MATTHEW LARSEN

I’ve been very lax about posting to this blog lately, mainly because I’ve been posting in the spiffy (relatively new) songspeak site. Songspeak is something that Jamie and I have been working on since 1997 or so. It’s pretty cool to see it develop into a blog format. It’s been fun for both of us.

We’ve been kind of posting some old stuff and posting some new stuff too… everything from misheard lyrics to songs in tv commercials, 70s music, 80s music, 90s music, 00s music, and of course, videos.

Re-use of old railroad tracks is pretty cool.

It’s always great when someone takes a classic idea and puts a new twist on it. Not in a lame way, but in a creative and intelligent way. Ursa Minor Vehicles sells a kit to convert a Honda Element into a VW Westfalia-type weekender camper for about $4,300.00. The Element is a pretty versatile, ugly-but-charming kind of thing, but this takes it to a whole other level.

I’ve always wanted a VW camper van ever since I was a little kid and my neighbors had an orange one with a white top and brown plaid seat cushions. Between noticing that friends who owned VWs were spending a lot of time and money repairing their VWs and getting older and camping less– I kind of became a Honda fanatic. I’ve had 2 Accords with over 200,000 miles on them and Kristen’s Fit is a pretty good camping car if we do decide to go for a weekend here and there. But the idea that I can revisit my little kid dream and mix it up with my love of Honda’s practicality is pretty intriguing.

Some would argue that they couldn’t imagine an uglier car than an Element. Those people might say that an Element with the camper top tops an Element without.

I’ve been reading about the Tesla Roadster, an all-electric sports car that’s beginning production on March 17th, 2008.

It gets the equivalent of 135 miles-per gallon and can go up to 220 miles on a single charge. t’s a really amazing blend of technology and design. I’m sure it will be astronomically priced, but that its appeal grows more and more each day is a good sign of the times. Having a ‘dream car’ that’s an electric vehicle is a pretty cool thing I think. When I was younger I just dreamed of Ferraris.

I was looking at my site one day and began to realize how seemingly quickly things become out of date and never get updated. It happens to everyone, and I suppose I could tell you that it won’t happen here since I have a fancy new blog setup so it makes it easier for me to post things. I suppose I could pledge to keep this updated as frequently as possible, not acknowledging the inevitable slackage that will creep up from time to time.

Instead I’ll just post about how I’m kind of excited about the whole blog setup. Ever since I started working at MassLive, and since meeting my lovely fiancee Kristen, I’ve been keen to the idea of starting one, but just didn’t have the time to explore it. Finally, I did.

So here we are. As I get into the swing of things, I hope some of these posts aren’t total snoozers.