Tossing you off for Tuesday: over the weekend for the entertainment/talent interlude after our Second Christmas dinner, I dug out my old Country Twangin' Micro Jammer and attempted a live rendition of the song "Thinking of You." I managed to do it tolerably well. But it's a very difficult instrument to play. The "guitar" samples are played by pressing buttons on the neck, but there's a slight delay after pushing the button, so you have to anticipate the beat a bit, but not so much as to cut off the previous chord too early. Moreover, the contacts don't seem to be perfectly aligned so you don't always get the sample you want. The useful ones are the I - IV - V that you hear on the recording, but there are also some "lead" bits, a kind of chicken scratching one and a sort of "Hot Rod Lincoln" type riff that sometimes play instead of the Travis picking IV chord intended, which is pretty annoying. And it's hard to counter-act... you just need to go with it when it happens. It seems to matter how squarely you press the button (firmly but slightly emphasizing the left side of the IV chord button has the best results) but it's still unpredictable and you have to hope for the best and barrel through when you get the annoying "lead" instead of the chord. Which is what I did Sunday night. The audience, Mrs. Dr Frank, Grim Deeds, and G. K. Chesterton (hiding somewhere) didn't seem to mind all that much. The stakes are rather low in the Second Christmas entertainment/talent interlude, at least they are at my house. In fact, I've never managed to get through the whole song without mishap, which is one reason I stopped trying to play it live. (Mainly though, it was because I misplaced the Country Twangin' Micro Jammer, only happening on it recently when I was looking for something else. The version on the record is edited, bits of tape spliced together, studio gimmickry. (Now you know.) I intend to do a video rendition of it one day (possibly for the re-issue o...