Happy Birthday, iPod

Last week, that beautiful little life-changing device turned all of six years old. Sadly, like poor Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles, nobody paid much attention. We all took it for granted that we could carry an immense personal library of music in our pockets, flicking or scrolling our way through the thousands of songs that have become the soundtracks to a life, whether it sucks or not.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I did not own a first generation iPod--the 5GB model. I know it seems shocking coming from someone who spent this past Saturday installing the new Mac OS onto their computer the day after it was released. Not to mention the fact that a mere couple of months ago I stood in line to be the 20th person to purchase an iPhone at the AT&T store in West Little Rock (for $200 more than it could be acquired today). But it's true. However, I already HAD an MP3 player, lest you think I was woefully behind the times. It was a 128MB piece of shit manufactured by Rio. At the time I was self-employed and the hefty price of the iPod seemed an extravagance I couldn't afford. A few months later I was visiting my friend Chope in Santa Monica and he was proudly showing off his 10GB iPod. In fact, at that time, Chope was more of a poster boy for Apple than I was, what with his brand new iMac and his mastering of the iLife suite of applications (I still can't use iMovie--it seems contrary to my theories of editing, whereas I look at it as putting pieces together, iMovie is more about removing what you don't want). On that visit, Chope shamed me into purchasing my first iPod--I splurged on the 20GB. It was one of the best purchases I ever made. A few months later that iPod provided the soundtrack to my road trip back to L.A. for my second life in Southern California, 10 blocks down California Avenue from Chope and his iMac (and of course, his lovely wife Ali). I'd go running with that iPod, but I had to learn when to slow down and hold it steady so the buffer could reload, otherwise it would crash.
By the time they came out with the 60GB iPod, I was back living in Little Rock. And then fast-forward to the introduction of the iPod Nano--I got the 4GB which was the biggest at the time, and I got it in black, to contrast my traditional white iPod. That was on January 11, 2006. I know because I had the date engraved on the back, along with Apple's stock price at the time, a high of $83.90.
That was really the big news last week, when Apple released their quarterly report and the stock shot up over $186. The continued sales of the iPhone, the release of Leopard, and iMacs newer and sexier than that one Chope had on California Avenue, along with all of the other Apple computers had sent profits soaring. As a long time stock holder and Apple user, that is a good thing. At six years old, the company itself has already renamed it iPod Classic to distinguish it from the all of the other incarnations. Just six and it's a classic--it took Coca-Cola a hundred years to achieve that.
But that's not what is important or what is to be celebrated on the iPod's birthday. It's the music that fills each individual iPod, and the way that music influences our lives, comforts, and lifts us. There is nothing like a song to trigger a memory for me--a full-fledged three dimensional memory where I can literally look around and what was going on in 360 degrees.  It is as if I was there, present again at the moment, hearing THAT song in THAT place. Old photos don't do that for me. The only thing I remember is what is there in the frame. Video is worse--it replaces the reality, the tape becomes the only memories I have of the moment. But a song can sneak up on me and trigger a memory or remember where I was at a certain time. But those memories are for a future posting.
I would like to bring your attention to a new addition to the links. Mr. Coco Suave himself, Jeff Baines is doing a weekly music blog, complete with a song of the week that you should not miss. I doubt anyone has influenced my musical taste or turned me on to new bands in the past 15 years more than Baines. I can still remember the exact moment he told me to check out Belle & Sebastian. I hadn't even gotten home, listening to "The Boy With the Arab Strap" (on CD), before I had to turn around and return to buy their previous CD "If You're Feeling Sinister". I needed that more than you could possibly imagine. In fact, there must have been strains of "Get me away from here, I'm dying" fading into the night as I drove West five years ago.

Boo!

I've never been a big fan of Halloween, I'll admit. I've never liked dressing up in costumes, especially using face paint or dried blood or other such devices. Thinking back, I was Spiderman as a child--I don't remember this myself but there is a picture somewhere. It was a cheap plastic costume. With red and white face paint (why there wasn't just a mask I don't know). Then of course I remember being dracula with the fake plastic teeth and the black cape. And of course the white face paint with dried blood on the corners of my lips. And I was a clown one year (I'll let you argue the validity of that statement to this day, dear reader). Again with the face paint. So you can see, I finally had enough and began seeking out costumes which didn't require make-up.
I was crazy about Indiana Jones. For Christmas one year I wanted the whole Indiana Jones outfit--the hat, the leather jacket, and the bull whip. My dad got many strange looks as he went around town inquiring about purchasing a whip. But he found one, and it was a beauty. I still have it and can still crack it. How safe it was to give a ten year old a full-sized bull whip seems questionable today, but those were different times. Anyway, I wore that ensemble any chance I could, so of course it became my Halloween costume for a few years. I always hated having blonde hair as a kid, so I jumped at the chance to spray it black--turning it into a crusty, toxic helmet once a year.
It was around my early teenage years that I became very interested in film, thanks to my infatuation with the aforementioned Raiders of the Lost Ark. I would conduct my own film education courses, thanks to the surge in videotape rental stores at the time. I would choose a director, read everything about them and rent all of their films. An early favorite was, of course, Alfred Hitchcock. I recently watched a wonderful interview Dick Cavett conducted with the master of suspense back in the early 70s.

DC: "How did you acquire this turn of mind. You look like such a pussycat."
AH: "I think my mother scared me when I was three months old. You see, she said Boo! It gave me the hick-ups and she was apparently very satisfied. All mothers do it you know, that's how fear starts in everyone."

Cavett was a ground-breaking interviewer with his TV show. Several episodes are available on DVD and feature in-depth interviews with stars long gone. I highly recommend them.
But back to Mr. Hitchcock. Here is the incomparable trailer for "Psycho".

That trailer is probably one of the best ever created for a film. Nobody else could have pulled that off.
So, I became a fan of Mr. Hitchcock and his films in my formative years. Unfortunately, this admiration and adoration led to a particularly unforgettable Halloween costume when I was about thirteen.
If you're thinking I stuffed a pillow in my shirt and wore a dark suit with a black tie then you're sorely mistaken. No, for some reason I thought--and more importantly was not stopped (where were my older brothers? already in college? too busy wreaking havoc with eggs and shaving cream on the High School crowd?)--that it would be a good idea to be Norman Bates from Psycho. But not just Norman Bates. Norman Bates as his knife-wielding, blood-thirsty mother. So, yes, I wore an old gray wig and a dress and I'm pretty sure carried a REAL butcher's knife (see earlier mention of real bull whip and you'll start to see a trend in my upbringing).
Well, for an already unpopular, late-developing teenager, the idea of dressing up as a woman (albeit a man dressed up as his dead mother) was not the smartest thing I've ever done. I'm sure you can imagine the dismay of my fellow peers, especially since they'd never seen this 1960 film that was some 13 years older than them--and in black and white for god's sake!
The good news is I didn't wear the wig for too long because it itched. So most of the evening I walked around in the dress and somehow managed not to harm myself or anyone else with the large knife. However, I think I can point to this one particular costume as the origin for my distaste of Halloween and costume parties in general. I'm starting to get over it, slowly. But I still don't care for the candy that much.

Written in Light, But Not Worth Reading

Sweet 16. I'm guessing that's what this is. I saw this photo outside the men's bathroom of a mall in Northwest Arkansas. It's a nice mall. And in the food court some photographer was advertising his services with a "gallery" of his work. I found this image arresting--for one it's placement directly outside of the men's bathroom. But it also seemed to sum up conservative Northwest Arkansas and George W. Bush's America. Are we to assume that this young lady has been given this Hummer for her birthday, thus warranting the happy occasion to be recorded in a professional photograph? And I'm not faulting the photographer--I dig the soft focus on the urban assault vehicle. I just question the thought process that went into composing this picture. Perhaps, with our nation at war, it was a way to show support for the troops? I doubt that, I'd guess she will be piling her friends in and driving to Sephora after school (it's in the same mall, so they could grab a slice of pizza and see her photo there too).
I had shown this photo to my friend Joy a while back. For some reason, she was moved enough by it to recreate her own "Corporate Sponsorship" version with the Alltel hummer.

I'm not sure what this proves other than that BOTH photos are pretty ridiculous. However, I would like to introduce this as a new feature of Why Your Life Sucks: Any loyal readers that wish to recreate a photograph, either one I publish here or a famous or infamous photo you possess, then please send both to me and I will add them to this very important gallery. Who knows, future generations may look back on this and learn much about our culture.
And I've been thinking about that--what does it say about a culture and what they choose to photograph, to record in light. In the early days, it was a special occasion for sure to gather the entire family around and have a family portrait photographed by a person not much removed from our friend displaying his work at the Rogers foodcourt. Here is a photograph taken many, many years ago of my father's family. My grandmother is on the far left.

I think with the decrease in cost and the rise of digital photography, we'll take pictures of just about anything now, yielding hard drives full of images that don't mean much, but we're reluctant to delete. I have a friend whose family asks non-relations to please stand in the crop-able position (on the sides of the frame) thus maintaining an image's relevance long after bitter break-ups. I think that's probably not a bad idea, especially after seeing so many disembodied arms on other people's myspace pages.
I'm not saying we should stop taking pictures. If anything, we should be taking more. I just hope they are worth looking at, say, a hundred years down the line.

P.S. My friend Joe Adams is back posting to his blog, check him out, he's hysterical. Also, Hudson finally finished that cup of tea and has written about a new book he's reading. And amazingly enough, Justin has figured out a way to post from all the way over in France. Here's hoping he can keep it up. Looks like fun.

Lurking, Still Lost

I googled an old acquaintance the other day. I had known her when I was living in New York City. I wasn't stalking, if that's what you're thinking. I was curious what had happened to her over the years. I originally met Andy in another "New" city, New Orleans, while shooting an episode of Haunted History. She was working as a P.A. and local contact for the production company out of L.A. We'd kept in touch over the years--poorly--thanks to our shared affection for David Letterman. After I'd been in New York for a few months, I got a letter? a call? perhaps an email, I can't remember now--but she was moving to New York with her young daughter. We met up for lunch down in Soho while she was staying with friends in Brooklyn. She was enthralled by my story of getting evicted from my first sub-let. We went to a few art galleries--in New Orleans she'd had a photography show in a gallery. I remember looking at snow globes--I think she had a collection. Anyway, once I decided to move back to Little Rock, I told her she and her daughter could stay in my apartment rent free until my lease was up. There were a few times I came back to the city and they would vacate back to Brooklyn, leaving my small studio apartment littered with Barbie dolls, snow globes, and feminine products. It was my apartment, but I was only visiting.
There was a guy I used to work with. He was from New York, family lived in the Village, and he had attended NYU. But he'd met a girl from Little Rock and ended up married to her and working there. So he drove up to New York in the mini-van so we could shoot a job for a New York producer, then load up my few furnishings and drive back non-stop to Little Rock through the night. For some reason, the last image I have of Andy is from across 62nd Street, loading a box into the van. She was with her daughter and she looked scared, or confused. Honestly, I was a little mad. She was looking at me like I'd done something wrong, yet I didn't know what. After that I didn't give much thought to her, until the other day.

"Everyone's unhappy, everyone's ashamed. Well we all just got caught looking at somebody else's page"
--Already Missed the Boat by Modest Mouse

I was curious what had become of her. Had she succeeded in big bad New York? I decided to use that wonderful sage of the internet age, Google, and see just what she'd been up to. Fortunately, her last name was pretty unique, so the search only yielded four pages of options. Through the posted results of a race in Chicago in 2005 I saw a 34 year old female with the same name. Then, through the published new members of an art gallery newsletter, also in Chicago, her name turned up. I figured this had to be the same person. But then all of sudden, no more Chicago. She moves to Iowa and is the editor of a newspaper. It is here that I stumble upon her blog. Now the little details start to get filled in. It was the same Andy I knew. There are references to her life in New Orleans. Living in New York. Moving to Chicago. And then finally, like me, moving home. Iowa was home. Central City, Iowa. She wrote about her daughter, who was now grown up and in High School, attending prom. The writing showed a great sense of humor. And then a heartbreaking vulnerability. She was sick. She lost her job. She was feeling better and was starting to run again. Then she is diagnosed with MS. There are references to a fiance, but never followed up by a husband. There are reprinted come-ons she received from some online dating service by men she must have felt were sad or sleazy. There is a link to an interview with a Chicago newspaper that interviewed her about presidential primaries in Iowa. But then there is a gap in time. The newspaper no longer lists her as editor on its website. Then there is a post on her blog about her new job. She is a librarian. It sounds like a good job. She sounds comfortable, peaceful. There is a reference on her blog to the fact that she is starting a MySpace page and her daughter is mortified. I try to find it but nothing turns up. There is a link to email. I want to contact her, say hello. Tell her I too am an accident of geography, having bounced around here and there only to end up back where I started. I want to know if she's OK. But I keep digging through her blog, looking to fill in the pieces I don't know, and then, all of a sudden, the blog is gone. I'm directed to a page asking me to log in. It says the account I want is "not currently available". I think perhaps I've been busted in my lurking. I've been locked out. I was learning too much, solving the mystery. I hoped maybe it was a temporary thing, maybe she was posting a new entry and that's why it was locked out. But now it's gone. I can't get back to the email link, I have now way of contacting her. Maybe the account had been inactive for awhile, unpaid bills, and my lurking on it triggered a computer to finally shut down the account and take it offline. I don't know where it went. I was so close, then nothing. So I'm forced to leave her there as a librarian in a small Iowa town, lost in time and memory, but it's a better image than that look I got across East 62nd that cold winter's day seven years ago.