with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, President Bush spent an hour and a half on Saturday on an 18-mile mountain bike ride at his Texas ranch. With him, as usual, was his indispensable new exercise toy: an iPod music player loaded with country and popular rock tunes aimed at getting the presidential heart rate up to a chest-pounding 170 beats per minute.
Which brings up the inevitable question. What, exactly, is on the First iPod? In an era of celebrity playlists - Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, recently posted his on the iTunes online music store - what does the presidential selection of downloaded songs tell us about Mr. Bush?
First, Mr. Bush's iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by Van Morrison, whose "Brown Eyed Girl" is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably "Centerfield," which was played at Texas Rangers games when Mr. Bush was an owner and is still played at ballparks all over America. ("Oh, put me in coach, I'm ready to play today.")
The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist during the 2004 campaign. Among them are "Circle Back" by John Hiatt, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" by Joni Mitchell and "My Sharona," the 1979 song by the Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor at Rolling Stone in charge of music coverage, cheerfully branded "suggestive if not outright filthy" in an interview last week.
Mr. Bush has had his Apple iPod since July, when he received it from his twin daughters as a birthday gift. He has some 250 songs on it, a paltry number compared to the 10,000 selections it can hold. Mr. Bush, as leader of the free world, does not take the time to download the music himself; that task falls to his personal aide, Blake Gottesman, who buys individual songs and albums, including Mr. Jones's and Mr. Jackson's greatest hits, from the iTunes music store.
Mr. Bush uses his iPod chiefly during bike workouts to help him pump up his heartbeat, which he monitors with a wrist strap. The strap also keeps track of calories expended for the intensely weight-focused president, who has recently lost eight pounds after eating a lot of doughnuts during the 2004 campaign. Mr. Bush burned 1,300 calories on his bike ride on Saturday, Mr. McKinnon reported.
As for an analysis of Mr. Bush's playlist, Mr. Levy of Rolling Stone started out with this: "One thing that's interesting is that the president likes artists who don't like him."
Mr. Levy was referring to Mr. Fogerty, who was part of the anti-Bush "Vote for Change" concert tour across the United States last fall. Mr. McKinnon, who once wrote songs for Kris Kristofferson's music publishing company, responded in an e-mail message that "if any president limited his music selection to pro-establishment musicians, it would be a pretty slim collection."
Nonetheless, Mr. McKinnon said that Mr. Bush had not gone so far as to include on his playlist "Fortunate Son," the angry anti-Vietnam war song about who has to go to war that Mr. Fogerty sang when he was with Creedence Clearwater Revival. ("I ain't no senator's son ... Some folks are born silver spoon in hand.") As the son of a two-term congressman and a United States Senate candidate, Mr. Bush won a coveted spot with the Texas Air National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, Mr. Levy sized up the rest of the playlist of the 58-year-old president. "What we're talking about is a lot of great artists from the 60's and 70's and more modern artists who sound like great artists from the 60's and 70's," he said. "This is basically boomer rock 'n' roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers. It's safe, it's reliable, it's loving. What I mean to say is, it's feel-good music. The Sex Pistols it's not."
Mr. Jones, Mr. Levy said, was nonetheless an interesting choice. "George Jones is the greatest living singer in country music and a recovering alcoholic who often sings about heartbreak and drinking," he said. "It tells you that the president knows a thing or two about country music and is serious about his love of country music."
The songs by Mr. Jackson indicate that the president "has a little bit of a taste for hard core and honky-tonk," Mr. Levy said, adding that both Mr. Jackson and Mr. Jones "are not about cute and pop, and they're not getting by on their looks." And while Mr. Chesney "is about cute and pop and gets by on his looks," Mr. Levy said, "he's also all about serious country music."
Mr. McKinnon, who has downloaded "Castanets" by Alejandro Escovedo and "Alive 'N' Kickin' " by Kenny Loggins into Mr. Bush's iPod, said that sometimes a presidential playlist is just a playlist, nothing more.
"No one should psychoanalyze the song selection," Mr. McKinnon said. "It's music to get over the next hill."
iPod ping!
The product of a slow news week ahead of us. We need another celebrity to murder/molest someone.
Hmmm. The formula for max heart rate is 220 - age, so President Bush comes in at 220 - 58 = 162 bpm. That's what he should be maxing at. All he really needs for conditioning and weight loss is 85% of max, so a real workout max for him should probably by (162 x 0.85 =) 137.7 .
I'm not a cardiologist, but I spend a lot of time with them now :-( . So this isn't a professional opinion, but my hunch is the President might be wise to cool it a little.... After all, we want him around for a very long time!
To the MSM, it's "established fact" and has been since, oh, 1999 or so. I'll bet the author didn't even give it a second thought when she wrote it; it just came out of her brain as naturally as writing her own name.
bttt
Rolling Stone Music Editor Joe Levy.
“The things that shaped my life, like comic books, rock and roll, and television were important, even if they weren’t considered art,” Levy said. “These were things that were easy, and they matter.”
Levy said rock and roll, which he estimates to be 45 to 50 years old, has a broad classification, which is expanding constantly — and he is central to defining as a Rolling Stone editor.
“There isn’t a soul in the world who isn’t passionate about Britney,” he said. “They either love her or they hate her.”
Neil Strauss from the New York Times called Levy, “an unabashed, self-righteous propagandist for pop music’s ephemeral pleasures. In other words, indie-rock was over, he had a reservation at Union Square Café with Elastica, and hey, we’re a winner, baby!”
Rolling Stone has a circulation of 1.5 million. It is important in shaping the identity of teenagers, Levy said.
Oh, the iPod battery indicators are notoriously unreliable. Sometimes the indicator will go down by a third after having it on for 30 minutes; sometimes it'll keep playing for two hours after the indicator goes to zero.
Using it in cold weather will make it even worse. After leaving mine in my coat pocket a couple of months ago, the indicator was blank when I turned it on, and didn't show any power at all until after it had been playing for an hour.
It's best to run it down all the way about once a month, though, to increase the overall longevity of the battery. When it gets to true zero, the music will stop and the screen will display "The iPod is out of power. Connect to a power source immediately." (or something along those lines), then about 10 seconds later, pfft.
Then why are there so many ads in it for Viagra and hair restoration, Mr. Levy?
Alas, the problem with letting it completely drain is that it will lose the bookmarks for any Audible books I am currently listening to. Apparently, the newer iPods just released now have 18 hours of battery life.
My rosy red @$$ it is.
He should have said it is important for validating the hedonistic, reflexively leftist world view of aging hippies, and giving them a few tidbits of information about the latest bands so their kids won't think they are hopelessly out of touch.
Guess what, Pops, your kids would think you were out of touch even if you took them to a Ludacris or Jet concert, and they aren't reading Rolling Stone. They get their musical education from web sites and instant messaging. Go blow another doobie, Gramps.
-ccm
I have been curious how the MINI works with audio books. I haven't been able to figure out what their capacity is...can you help?
Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times referred to bloggers as “the chattering class.” Washington Post media shtarke Howard Kurtz called a bunch of “fringe websites.” Bumiller says Iraq is "Rummy's war."
Elizabeth Bumiller wondered what would happen to the G.O.P. if voters send President Bush back to Crawford Tuesday...
Republicans don’t want to talk about it, but the question is already an awful thought not so far back in their minds: What happens to the G.O.P. if President Bush loses on Nov. 2?…
ROFLOL!
Geoffrey Fieger's brother! LOL.
Mini has 4 GB. I just finished a 12 hour book that was recorded in its highest quality format - and that required 160 megs of space. In other words, you should never have any space problems with audio books. Unlike with music, there is little reason to maintain a large library of books. When I've finished a book, I delete it from the portable player.
Hilarious article about the moron who wrote this article ...
Barking up the wrong tree
http://tinyurl.com/56dhm
How do I get a job at the Times? I can do that.
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