What's in my ear holes this week? #HitParade and #Keepit!

If you haven't taken advantage of the amazing world of podcasts, you need to start listening now! There literally hundreds of amazing podcasts on any subject you can possibly imagine.  Have a hobby?  Have an interest?  Want to catch up on World History or listen to a fictional tale?  All is yours in the land of podcast.  But wait there's more! Almost all are offered free to you the listener, so put a podcast your ear holes today!

One of my new favorite podcasts is Hit Parade from Slate. You don't have to be well versed in popular  music to find it fascinating.  One recent episode discusses how the Billboard Top 100 changed a few years ago to include You Tube music video plays vs. just purchases of music. Most interesting was learning that if someone makes a parody or fan video and uses the original song audio; that fan video or parody counts toward the original song's number of plays.  So when a song goes viral with a dance, like the Harlem Shake, and thousands of people film themselves dancing--the original song gets the credit.

You can listen to the latest episode HERE (or at iTunes, Stitcher, etc.)

Do you like pop culture?  Ira, Kara and Louis give a weekly review of the biggest happenings in pop culture and call people on the absurdity of it all. They shade those who deserve it and point out whats good.  And they laugh, a lot.  It's infectious.  I look forward to Keep It hitting my feed each week.

You can find the latest Keep It HERE (or at iTunes, Stitcher, etc.)

FourSquare you disappoint me.

FourSquare, in case you aren't aware, is an app for your smartphone and with it you 'check-in' to places and it rewards you with points.  The points are completely meaningless, and yet still I love to see my points!  There is some benefit to using FourSquare  as some businesses have specials that are only revealed when you 'check-in' via FourSquare.

On the app, people can add a location if they want to check in somewhere that doesn't already have a location.  For example I made one called:  "The Hamel Lakehouse." 

It should come as no surprise that people try to be funny and/or creative in naming places.  My Big Comfy Bed is a place you could check into by our old house in Hickory Hills.  Out here in Western North Carolina, you don't even need to come up with funny name because long ago, the forefathers of this area went to great lengths to give  the surrounding mountains, valleys and roads funny and/or creative names. The best are funny at the 6th grade immature boy level.
You may recall a while back, I posted a picture of Peckerwood Road, which is located right by a golf course. This is a popular street sign to steal, natch.  However there is an even better area around here, and I wanted to 'check in' from it on FourSquare. Much to my dismay,  it isn't listed as a spot to check into via the app.

  FourSquare, you've let me down how could you *not* have Smackass Gap listed!

Yes that's right Smackass Gap, see it's right there.  I am sure there is some story that goes along with the name probably something about a stubborn mule, but who cares!