Seattle Vacation 07

So I’m sitting here, some odd hundred feet up in the air, on a plane bound for Seattle, Washington for a much-needed vacation with my wife and something strange is happening.

For the past few hours I’ve been listening to United’s music channels (which, excitingly, is now XM) and watching the offered movies, Marie Antoinette & Man of the Year. All the while, Jennie is watching movies on her mother’s borrowed portable Sony DVD player (and falling asleep to them) when I noticed that the music I am listening to seems to be synching up with what she is watching, in particular Garfield the movie.

This isn’t something like The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the moon. No, I mean everything is spot on perfectly synched. For instance, as Garfield is waking up the music changes slightly to offer a more … discovery mood (if that makes sense). Soon after, he jumps on Jon (his master); this time the music changes dramatically to introduce a mood of surprise. That was the first time I noticed the oddness.

The second was at the end of Man of the Year in which the credits are playing. This time I had actually watched the movie (which is worth a rent) and switched to an XM channel slightly before the credits started rolling. The particular channel was playing as song by The Police called King of Pain. I thought it was interesting that this song could’ve easily been used as a movies end credit track and found myself wondering if I had switched to one of the plane’s movie dubbed channels instead of an XM one, as they are in order 1-18. Instead of doing the easy thing and switching back from channel 3 to 1 in order to find out if it was, indeed, one of the songs at the end of the movie, I decided to keep listening and see if it ended with the end of the credits or faded into another song as is usual for a film these days. To my astonishment, when the last credit rolled off the screen the music came to an abrupt but musically planned end (it didn’t just cut off in the middle).

Now, to any of you who have actually heard this song you know that there is a certain point in the song where this, in fact, does occur … just not at the end of it. So as I’m waiting in the few seconds of silence afforded to me by the song I am thinking, “I guess I am on a dubbed channel,” when suddenly, I get catapulted back into the song. What a wild vacation this is already turning out to be.

Oh and by the way, to any of you thinking of getting XM. It’s completely worth it even just for the classic rock channel. The DJ’s they have play the best music you never hear on traditional FM radio. Most songs I’ve never heard before and are excellent, plus the songs I do know they play at full length. It’s great for people who get bored with their music collection even if it’s 15GB.

My only compliant is that at a scant 128kbps some music reveals the low quality of the compression … anything with loud high strings or cymbals, or a synth playing in the very upper ranges of hearing, for instance. Still, for music you would’ve never known about, it’s justified, especially when most of the time you can’t tell.

Now, what IS the name of the song I’m listening to?