David Wilcox, who I think has long been one of the more interesting songwriters out there, has a funny little song called "Modern World." In it, he laments that this ain't the modern world that he was promised -- a world with one-button kitchens, holographic TV phones and, of course, flying cars. Numerous songwriters and social commentators have griped about our lack of flying cars, especially, I imagine, when they are stuck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
I get that because when I was a kid, the flying car seemed just about the only realistic thing that had not yet been invented. Flying cars and time travel. That was all that was left. We had radio -- that took care of hearing. We had television (in living color!) -- that took care of sight. We had telephones so that we could actually talk to people far away. We had refrigerators and microwaves (though they were roughly the size of AMC Pacers) and the handheld game Merlin and digital watches and even super-advanced computers with roughly the same memory of Boston Red Sox critics that allowed students to do amazing things like have the computer repeat "School sucks!" an infinite number of times.
10 Print "School Sucks"
20 Goto 10
Just talking about my childhood makes me feel like I'm roughly the same age as Tony Bennett. But the point is that it really felt like everything OBVIOUS had already been invented. The idea that my parents felt the same way when they were young, and their parents, and their parents, well, that one didn't register with me. I didn't realize that one of the real challenges of inventing was, you know, INVENTING something that nobody had thought of before. I just assumed that life would more or less be the same as I got old with that one potential breakthrough -- the flying car.
Of course, there have been about a billion new inventions since I was a kid, so many that almost nothing feels the same. The funny thing, though, is that I almost never think about the new things. They just absorb into life. Louis CK talked about this when he did his classic bit about wireless on planes and how it took us all of three minutes to take it for granted, and this is true about everything. I never even think about how amazing ATM Machines are, how easy it is to pay at the pump, how absurd it is that I can send a text message to just about anyone anywhere and that I can talk to someone in Thailand on my computer for free. I have grown so used to the absurdly wonderful high definition picture, that watching regular television feels like hard labor (and to think we used to watch stuff STATIC). I so rely on my GPS, that if it sent me to Cleveland through the center of the earth, I would go that way. When I make travel plans, I immediately forward them to Tripit, which mysteriously transforms it into an itinerary that I can instantly see on my phone. And, of course, if we are for some strange reason watching "Reality Bites," and someone says, "Hey, what's that actor's name," I can pull out that same phone, press like 11 buttons, and tell you that it's Steve Zahn, you know, the guy from "That Thing You Do."
And none of it fazes me, certainly not anymore. Twitter. Hulu. Instapaper. It's all just part of living in today's world. I just turned on my television, punched a few buttons, and watched a little bit of Reality Bites. Just now. For free. This is how it goes. I went to my computer, clicked on Spotify, and listened to a bit of the new Jack's Mannequin album. This is how it goes. I just clicked on the SI Vault and printed out every single story we've ever written about Joe Paterno. This is how it goes. Who even thinks about it?
There is only one device in my life that constantly amazes me, every single day, nonstop … only one thing that, for me anyway, stays surprising and modern and, sure, I'll say it, miraculous.
That, of course, is my iPad.
I was never going to write this iPad review -- most of you figured that out. It was going to be like Norm's wife on Cheers -- I would talk about it a lot, promise it a lot, but I was never going to write it. And, to be up front about it, this is not really the iPad review. No, this is a few words about the way I use the iPad every day. And it is in honor of Steve Jobs, who died on Wednesday.
I wake up every morning to the alarm on my iPad* -- right now I have it playing an NFL Films song to get me inspired. For a while, I would wake up every morning to Ben Folds' "You Don't Know Me At All."
*This is not precisely true -- I've woken up the last four mornings to the sound of a squirrel running around in the heating ducts above my bedroom. I've told the people who run this apartment complex about it, and they apparently sent someone over who said he "couldn't' hear anything," and left without doing anything. How do I feel about this? I think I'm a peaceful person. I don't like guns. I enjoy the movie "Notting Hill." Yes, I'm a complete wimp. And yet, if I could kill that squirrel by beating it to death with my tennis racket, I would do it. And then, if I could bring it back to life, I would do that just so I could kill it again. And I would then go after its family. II haven't gotten much sleep lately. 'm a little cranky.
I then check my email on the iPad. It's usually junk email that early in the morning. Marriott usually has some offer for me. I then check my calendar on the iPad. I see who has tried to contact me on Facebook and who has a birthday. I check the weather (and by that I mean I look at the radar; I like do-it-yourself weather reporting). Then I usually take my turn in the killer "Words with Friends" games that I'm having with my friend Pop Warner. Words With Friends is, I suppose, a lot like Scrabble. I only suppose this because, strangely enough, I never played Scrabble as a kid. Ever. We used to play a lot of games, but I'm thoroughly dense about Scrabble -- I only vaguely knew the rules the way I only vaguely understand what Survivor really is (they vote people off the island and they walk around without shirts, right?). So when I started playing Words with Friends with Pops, he CRUSHED me. I mean it was humiliating. I'm a writer. He's a music executive. And he was killing me. So I had no choice, I had to study up, go through basic Scrabble training and now we have bloodbath games, and I win my share, and it's rewarding though I suspect before it's all done we will no longer be friends.*
*One of the things that I have come only now to realize -- many of the great words in "Harry Potter" are really just words you wish you could use in Scrabble. I mean look:
Quaffle -- 22 points
Horcrux -- 19 points
Bezoar -- 17 points
Squib -- 16 points
Portkey -- 16 points
Hallows -- 13 points
Bludger -- 11
So, I'm thinking J.K. Rowling was really just a frustrated Scrabbler. By the way: Quidditch is worth 25 points, though it's too long to form with one set of tiles. I guess if someone has used "itch" and you had the Q-U-I-D-D …
OK, so then I usually go to work. Sometimes I write these blog posts on my iPad. Mostly I don't. But I always take a break and go to lunch with the iPad. I sit in restaurants alone and read books on my Kindle app. This is actually one of my favorite parts of the day. I know it's kind of sad, but I love eating lunch alone and just reading. It often feels like my one escape. And reading on the iPad is an amazing thing. I just prop it up in front of my food, tap the screen to turn the page, press on any word I don't quite understand and get the definition. And of course, if an email pops up I read it immediately. If there's something I want to look up from the book, I go to the internet and check it out. If Pop Warner takes his turn in Words With Friends, I'm notified and can respond. Sometimes, I'll listen to my music while reading -- maybe from Spotify or my own iTunes library.
I get back home, do more work. Sometimes, I break, lay down for a little bit, and watch some TV show I missed on the iPad. It's the perfect size. The other day, I watched HBOs documentary on Borg and McEnroe, which was terrific. An email pops in, I respond. A call comes in on Skype, I can do a quick video chat with family back home. Sometimes, there's an afternoon baseball game. I can watch that on my iPad too.
On Sunday, I watched the Kansas City Chiefs play on my iPad. I saw on the side that the Bengals were threatening to win, so I flipped to that. Soon, I'll be able to watch NHL games on there, and I hope to do that. This is the year I'm hoping to become a hockey fan again -- especially because they might not start the NBA season for another half-decade.
I download my Sports Illustrated every Tuesday night at midnight. My New Yorker comes on Mondays. These have cool features that the magazines, by their nature, cannot have. During the day, I usually find three or four longer stories on the Web that I want to read, so I just Instapaper those and they somehow pop up on my iPad in perfect reading form. I am always trying -- and always failing -- to get better organized, and so I have purchased about three dozen different task and organization apps, which are fun to use for a little while though I'm precisely as disorganized as ever, perhaps more so since I waste so much of my time using downloading these apps. And, of course, there are games and you can find out about space and the elements and U.S. Presidents and on and on and on …
I do a lot more on the iPad, but I suppose you get the point -- Steve Jobs' Apple tended to get carried away with itself, I think. I mean, sure, I'm an Apple guy -- I'm writing this on a Macbook Air, waiting for a call on my iPhone 4 (while I prepare to order the 4S) and my iPad just rang to let me know that Pop Warner had made his move (I volleyed with a 36-point "BLITZ" -- always joyous when I can not only score big points, but hit him with a football word).
I still think Apple's self-image can be a bit much. That whole "If you don't have an iPhone you don't have an iPhone," thing came across as pretty insufferable. And I've heard enough stories from people to know that Apple can and does play serious hardball and isn't necessarily out there inventing these wonderful toys and devices merely for the better good. And, of course, there are plenty of people who will tell you that Apple's toys and devices are not even that wonderful, that they are overrated and overpriced and derivative and all that. I'm not a technology writer. I couldn't tell you anything about that.
All I can tell you is that the iPad does something for me that nothing else does: Every day, it reminds me what an astounding time we live in. I'm not saying it's a better time than any other. I'm also not saying it's worse. But it is astounding. I carry around with me a device about the size of a composition notebook that lets me talk to my friends, respond to my bosses, read Susan Orlean's wonderful new book Rin Tin Tin, play games with friends across the country, watch Louis CK's bit about wireless on planes (AGAIN), write stories, look up baseball statistics and cut up vegetables with ninja knives.*
*OK, you've no doubt seen the Taco Bell commercial with that ninja chef making that chicken taco-sandwich thingy that you can get for 99 cents. First off: As TheFanManifesto on Twitter asks, why are we supposed to be astounded that chicken and cheese on white bread is "only" 99 cents? They used to have that combination in the vending machine in my father's factory for like 75 cents.
But the thing that amazes me is that they have the warning, "Professional: Do Not Attempt" written in tiny type that you wouldn't notice unless you've seen the commercial 24,483 times like all of us who are watching the playoffs. Obviously, this is put there for lawsuit purposes, I get it. But it bothers me on so many levels. For one thing -- playing off Jerry Seinfeld's classic bit about Halloween Superman costumes -- are we really supposed to believe that anyone out there would be dumb enough to watch the guy throw knives around like that and think, "Oh yeah, I'm doing that," but be smart enough to notice that tiny little disclaimer, read it, and go, "Oh, wait, it says not to."
But even more: What kind of disclaimer is that? It's telling you that this guy is actually a professional knife thrower so you shouldn't try it. Hey, Taco Bell, HOW DID HE BECOME A PROFESSIONAL NINJA CHEF? Right: He threw knives around and cut up stuff. If I was the sort of person who would watch that commercial and think I could throw knives around too, I don't think saying that the guy's a professional would dissuade me. That would make me think: "Wait, you can make MONEY doing that? I'm totally in."
Here's what I think: If I could bring one thing to my 10-year-old self and say: "OK, hey, this is what the future looks like," I think I would bring back an iPad. Of course, there wouldn't be wireless then, and many of the apps wouldn't work, so it might not seem quite as cool. But it would be cool enough. Books. Movies. TV shows. Everything. One place. I know, deep down, that every day I should be astounded by the advances we are making in medicine, in life-saving technology, in connectivity, in a million different fields. I know I should: But I'm not. I just go through my life, living it, enjoying the advances, griping about dropped phone calls. trying to figure out what new music my daughters are listening to. I just don't think about it.
In some way the iPad, every day, takes me out of that life loop. I read Steve Jobs talking about the iPad once, and he called it
magical. When I read that, I had not seen one, and I thought: "Oh yeah, there's Steve Jobs being Steve Jobs." He lived this remarkable life, this transformative life. He was our Edison, without some of the unappealing qualities. He didn't invent these things exactly, but he was a visionary -- and his vision was behind the Mac, behind Pixar, behind the iPod, behind the iPhone, behind many other Apple products that have come to take over the world. And as I go back to my game with PopWarner (M-E-W is a word, right?), I can't help but think he was right. The iPad? Magical. Absolutely.
If only it could kill squirrels in heating ducts.
Thursday, October 6, 2011