A few less hours of work today, so a little time to blog for a change.

Here’s a great golf blog that I’ll be adding to my blogroll – Yahoo!’s Devil Ball Golf. Lots of fun and informative reading.

Coming to the book nook – how’s this for eclectic choices: Brian Chidester’s and Domenic Priore’s “Pop Surf Culture: Music, Design, Film, and Fashion from the Bohemian Surf Boom” (something Jana would probably dig), and Scott Hahn’s “Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith”. Both promise to be absolute page turners, for sure!

The Chidester/Priore combo are famous for their “Dumb Angel Gazette” series of books celebrating the Southern California pop culture of the surf / Brian Wilson / Beach Boys salad days of 1962-66, while Hahn is a well-known contemporary theologian and Catholic apologist famous for his landmark book “Rome Sweet Home”, which told the story of his conversion from Presbyterian pastor to Roman Catholic theologian.

All I have to do now is figure out which book I’ll take for those long flights to and from home in three weeks time!

Yesterday I received Elvis Presley’s “Peace in the Valley: The Complete Gospel Recordings” and first listen finds it a mixed bag. The three-CD set covers all of Elvis’ studio gospel recordings with quite a bit of concert and outtake filler thrown in. The studio recordings alternate between the marvelous and the breathtaking – you can feel all the country / gospel / blues traditions felt by Elvis shimmering as he sings about the Lord, and I just love the “Deep South” feel of the beautiful arrangements and gospel quartet singing. The concert recordings I’m not quite as impressed with – with Elvis’ recordings you always had to deal with some poorly produced concert tracks that never really did it for me. But overall it’s a great set – especially some of the outtakes where Elvis and J.D. Sumner and The Stamps quartet are just gathered around a piano singing the music you can tell he loved the most.

News item: A-Rod admits, regrets use of PEDs. The term “A-Fraud” was never more appropriate. Let’s face it – the only reason why he’s now “sorry” is that he’s sorry he got caught. I never liked him, but he never liked me, so there you go. What a jerk.

No one listens to The Great White Shank dept: I told you months back the stock market would not be impressed by a Barack Obama presidency and you’d be looking at a Dow of 7000. Well, the chickens are all coming home to roost. Lemme tell you something: everything you ever wanted to know about this guy you can find in his so-called “stimulus” package. This is nothing more than a grab-bag handout to every liberal and Democratic Party organ, courtesy of John Q. Taxpayer. If “The One” really wanted to stimulate the economy he could just give every taxpayer a individual bailout of $5K or $10K apiece. Compared to what his flacks on Capital Hill have voted for, he’d be saving money!