A Prairie Home Companion

This maddening machine is able to set us more free. We can access music we haven’t heard since high school, and it can teach us how to play it or where to find it. It can open a monster library — because it’s a monster itself — and allow access to something obscure like, say, the guitar riff in Steve Earle’s 1986 song ‘Guitar Town.’

It can show how to play the riff and where you can buy a tremolo pedal to get that throbbing sound on your electric guitar, and it can tell you that the much-admired Mr. Earle has been married seven times, putting him into the company of Larry King, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Artie Shaw, Liz Taylor, Lana Turner and Mickey Rooney. A country boy hits the big time. The machine can answer nearly any seedy little question that might pop into one’s freedom-loving mind.

It can get you literature, an education, weather forecasts, a bazillion opinions, maps, an aerial view of your house, a restaurant, takeout food, a vast sea of shopping possibilities. It’ll sell your stuff, move your stuff, fix your stuff, give away your stuff.

- Our truck driver, Mr. Russ Ringsak, ponders the freedom offered by the internet in his latest column. Plus, more musings on Freedom, emergency engine repair and earning your very own dressing room at the Hollywood Bowl.