How’s my day? HOW’S MY DAY!?!??!
This, this is how my day is going:
This is what happens when you take the lovely rubberized cover off your iPhone and then go to a meeting and, whoops, drop it face down on a beautiful gray granite floor.
I have many, many curse words yet to go today.
By the by…the phone still works. Just not really inclined to run my finger across the screen…..
Ok. It’s time for my annual check in. I’m fast approaching a birthday, and now that I’m over 40, it’s a good time to check to see just how wide that ol’ generational gap has become.
We’ll start with trending topics on Twitter. I’ve eliminated all the hashtag items that are Twitter specific funning around like #DontBeShocked and #Musicmonday.
So here’s what we have as of 10:50 Pacific Standard Time.
Hekla
This Is Apple’s Next
#ashtag
Icelandic
Ok, well. Hekla. I pretty much figured it was a new R&B artist. I was wrong. It’s a volcano that may or may not be ready to blow its lid. Bad me.
“This is Apple’s Next” is a topic I’m all over. I read the Gawker item this morning about a supposed “found” iPhone 4. We’ll see. Apple always seems to have crafty moves…
But ok, score one for me, I’m on the board.
And #ashtag and Icelandinc are all about that fun, wacky volcano called Eyjafjallajokull.
Good, good. Three of four on that. Rock on.
Let’s try Yahoo! trending topics. Here we go, as of 10:55 PST.
Boston Marathon
Conan O’Brien
Christina Hendricks
Kelsey Grammer
Timothy McVeigh
Alyssa Milano
Lady Antebellum
Joakim Noah
Space Shuttle Discovery
Eyjafjallajokull
Ok, let’s run through the list. Let’s see….Boston Marathon. I know what that is, didn’t know it was being run today. Half point for me.
Conan O’Brien. Yup, know who he is. Heard he was getting a new cable show. There are a couple news items about he and George Lopez that I’m out of the loop on. Half point for me.
Christina Hendricks. I have no idea who that is. Hoookay, she’s evidently been chosen America’s best looking woman. She stars on “Mad Men” a show I haven’t watched as I don’t have cable. Big fat fail for me.
Kelsey Grammer. I used to watch Frasier and Cheers, so I’m up on Kelsey. I also know he’s super conservative. Ok. Evidently he’s starting his own right-wing network. Fair enough. Half point for me.
Timothy McVeigh. I know who he is. I wish I didn’t. Evidently there is some new project using his recorded voice. I probably don’t wish to hear it. I’ll take a zero points on this one.
Alyssa Milano. I know who she is. She is a $%#@ing Dodger fan. I don’t give a tiny rat’s ass about her. That said, I did read an article about her this morning and her new show “Romantically Challenged” (I didn’t say I was proud of it). Go me. Score one for the good guys.
Lady Antebellum. Know ’em. Love ’em. Love that they won a whole slew of Academy of Country Music awards last night. Whoo! Score one for me!
Joakim Noah. Er, uh. No idea. Ya got me here. Ah, basketball player. Chicago Bulls. Apparently people are pissed off at him. I don’t know why. I don’t watch basketball, sorry. Zero points for me.
Space Shuttle Discovery. Heard of it. Knew it was up. Didn’t know it was trying to land today. Bad weather causes delays. What’s new for the shuttle? Half point for me.
And finally, there’s my ol’ friend Eyjafjallajokull. Point goes to me!
Ok, let me add up the points…do the math here…carry the one…
Seems that I’m hip to 8 of 14 trending topics. That’s a resounding 57%.
Better than half, but not by much.
I’m not completely irrelevant, but I’m definitely trending down.
This year I will try to throw a rope over this generational chasm and hold on tight.
Image via the New York Times.
Edit: in the half hour or so it took to write this, the trending topics changed. Ah well, so goes the internets.
So, in the middle of the night last night, while I was *not* sleeping, I got to thinking about, well, phone booths.
And how there aren’t any around anymore.
Phone booths were such a key element to the plot lines of a LOT of books and movies.
For example, where would Superman be if not for the phone booth!
Where does mild mannered Clark Kent put on his blue tights these days?
Probably the bathroom at a Starbucks, but that’s not the point.
The point is, there are no phone booths on every city street corner anymore. Where are you supposed to take that random and creepy phone call? Where are you supposed to wait for the kidnappers to give you your next clue? How do you have an angry confrontation with a guido over how long you are on the phone? You don’t. Not anymore.
The movie “Crazy Heart” had a scene with a phone booth. It was by the side of a desolate road in New Mexico (playing the part of Arizona). It felt odd even in the context of the movie. It was in a weird location and had no wires leading to or from it.
It just didn’t work. The era of the phone booth is dead.
How many of our great stories told over the years involved a phone booth?
Or for that matter, payphones in general?
It’s just not the same.
The lonely cowboy with a stack of dimes trying to get his lady on the line, rain pouring outside the glass phone booth, operator intoning “fifty cents please” in a nasaly voice. That’s literature!
Cowboy flips open his mobile device and curses the low signal strength just doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi, ya know?
And so then I thought about another lost plot device. The lockers in bus stations, train stations and airports. (ok, I already lamented their loss here, but I’m going there again.)
You know, the bad guy stashes the loot to cool it off, inserts a quarter, takes the key and no one is the wiser? Until the bad guy is bumped off and ANOTHER bad guy takes the key and tries to figure out where it goes so he can get the stash?
Oh yeah. That’s good suspense!
The movie “Desperately Seeking Susan” centered around the Rosanna Arquette character getting Madonna’s locker key that held her valise and that really cool jacket. Remember?
Yeah, we really don’t have those anymore, the quarter to rent a locker places. A few gyms have ’em and a local nature preserve has a few near the walking trails, but mostly people leave their stuff in their car or carry a backpack anymore.
Another good plot device, dead.
Oh, and how about meeting people at the gate at the airport!?!
How many great, dramatic scenes involve someone stepping off a plane and a loved one, bad guy, limo guy, complete stranger, detective, etc. is there waiting?
It’s just not quite as dramatic to have the waiting happen down at baggage claim where you hope you find the right person.
Or heck, really going back, how about waiting out on the tarmac while the starlet decends the metal stairs. Nope.
I won’t EVEN start down the road of the loss of manual transmission cars (I covered it here), but do you think Steve McQueen’s hot little green fast back Mustang in “Bullitt” was an automatic? Oh no, I don’t think so.
I know, I know. I’m being a fuddy duddy and time must always march on. But as a writer, I lament the loss of ANY good device to keep a story moving along….
Or maybe a little self-awareness?
At my place of employment, we have a bank of five elevators that get all us little minions to and from the multitude of floors in our fabulous office building.
Every day I ride in these elevators, and it gives me time to notice some stuff.
Like the fact that the interior of the elevator cars is mirrored. Yup, to a high polish. What this means is each person’s visage is clearly reflected back into the car.
Meaning…if you are standing in the back surreptitiously picking your nose, you are not surreptitious at ALL. We all have to just look forward to see what you are doing back there. You aren’t hiding.
Most people get in there and lock their eyes on the television screen scrolling headline news. You know, the ol’ don’t make eye contact elevator rule.
I sometimes watch the headline news, and have become a repository for useless trivial information that I can whip out at random times to the utter disinterest of The Good Man.
But lately I’ve been watching the show in the reflected doors. People really are odd little creatures.
I’ve caught *numerous* male colleagues checking out the backsides of the comely young ladies who work here. And who can blame them, really?
I’ve also caught quite a few roll eyes or scowls as someone apparently unliked gets on the car.
There are the salespeople on the elevator who try to read the names on people’s badges, I guess perpetually making a sales contact list.
I’ve witnessed some personal grooming that is best left for a private moment.
On Friday, as I got on the elevator and found my spot, I saw the lady to my side and a step back look my Friday casual outfit up and down, roll her eyes, then put her hand to her stomach and smooth it down, as though to assure herself that her midsection was smaller and flatter than mine. It was, she has nothing to worry about.
Evidently people seem to go through life believing, “If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.” Except when your every move is reflected back.
Believe me, I’m all too aware of this little feature of the elevator and make sure to keep my hands away from my nose, my errant underwear or my boiling zit.
I kinda want to put up a sign that says, “Objects in mirror may be you.”
PS Yes, I really did take an iPhone photo in my elevator at work…….don’t think that wasn’t odd to explain to the guy who got on two floors down.
PPS Yes, I’m wearing my kicking Fat Babies to work today. Saaaalute! Since Fat Babies are one of the highest searched keywords on my blog, I figured I’d give them another plug.
You know, back in my day, if a person were to have occasion to be walking down the street, holding an entire conversation with only themselves, we’d call them nutty, cross the street to get away from them and cover our children’s eyes.
These days? No, it’s commonplace. We just figure it’s all normal.
I went downstairs this afternoon to the snack shop in my building for a cup of frozen yogurt. When I walked in the small shop, the oddball guy working there was deep in the middle of a conversation. By himself.
He was speaking, answering, getting a little lively in the discourse.
I naturally assumed he was on the Bluetooth headset for his cell phone.
So I went about the dispensation of some boysenberry no-fat fro-yo. When I went to pay, the young man was still chatting away, waving arms.
He saw me and was like, “oh hi, that will be two dollars.”
He wasn’t on the phone.
Nope. He’s just a good old-fashioned slice of crazy in a brown apron.
Hiding in plain sight.
Questionably sane people can’t even get noticed in this town anymore!
