Phones and Rolls

So what’s new…. It’s been too rainy to do any real grilling, but I’m planning something big for my fake birthday. My family tends to travel on the anniversary of my being born in 0 A.B., so we’re doing it this weekend, although they won’t all be there at once. You see, I’m so fly I get my birthday spread out over several weeks, like a book or movie tour, with different audiences and accolades.

We finally got the Iphone. The acquisition was anticlimactic. There was this big long wait for it and a ton of publicity and people waiting in lines like the cure for their itch was being given away for free. I’d been through this before. In 1984, I was 7 years old and the Transformers landed on these shores. I saw the reports that no stores had them. I saw the commercials, the cartoons, but I’d never seen one in person. I wanted one more than anything I had wanted in my life up to that point. When the day came when all American children get what they desire, for no reason at all, other than they are American and their parents got it for them (Christmas), I felt deep down that there would be no Transformers coming. Santa was good, but he didn’t shop at Child World, and I knew Toys R Us was flat out. There was no Ebay or Amazon to the rescue. I didn’t even know what shape a transformer would be (I had never seen one!). So when I opened the package and there was Megatron and my brother MH opened up Optimus Prime, I think a part of me died a little. I knew now that all I had to do was wish and hope and miracles would happen, forever destroying my work ethic. That’s what I think. What I know happened is that pure chaos erupted. I am getting goose bumps just writing this, remembering the pure adrenaline tail wagging barking giddiness that only a small child can feel. I also remember completely breaking down and crying in frustration when I couldn’t make Megatron turn into his robot form because I tossed the directions aside. It took my mechanical engineer father what seemed like hours to figure it out so he could teach me. Does anyone remember what Megatron’s non-robot form was? Anyone? A Walther P38. That’s a gun. A life-sized gun. There are a few iconic guns out there, the cowboy and his colt, 007 and his PPK. You know who made the P38 famous? The Wermacht, i.e. Germany’s Army circa WWII. So I essentially got a nazi war toy for Christmas that turned me from a happy innocent child into a greed loving frustration case overwhelmed with joy and excitement. So here in 2008, 24 years later, those Transformer (and Cabbage Patchers, 1984 was a good year for toys) kids got a new toy, the IPhone. The phone costs roughly 20 times as much (with a 2 year subscription!, monthly rates vary), but you can sign up for a list and instead of rioting in the aisles when they arrive you simply show up and claim your prize like Ed McMahon sent you a letter. We picked it up, did the paperwork, paid another chunk for a holster (yes a holster, I am a yuppie cowboy and my phone is my pistol) and that was about it. There were no screams, no instruction book, we casually went shopping afterwards as if nothing had happened. There were nearly some tears though, when I tried to get it to work with my employer’s email. I am still capable of childish temper tantrums when I can’t get my toys to work, which is good to know. I’ve spent the past few days buying music and generally learning how to use it. Overall I’m happy, but I don’t get any goosebumps when I look at it. M and I will be able to get our intended use from it and that’s the most important bit. And I get a little bit of cool out of it for a few more weeks, which ain’t bad.

In other news, I saw a ghost. Not a real ghost. Is that even possible? Can you see a ‘real’ bigfoot, or the ‘actual’ loch ness monster, or an ‘ethical’ republican? Anyway, I saw a Rolls Royce Phantom being parked in a lot around the corner from my office. I don’t work in a particularly pimped area, although I do see the occasional nice car. The Ferraris and Bentleys usually get parked in the valet spaces underground. This was out in the open, in a scrub lot with a teenager running it. I had to stop and take a picture because I found it hard to believe that someone gave the keys to their $300,000.00 car to a teenager, but they did. I looked it up - RR has sold only 3703 of these things worldwide since 2003. I know most of them to the middle east and Asia. Let’s say that half of them are. That’s 1850 for Europe and North America. I’ll pretend they’re distributed evenly and being that there are about 250,000,000 cars in North America alone, that would give me a .00037% chance of seeing one of these cars. I don’t want that kind of luck. If I’m going to overcome incredible odds, I want to win the Mega Millions. The fact that I managed to buy a home and get married to M should tell me that my winning lotto tickets have already been cashed, but that damn transformer just made be greedy. As an aside to the Rolls story, one of the features of the Rolls is that the back seat is nicer than the front, because you’re so stinking filthy rich that you pay someone to drive you around and the owner shouldn’t get the crappy seat. I wonder what these rich folks do with their sports cars? Do they drag Jeeves into the backseat so they can show everyone they are so rich that they drive their sports car with a guy in the back who is paid to be there? But I digress. There’s supposedly some snob joke that one drives a Bentley but gets driven in a Rolls. There were no chauffeurs to be seen on this day. So there’s a broke Rolls owner driving his own car, parking it in a budget lot downtown. Somewhere a violin weeps.

All Caught Up

We spent some time this weekend getting caught up with the rest of the world. We saw the big blockbuster movie of the moment, but before that we scooped up a hot gotta have it new technogadget. It was interesting getting acquainted with what all the other cool people are doing. If we didn’t already live in Massachusetts, we could be out there campaigning for Obama and plunking down cash for a Prius. But we do, and no matter whom we vote for in November, the state is going for BHO. I’ve already detailed why we opted for the Subaru (it snows a lot here and the Prius looks pretty wimpy for bad weather driving).
So with the politics and automobile statements out of the way, we’re on to the two more hot items on which you can put people into a neat little box, their choice of mobile phone and movies. I’ll start with the movies. M and I watch our fair share of flicks. When we merged our collections, we were concerned that our DVD’s would get confused. Have no fear, all off mine came in black DVD jackets and hers came in white. If you don’t believe me, look at an action movie box or a romantic comedy box. It’s true. So you can tell from 30 feet which movies are mine and which are hers. We nixed cable so we could do nextflix where we started with the black and white classics and have since moved on to the mundane (Fool’s Gold), bizarre (Be Kind Rewind) and mindless (Smokin’ Aces). This weekend, we were supposed to do a black/white double dip of Mamma Mia and The Dark Knight, but time and circumstances prevented MM form remaining on the docket. We opted for a matinee of the 3+ hour (including early arrival for good seat and commercials/previews) Batman movie. M was somewhat less than excited to see it, but she liked the first edition and acquiesced, despite promises of darkness and gloom. It definitely delivered. It lived up to expectations, which is always a tiny bit more disappointing then being surprised (Iron Man). Good thing we saw it too, because half of my team saw it also and we’ve already had a fierce discussion about everything from the previews to the third installment. Everyone else had to sit around and wish they saw it instead of doing whatever else they did last weekend. Suckers.
So what does going to a big blockbuster movie say about you? You could have just been bored that weekend. A lot of moviegoers are these types. A hot summer day, kids home from school, what else are you going to do? A movie is a nice thing to do with the family. Maybe you were on a date? I wouldn’t classify hand to hand combat as a good opportunity to make your move, but a lot of people go on dates at the movies. But would that justify waiting in a line and dealing with the unwashed masses for a half a day? I know people who never, ever go to the movies. The last movie they saw in the theater was probably 10 years ago or more. I also know people who only see ‘event’ movies. I’d say there’s a certain mentality to go with these two types. It’s a combination of frugality ($22 for two people vs. $2 rental fee), convenience (you have to go to the theater when both your schedules fit vs. waiting at home until you have the time) and patience (some of us have to seeitrightnow vs. those who don’t). If we had a big time home theater, I’d have a hard time justifying a movie theater ticket. Part of the movie theater experience is for the big sound and great picture, but if you’ve spent a decent vacation equivalent on a home theater, then you need to see approximately 900 home movies to recoup your investment. I can just imagine the guys sitting at home still using laserdiscs or SuperVHS repeatedly in an attempt to balance out the extreme layout they did 15 years ago. There are the people who go to the movies every weekend, either because they are film junkies or that’s just what they do on the weekend. (These people go to see dreck like National Treasure or anything starring Jason Biggs) There are the fanboys who religiously stalk a certain director or film series. You see these types camping out before opening night (see Peter Jackson/Hobbit movies or Wachovsky siblings/Matrix/Speed Racer). I used to be a Quentin Tarentino stalker, but I think that’s something you grow out of by the time you want to start meeting serious women. Right now I can say that I’ve got a bit of a bias towards Michael Mann movies, but I didn’t take a day off to see Miami Vice (I did enjoy it thoroughly though). M and I are somewhere in between. We enjoy going to the movies a lot. We like the bad popcorn and watery sprite. We like getting our seats in just the right place so we can sneak out as fast as possible. We like spotting upcoming film trailers and waiting for the opening weekend. We like trading points so we can drag the other to something they don’t want to see. Depending on the awfulness, there are many points to be won or lost. Superbad KILLED me, but I almost won it all back with Enchanted. I suspect the Dark Knight will cost me quite a bit. I was hoping to offset the damage with Mamma Mia, and there’s still time.
In a different way, your cell phone also says a lot about you. Do you not have a cell phone? It must have been traumatic for you watching the Hindenberg go down. Do you own a phone that’s 5 or more years old? You tell everyone that you just want to use it for calls, but you don’t even use it for that. If you did, you’d be frustrated that you can’t hear anything and your battery is always dead and get a newer one. That phone is as useful as a stapler in your bag/pocket. Are you a serious business-type? You probably have something with a million buttons on it and maybe a stylus for jotting your ideas down. A lot of these people carry Blackberries (their company ‘forced’ one on them) or some variation of a giant but anonymous smartphone class of device. These usually have way too much software and their users have no idea how 99% of it works. If you do a lot of text messaging, there are a series of phones that are basically keyboards with a cell antenna on them. I happen to have a blackberry pearl. My old Motorola (at least 3 years old at the time) couldn’t hold a charge for more than 4 hours and the voice quality on it was sketchy. But I was cheap and my company wasn’t handing out phones, so I stuck with it. I passed on the first few generations of bible sized blackberries and tiny-slim Razrs. I didn’t want to be forced to carry my phone on my belt or pay $400 just to have a skinny phone with a crappy battery. My el cheapo had a crappy battery all on its own. The ol’ Moto had a camera and a few games that kept me entertained, but when my nightly calls home from the road kept breaking up every 10 minutes, M had enough and made me get a new one, which is how I came to acquire the pearl. I was skeptical of always being attached to email, but in a way it was liberating. I didn’t have to dread being out of the office for a few days and coming in to a pile of messages waiting for me. I could type out text messages a lot faster, I could even cruise the internet in a somewhat limited manner, and the phone fit in my pocket and even looked like a phone. So I became a fan of the pearl and blackberries in general. The software is basic and to the point, the camera is a lot better than the old one and the battery is durable. So this is a long winded way of saying I am not an early adopter or technophile when it comes to the mobile phone. The IPhone was interesting for a bit, but $500 for a phone seems ridiculous to me. Which brings me to where were ended up on Sunday, an AT&T store buying an IPhone 3G. In preparation for our upcoming vacation, M read that you can download MP3 tours of sites we’re visiting, which seemed like a good idea for countries where we no-speeeka-the-language. We don’t own an Ipod between us, so either a Nano or Touch seemed like contenders. If we wanted to play games or watch movies while we’re traveling, the Touch starts to look more appealing, if pricey. Coincidentally M needs a new phone and switch to AT&T. She really is one of those people who only uses a phone for calls so we were going to have to get a bargain basement phone and endure the sarcastic looks from the phone store workers. That’s when it dawned on us, almost simultaneously, that we can get an IPhone and use that for the MP3, movie, game thing. Then I can take the IPhone for my work and M can have my Pearl. So we plunked down our cash and in 10-21 days we will have a shiny toy. I feel a little bit like I’m drinking the kool-aid on this one, but it really makes sense and we get to have a slick little device until the next great thing comes along.