LARGETONY Blog

“Today is Tuesday. You know what that means. We’re gonna have a special guest..”

That’s what they used to sing once a week on the old Mickey Mouse Club show. Not the Britney, JT, and Cristina Mickey Mouse Club. The old, old, 1950’s Mickey Mouse Club. I have always been a junkie for old TV shows. Black and white old. I could watch “I Love Lucy,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and “The Beverly Hillbillies” on an endless loop and never get bored.

When I was young, I used to watch reruns of “The Mickey Mouse Club” on the Disney Channel, and I remember that Tuesday was always “Guest Star Day.” The Mouseketeers would put on their Sunday mouske-best and introduce their celebrity guest. For the life of me, I can not remember a single guest. Maybe because I was watching the show 30 years later, and had no idea who they were dragging through the starred door anyway.

I’ve been looking since September for a regular feature for the final year of the blog. I have started doing the HNT thing, but everybody and their brother does that. I wanted something a little unique. Like Hump Day during Year 3, and the T-Shirt Project from Year 2 (and 3 AND 4 and…).

Taking a cue from the Mouseketeers, I decided feature a guest blogger once a week. So, for the duration, Tuesdays will be Guest Star Day on the blog. The guests can write about anything they want, as long as it can fit into one of the categories on my sidebar. It’s kind of like when Johnny Carson has guest hosts. They could do their own thing with their own guests, just in his format.

Hopefully it will expose my readers to other blogs that they might want to follow after I’m gone, or it might simply give ya’ll a breather from my ramblings.

So now that I have done my song and dance, let’s get on to our first guest star.

Chad Fox of “Stop Touching My Food” / San Francisco, California

One of the unofficial leaders of the coven of San Francisco bloggers, Chad has taken a little self-imposed hiatus from blogging and this guest post is the first he’s written in months,. But if you go back and look at some of his past stuff, I think you will enjoy a wild blend of sharp humor, touching humanity, total living, wake-up calls, and poop-jokes.

So shiny.

How can you not love the iPhone?

It’s a bright, shiny object that lights up and plays music and can do just about everything but give you a reach-around, yet is able keep you occupied for hours and hours nonetheless. You turn it on, and that little dark screen suddenly comes to life; your pupils dilate, your blood starts pumping, and you’re suddenly lost in your own little iWorld. It’s like you’ve stepped into a virtual sedan, and have isolated yourself somewhat from your surroundings. You can see what’s going on, but as soon as you pull that door shut, you’re snugly insulated from the cacophony outside. It’s the difference between actually walking the streets of San Francisco and getting the full experience, and observing them in “safety” from behind the grimy windows of a rented Hyundai (anyone who has ever rented a car and driven in San Francisco knows why I use quotation marks around the word “safety”).

I have lived in the City By the Bay (not Oakland, the other one with the red bridge, sourdough bread, homogays, and sea lions) for over a decade; I can say with some authority this is the kind of city best seen with your own eyes and heard with your own ears rather than through an internet connection or from aboard a lumbering tour bus.

“Max” moved into my building about a month and a half ago. He’s brand-new 24 year-old San Francisco transplant, fresh from the parched desert of Las Vegas. A kind, gentle soul, he left behind a comfortable, suburban life with his life partner, a steady job, and the World As He Knew It. I have to admire him for his courage; he more or less dove headfirst into life here by the Bay, and didn’t look back. He did, however, have some help, a “cheat sheet“ if you may. His iPhone.

Why bother learning the multiple, colliding street grids when you have your iPhone with you? Simply pull up a map and it’ll tell you exactly where you are. Ditto if you need directions anywhere. It quickly and efficiently calculates a route to any destination you desire anywhere in the city. Apparently, thought and sense of direction and common sense are now obsolete. Why bother learning how to get around when your iPhone becomes an extension of your iBrain? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating on the iPhone, I think it’s an incredible device, and every time I see an iFag on his iPhone I admit to having a bit of gadget envy. Sometimes I just want to smack a bitch who stumbles in front of a speeding taxicab on some street corner because they‘re way too focused on their iPrecious to actually watch where the hell they‘re walking, randomly crashing into people (it happens constantly) and wandering into traffic, making me an iWitness to just how incredibly stupid people can be.

Max, a native of Bakersfield, California, depended on his iPhone for everything, as it was his lifeline to his new world. Often, I saw him shuffling up the alley at dusk, head down, music in his ears, gaze transfixed on the little screen, illuminating his face with a ghostly gray light. I’d say hello, but he wouldn’t hear me until he looked up, startled, only a few feet away from me. He’d always smile, blush, and say hello, hastily plucking the white buds out of his head so he could hear the words my moving lips were making. He always had a bewildered look about him, and would, at times, look absolutely terrified as he ventured out the front door into our somewhat-baffling neighborhood known as Lower Telegraph Hill/North Beach/Chinatown (I‘ve been pushing “Lower Telegraph Heights” these days but it hasn‘t caught on). Off he’d shuffle, head always down, ears always full of familiar music, a gentle soul simply lost in his personal technology.

His electronic lifeline was also an umbilical cord of sorts; his partner would text and call at least a dozen or so times a day, which, in itself, was a huge distraction. He’d be at dinner with new friends, and his phone would vibrate incessantly, demanding attention in the middle of conversations, bites of food, and sips of cocktails. No matter where he was, Las Vegas still beckoned him and clawed at his heartstrings, which only saddened him more than he already was. Had he made the right decision to move to San Francisco? Well, it was impossible to tell when he still have one foot firmly planted in Las Vegas.

Tell you what…San Francisco is a two-foot sort of town. You need both of them here to maintain solid footing on our terra firma, both physically and psychologically. Otherwise, you end up losing your balance, and you find yourself quite miserable and confused and not sure if you even did the right thing by moving here in the first place. It’s not a comfortable feeling. It makes you not want to be here. I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve lain awake in bed, wondering how the hell I was going to cover rent that month, and whether or not I should just throw in the towel and retreat to the safety and comfort and familiarity of Cleveland, Ohio. It can be a frightening ordeal at times, and some people simply can’t cut it here. Call me Mrs. Garrett because it’s a Fact of Life.

A few days after Thanksgiving, Max came up to my apartment to hang out a bit, have a glass of wine, hit the bong, watch some TV, and enjoy the fire in my fireplace. When I opened the door, I immediately noticed the expression on his face. The glazed befuddlement that previously furrowed his brow was gone; he was smiling and (gasp) making eye contact with me. His head, usually hunched over as he dealt with the never-ceasing text messages, was held high. His eyes were shining and bright. He also appeared to have lost about ten pounds from his husky Latin frame. I must admit I was slightly taken aback by his newfound clarity and disarming smile. He sat down on my couch, took a sip of wine, packed a fresh bowl, filled my living room with little fluffy clouds of Northern California‘s finest, and told me a story.

At some point during the Thanksgiving holiday, Max reached his breaking point, and his iPhone was about to become a casualty. It had been ringing and ringing and buzzing and vibrating even more than usual; the partner in Las Vegas, apparently afraid of losing the love of his life to this crazy city, simply went into a full-scale text message meltdown, and as the pressure and frustration and uncertainty approached critical mass, Max took matters into his own hands. In a move that would later prove to be his salvation, he dashed the iPhone against a curb, shattering its innards and effectively silencing it forever.

He picked it up. The phone was silent, save for a slight rattle; the screen was dark. It no longer responded to anything; it was, in essence, nothing more than a very expensive way to prop up one of the legs of a wobbly table in a café.

Cautiously, he glanced around, completely undistracted, suddenly noticing the city of San Francisco around him as if he was seeing it for the very first time. The sounds of the City by the Bay enveloped him like a foggy blanket; the clanging and rattling of the cable car and the hum of the cable under the streets, the sound of the historic “F” line rumbling down Market Street, the seagulls, sirens, honking taxicabs, conversation snippets and fragments in Cantonese, Portuguese, German, Italian, Arabic, French, Japanese…music spilling out of nightclubs, the foghorns under the Bay Bridge, all these San Francisco sounds melded together into a dull roar that is the distinctive sound of this crazy American West Coast port city.

The streets took on lives of their own, as they were now real and tangible things, with real buildings and businesses, not little lines and on a little screen on a little handheld device. He walked and walked and walked, not really sure where he was, relying not on a digital assistant, but rather, his own wits and intelligence and sense of direction and smell (each neighborhood has its own distinctive aroma) and Actually Looking Up and Watching Where The Hell He Was Going. Instead of avoiding hills, he took the most direct routes, even it took him up an insanely-steep hill and down a winding stairway. Instead of relying on a taxicabs and crowded public transportation, he utilized his big strong legs and took deep, deep breaths of our fresh, clean, salty sea air. A gossamer veil of “convenience” was finally lifted, and he could see his newly-adopted home through eyes unfettered by technology and its accompanying distractions.

After he told me of his iPhone’s demise, I looked down at my battered Treo sitting on my coffee table. The trim around the screen is cracked and missing a large chunk, the edges are scratched, and since it’s a few years old, it sports an unfashionable stubby antenna that sticks out of the top like a horn. I‘m tempted to Bedazzle it and fill the hole with stick-on rhinestones, but that may push it over the threshold of Ghetto Fabulous, where it currently resides, into simply Ghetto Nasty. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve wanted to hurl it to the pavement as it freezes up.

For a second, I idly considered chucking the Treo into my fireplace. I’d be free of the incessant beeping and vibrating and buzzing that ghastly little object constantly emanates. It seems the only time it rings/vibrates is when I’m eating, sleeping, on the toilet, or having sex. I’m not kidding. If I head for the bathroom and leave my phone lying on the kitchen counter, as soon as my ass so much as touches the toilet seat it’ll start ringing. As if on cue, it unfailingly starts clamoring for my attention. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the throes of hot booty love, not wanting to stop, and have had to endure my phone screaming for attention the entire time in the other room, effectively killing the moment and ruining my Happy Ending.

I then thought of the consequences of incinerating my phone. The resulting explosion the lithium ion battery would make and the fumes and flames that would no doubt fill my living room and ruin a perfectly good evening, not to mention my sofa and new rug, made me reconsider. Besides, it was a Spare the Air Day in the City by the Bay, and subjecting my neighbors to and filling the skies above North Beach with burning plastic fumes, lithium smoke, and benzene compounds tugged at my verdant San Fransensibilities, and I reconsidered. Besides, the thought of using the grimy, tuberculosis and staph-ridden payphones at Columbus & Broadway made me shudder as much the thought of riding a 30-Stockton MUNI bus packed with coughing and hacking commuters through Chinatown in a rainstorm on a Monday morning.

No Thanks.

With the murderous thoughts about my phone rapidly dissipating and my sensibilities returning, I asked Max if he thought he had done the right thing. He obviously missed his device, and the occasional twitching and twiddling of his fingers told me he still wasn’t used to the idea of not having something to keep his hands occupied. After a bit of thought, he concluded it was probably one of the best things he could have done for himself, even admitting he did feel a bit selfish when he purchased it. Yes, it was nice, it was fun, it was convenient, it was everything he could have wanted. It kept him occupied, perhaps TOO occupied. However, it ended up isolating him from a world with which he desperately needed to connect. He simply didn’t NEED the iPhone; he succumbed to the slick advertising campaign and the promises of a better iLife with your iPhone in your pocket. He’s human. We’re all susceptible.

I, for one, applaud his decision. Was it a bit rash? Certainly. Was it expensive? Oh yes, as Max found out the next day when he visited the Apple Store to inquire about a replacement. (Side note: They told me the same thing a few years ago when an iPod of mine broke at the tender age of one month…fuck Apple and their smarmy minions of brainwashed iDorks who are comically helpless when their devices suddenly cease functioning…my next mp3 player is going to be an iRiver.) Was it worth it? Put it this way: Sometimes, when something in your life is preventing you from functioning normally in a society, whether it’s overeating, excessive drug, alcohol, tobacco, even internet use, you name it…it’s best to remove it completely, even if just for a short while. You can always “cut back” on it later. Not all of us are strong enough to simply use the “OFF” button, put down the bong, refuse that one last drink, say no to dessert, tap that booty just once more, or decline that last hit off the crack pipe. I, for one, am certainly no saint.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with iPhones or the people who use them. Since I don’t have one, iPhones don’t negatively affect me. To be honest, prior to this episode with Max, I didn’t think much of iPhones except for the fact I don’t own one, they’re a bit expensive, the commercials annoy me, and I simply don’t NEED one. Would I like one? Hell yeah. Would I probably become way too dependent on it? I suspect that would be the case. Will I own one someday? Probably. What can I say? I’m a hypocrite when it comes to stuff like that. I love shiny things that light up and make noises. I always have. It’s way too cool not to have one, but I’ll wait until a few generations of them have come and gone.

I will, however, keep this important fact in mind: After a huge earthquake or hurricane or tornado or blizzard, when there’s no power to recharge your battery, and the towers that keep your device connected are knocked out, you’re stuck with something not unlike what Max had after hurling it to the street, a very expensive, very useless piece of electronic junk that isn‘t good for anything but stabilizing a wobbly old table or keeping a door open. Times like that call for self-sufficiency and intelligence and the ability to think on your feet (or to pick up a goddamn phone book), not fickle, problematic electronic devices humankind somehow survived without for ages sitting idly in your hands while you wait for a rescue that may or may not ever materialize.

I have to admit I’m glad Max entered my life when he did; he’s a handsome, gentle, kind, sensitive, thoughtful, intelligent young man. He’s a gentleman who was raised right, and his manners are absolutely spotless. Acting rashly is completely out of his character; in fact, he rarely curses and still attends Catholic church on Sundays.

He did, on the other hand, teach me a very important life lesson that will probably lessen my frustration and affect how I deal with future annoyances, electronic or otherwise. Sometimes, symbolically dashing one of life’s iDistractions against a proverbial curb is the best thing you can do to regain your sanity and clarity. Of course, shutting it off and leaving it home on occasion works too, but that’s, like, hard.

Right?

Chad’s photo by Darin.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 5:17 am and is filed under guest star day, rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.