completing the madness

As you all know, yesterday I got jazzed enough about the iPhone to wait in line for 5 hours at the 5th Ave. Apple Store. Well it was worth it. I’m blogging on it right now kids. There was thundrous applause from Apple staff as you walked in the giant glass cube to buy the gadget, and more applause and papparazzi on the way out. I made a few friends on the way out. This thing is amazing kids.

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Listening to:

Paul McCartney

Chaos and Creation in the Backyard

iPhone Madness on my Mind

Yet another sweet iPhone blog from me. but first, Philly, this is your mayor:

That’s right, America’s favorite wire-tapped mayor of the most dangerous city to live in (how many murders so far?) is chillin’ in an iLine. Looks like not all Lame Ducks have to be all that lame. So I’m off, folks, to join the line. I’ll give 5 hours of my life to the off chance I’ll get a sweet phone. Bringing a book and a play, and my laptop and plenty of CocaCola. Visit me at the 5th Ave. Nuthouse to see Jon before iPhone, which may be totally different from Jon after iPhone. Rock on kids, and here here to capitalism.

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Reading:

Andrew Neilson

Stitching

A Comment on iPhone Hype

Somewhere in 2001 I first taped into the Apple rumor-mill. I was raised on PCs (from an earlier age than many actually) as far back as that wondrous time when Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect were considered godsends, and the most exciting gadget we got was a 3 color band for our dot matrix printer, making sweet blue yellow and red Print Shop flyers. There were macs at school, but I never really cared too much, until High School when I first messed around with Final Cut Pro. As a diligent geek, I sought out as much info as I could to make an educated decision about my first Apple purchase, an iMac G4.

Ever since, I’ve become a huge Apple fanboy, with my ear close to the tracks. Those of you who know me know that my hero is Steve Jobs, and my favorite TV movie is Pirates of Silicon Valley. Now, lately, the internet (read the world) is abuzz with talk of Apple’s latest creation, the iPhone. There is a lot of heated debate over it. And there is one very common argument that is really pissing me off that I’d like to share.

iPhone and Apple critics wont shutup about the fact that Apple is just building up a product that isn’t so revolutionary. They’ll say that you can’t shoot video with it, or no Flash, or touch screens have been around awhile, or any number of things that the iPhone can’t do. Then, to the fanboys like myself, they’ll say we’re just caught up in a marketing scheme, that we’re brainwashed by the Jobs Machine, in fact that whole world has been brainwashed. Then it turns into an argument of how there are better mp3 players than iPods and Macs just have pretty casings with crap inside, blah blah blah.

So here’s my answer to all of you, if you ever happen upon my humble blog: So what? Who cares that Apple has a die-hard following? We’re not brainwashed. They have great marketing! We stand here on the eve of a revolution, the release of the iPhone. Now, whether or not it is a revolutionary device is at the center of these debates, but no one realizes that the device has nothing to do with this revolution. Have you ever seen this hype over a gadget? The answer is no. This is bigger than Halo 2, bigger than PS3, bigger than, hmmm, Windows 98? The “damage” is done. The revolution happened. The iPhone is already a success because it made people so excited about a product that none has ever gotten this jazzed about. The precedent is set, and now gadget releases, we will see more and more, will be like movie releases. Hit ‘em hard and fast, then make a sequel!

Anyway. Tomorrow I’ll get in line with the rest of the nutcases (read enlightened) and hand over my money to the revolution.

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Watching

ER

Third Season

“Why Jaywalk?”

Her eyes said it all to me. Those round and wet eyes, so perfectly spaced apart from each other. They fit into her wonderfully shaped head just so: they didn’t stick out or anything, and they weren’t hidden behind cavernous sockets, like when a fat man laughs hard enough to go blind. Those eyes, they spoke volumes.

“Why Jaywalk?” they said to me. “Why not just wait for the green light? Why not obey the laws of traffic like all good citizens should?” The tall drink of something looked at me with those eyes, and this, if she had in fact audibly acknowledged my transgression, is what she would have said. Her blonde locks pulled back behind her ears, her short dress, which upon first glance looked like it was just a shirt, fluttering against her legs in the summer wind, she was a specimen of WASPish wonderment.

“Because I can” thought I defensively. “Because it doesn’t hurt anyone! Who do you thing you are, eyes of the WASP, to tell me when and how to walk? I cross when I want. I am a rebel! I obey no laws of the land, except for the ones I find benefit myself. Walking across the is not one of those decisions better left to a blinking light. I’ll take the hearts and minds of men and women over those machines, those robots, any day. Because when I jaywalk I do it in tandem with drivers. I can sense how they feel, when they’ll speed and when they’ll stop. My intuition, my social sensibilities afford me the luxury or crossing when and how I please. So back off, with your gorgeous figure and perfect teeth, oh WASPy the crossing guard” I thought.

But the social sciences are subjective. I couldn’t read the WASP. I couldn’t imagine she’d follow my lead in spite of my bravado, as a means of saying she could be as much a rebel as I. How dare I jaywalk while she is left in the dust waiting, hoping the machine will tell her the truth, the time, the moment to cross? Instead she followed me and got hit by a truck.

Not I, though, skilled lawbreaker and professional jaywalker. Not I.

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Reading:

Norman Mailer

Cannibals and Christians

Tales of Tumvik: 1-The Rebbe’s Return

On the evening of June ninth, on the Christian calendar, Itzik the Banker fell asleep in his modestly comfortable bed in his humbly adorned home located in the center of the small shtetl of Tumvik. Geographically, there is little need to go into the placement of Tumvik, for its importance lay only in the minds of Tumvikers, and who needs a map when all who must know where things are already know. Itzik’s sheets were recently cleaned by his wife, Ruchel, and his pillow, a gift from his brother, Sacha the Farmer, on the occasion of his being named the town Banker only a few months prior, felt like a bit of the word to come wrapped in linen under his weary head.

For twenty years Itzik had ben known to all Tumvikers as Itzik the Candler. Every night he would sit at his table outside the chicken coop with specially made candles and inpect every single egg to make sure it was edible, and that they would not be wasting the life of any unsuspecting chicks. Should a newborn bird be found, it would be moved back into the coop and hatched, then aged, cut, plucked, and distributed evenly among all members of the shtetl as was tradition. But more likely than not the result was a heap of scrambled eggs, or perhaps a nice glaze for a Shabbos challah, that braided baked good that was eaten on the holiest day of the week.

This was an important job in Tumvik, second only to Villmer the chicken farmer and lover of all fowl, who was in turn second only to Rebbe Herzman himself. Some quipped that the town holy man, rather than being second only to Hashem locally, answered solely to Rebbesson Herzman, a distinguished scholar in her own right whom any man should fear should she choose to bear down on him.

Only one hundred fifty men, women, and children lived in the town of Tumvik, and for a century they provided all they needed for themselves from the earth, together. They built their own houses, raised their own livestock, grew their own crops, and so forth. The earth was good to them and gave them all they required and nothing they despised. From the plumpest rutabagas to the healthiest chickens, from the finest wool off of prize-worth lambs to the odiferous beeswax in nearby hives that helped make long-wicked candles to last longer than most imagined possible outside the introvertive shtetl. Never was any member of the town given a thing to fear, for Hashem had provided them with perfection. Most had even given up prospect of ever returning to the biblical homeland, the land of milk and honey where the Temple has been destroyed twice. Why hope to return to a graveyard when life here was more perfect than promised there? Even Reb Herzman felt this strongly about Tumvik’s level of perfection over all other towns. That is until he returned from a trip to Ponzik.

Reb Herzman was the first man to leave Tumvik in thirty years and the only one to return. The last was Zalman the Wise, though some you ask may call him Zalman the fool. Regardless of nomenclature, it is agreed that he is the engineer behind the methods that allow the Tumviker’s to enjoy such a quality of life on their own. Their farming and building skills, their social and religious actions, the way in which the Tumviker thinks so differently from any Ponziker or anyone else, is all accredited to the man they called Zalman.

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Listening to:

Aimee Mann

I’m With Stupid