My talk with the Swampers.

It's that time of the month again....time to show you the new video clips from The Year of Alabama Arts.

This time, I have to say, it's probably the coolest set yet. These are from my interview with two members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. They're the ones Lynyrd Skynyrd referred to in "Sweet Home Alabama" when they said, "Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers."

The Swampers are studio musicians who recorded and played on everything from Aretha Franklin's "Respect" to Skynyrd's "Free Bird." Despite all their success, they are still wonderful, humble guys. Enjoy!

'I was just glad Alabama didn't have polar bears and smoke monsters. Whew!'

I feel like I have several ideas for deep, thought-provoking and tremendously entertaining blog posts. But sadly, I lack the time to piece them into anything of consequence.

So instead, you get an exclusive look at the TV commercial I spent the past few months working on for The Year of Alabama Arts. It even features Michael Emerson, who plays Ben/Henry on "Lost." Huzzah!



Yes, I realize there's no obvious "writing" for this spot, but I did do the interviews. Except the one with Emerson. We had to hire some folks out in Hawaii to do that. Oh well.

New Alabama Arts videos!

Our December featured artist in The Year of Alabama Arts is Maestro Justin Brown of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. If you haven't already (and most of you haven't), sign up for a free YouTube account and subcribe to our channel at youtube.com/AlabamaArts. It won't bug you with e-mails or anything...it'll just show you new videos we've posted when you log in.

Anyway, on to the new clips:

When there was no crawdaddy to be found, we ate coal.

There's a fun/scary tool in today's installment of the Slate.com Carbon Diet, an ongoing series of tips for reducing your CO2 emissions. Today's entry is about electricity, and it links to an EPA site that tells you where your local energy comes from.

Up here in Hoover, we're lovin' us some coal:


The good news is, up until a few years ago, Alabama was 30% coal, 43% suet, 6% moonshine and 3% bacon drippings. So there is some progress.

BTW, there are some great tips in this Slate series, so I really encourage you all to check it out each week.

Here are the two admonishments I was most guilty of today:

• How many times have you left your cell-phone charger plugged in, even when your phone is not? Wall chargers for things like iPods and cameras suck energy out of the socket, even when not attached to their mates. With the national average at five chargers per person, unplugging adds up.

• Rechargeable battery docks for gadgets like drills and handheld vacuum cleaners can draw from the socket five to 20 times more energy than is stored in the battery. Unplug them once tools are juiced.

Oops.