Camping at Hardridge Creek near Abbeville, Alabama… Pictures — Part 1

If you’re going to camp at Hardridge Creek Campground situated right on the Georgia/Alabama line, there are quite a few camping sites with views of Walter F. George Lake. If you really want to be close to the water, though, you need to reserve a spot on the little peninsula where I camped for 2 nights.

My experience was great, in spite of a bad storm that came through on the first night and discovering that my camper had be discovered by ants. I actually packed up and left a few hours earlier than planned because I just didn’t want to spend the rest of the time dealing with the little boogers.

Besides that, and the storm that almost broke my awning (because I was the idiot that left my awning out knowing there was a windy storm coming!), I enjoyed kayaking, a bit of hiking, walking my dogs, and riding my bike around the campground. Here are a few pics, and check back tomorrow for the rest of the photos! Thanks for crawling in like an ant to my blog site 🙂

-Out of the Wilderness

When the Lead Singer Leaves a Band… A Pet Peeve

This has been a pet peeve of mine for many years. Why is it that when a lead singer leaves a band and a new one steps in to become the voice of the group, the band keeps the same name? I guess it might be a little weird that this bothers me so much. But think about iconic bands with instantly recognizable lead singers like Aerosmith, The Beach Boys, Wham!, U2, Guns N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones. The list goes on but now imagine if those familiar voices were removed and replaced with a new singer, a voice that sounds nothing like the original. Let’s just go right to the point– Queen. Journey. Audio Adrenaline (for all you 90s Christian music fans). Except for Journey, the singers fronting the bands aren’t replicating the legendary sounds we associate with the groups.

This clear difference is where my pet peeve sets its foundation. If you don’t have Bono singing “So Cruel,” Steven Tyler belting out “Livin’ On The Edge,” or Freddy Mercury performing “Save Me,” then you aren’t listening to U2 and you aren’t listening to Aerosmith and you aren’t listening to Queen.

The sound of the band IS the band. Musicians can be replaced without anyone knowing, unless of course the new guitar player or drummer isn’t as good as who they’re replacing, but when it comes to singing, NO….. just… NO! Many bands are known by their lead singers voice. When that voice changes, the band name should change, too.

I’m prepared to fight over this! 🙂 Can you give me a good reason why a band who’s lead singer changes SHOULD keep the same band name?

-Out of the Wilderness

Invesco QQQ commercials – too many or not enough?

Why is it that from all of last weekend’s amazing March Madness basketball games (I didn’t watch any of the women’s games, sorry Buick), the one memory that keeps bubbling up to the top of my brain is Invesco QQQ commercials?

You might say it’s from the huge advertising push from the company, and I guess that’s true. They clearly invested a lot of time, effort, and money into promotion during the NCAA tournament. “Brand awareness” is one thing, but by golly, they went overboard like the husband on that Lifetime movie special where a young couple goes on a cruise and you think everything’s fine until the wife can’t find the husband and then someone finds blood on a starboard side handrail and then it’s discovered there was an altercation and the husband didn’t jump off the boat he was pushed!!! and the wife seems really grieved and all and then later there’s surprise evidence that she’s the one who cut him with a piece of glass right on his hand and then she pushed him and he slipped and flipped right over the railing but no one saw it so she quickly fled the scene except a young boy DID see it happened because he was innocently following a butterfly and the butterfly lead him all the way to the scene where the woman and the man were arguing and he definitely saw what happened but was too scared to say anything until he learned to trust the detective who just so happened to be on the cruise ship celebrating her first wedding anniversary with her husband who is a manager of a construction company.

The Invesco QQQ commercials are just like that husband who went flippity floppity overboard. Not only do I not know what they do because I started tuning out their commercials, but now just hearing the name of the company triggers negative feelings and you know as well as I do, in the world of advertising, that ain’t good!

Every commercial break had some random spokesperson analyzing something while chiming in that they’re from Invesco QQQ. I would bet it will be that way again when the games resume this weekend. It was tolerable at first, but I knew something was very wrong when this happened: I was outside when a bird in the trees was chirping. Birds have so, so, so many different types of calls, you know. But this one bird kept chirping and I swear to you it sounded like “Q… Q… Q…” …..then again “Q… Q… Q…” Invesco QQQ has infiltrated the TV, the forest, and lives in my head 24/7!

This is a problem because now there’s not enough room for all my personalities.

-Out of the Wilderness

Airbnb Hosts Commercial – The Music from Rita Lee

AirBnB has a series of ads featuring photos of actual vacationers using an AirBnB. Here’s one on TV currently…

The Music. Backing this ad is a song from Rita Lee called “In My Life.” Here’s the full track…

This is actually a Beatles song from 1965. Here’s their version…

Which version do you like better? Comment below, and thanks for dropping in…

-Out of the Wilderness

iPhone 13 Pro Commercial – The Music and the “Wild” Color?

Apple probably never needs to air another commercial for the rest of time. Their products are so integrated into our lives that they’re practically synonymous with the products they advertise– kind of like when you sneeze you grab a Kleenex, which actually is the brand, not the tissue. But I digress. Apple is back with another ad promoting the iPhone 13 Pro. Take a look, then scroll down for more info!

The Music. Playing as the soundtrack for the commercial is “The Jungle” by Oliver Malcolm. Here’s the full track…

The color. Apple describes the phone like this: “iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro have a wild new look.” In less dramatic terms, the phone is green. I’d hardly call that wild except in the literal sense, jungles and all forests is green. That’s pretty wild. Kind of like buying a phone for $1,000. Wild.

I”ll take “affordable black phone for $400, Alex.”

Thanks for dropping in…

-Out of the Wilderness

-Out of the WILDerness