Number 9, Number 9...

Random stuff...

"It was 40 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper told the band to no longer play..."

Well, bad rephrasing of Beatles lyrics, but it's been that long since the Fab Four broke apart. And today is a big time day for fans of this Group That Never Seems to Go Away. All their albums have been remastered and are being reissued once again on CD, either individually or in this big honkin' box set. I figure 09-09-09 was picked as the date to tie in with that block of noise that is a particular cut on The White Album (number 9....).



Also EA/MTV Games' Rock Band has its Beatles edition released today. Rock Band and Guitar Hero (by Activision) of course are the two competitors in the Living Room Rock Star Sweepstakes. Guitar Hero 5 came out about a week ago.

It's all funny to me, because rock 'n' roll itself may be dead, after a 50-year run as the dominant music of youth. Music has been so fragmented into multiple types, that any games or album re-releases or popular music themed restaurants 'n' T-shirt stands seem to be Baby Boomer tactics to keep their music alive and to recruit their children and grandchildren. It seems to be working, too, 'cause Guitar Hero already hit $1 billion in revenues by January 2008. Rock Band hit $1 billion in 2008 but profits for both games have dropped as the recession continues in the U.S. Rock Band was predicted to lose $400 million for EA in 2009.

The Beatles are expected to top the charts with their remastered package, a fact not surprisingly marked by media in their home country, such as this article.

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This special date, 09-09-09, is also a media and new release day for my Least Favorite Company, Apple Inc. They have an event going on 10 a.m. PDT or 1 p.m. my time (Eastern Daylight). They're supposed announce some new iPods and iTunes 9. They probably still don't have The Beatles on iTunes, though, because the event's theme is "It's only rock 'n' roll, but we like it," a redoing of a Rolling Stones favorite.

Yesterday I stumbled across yet another goofball pursuit of Mac fans while trolling the net. This one is taking pictures of Steve Jobs' Mercedes Benz, which doesn' t have any license plates and is often parked in a handicapped space, even though he has no disability that I know of, though he did have a liver transplant and probably is still healing up even as he returned to work at the Fruit Co. Thing is, "Jobso" has been parking in handicapped spaces since the 1980s, when he was in his 20s and in robust health. And the guy can't park a $150,000 Benz worth a damn, as seen below in an image by brianamerige. The car is a Mercedes SL55 AMG.



Just for the hell of it, I am also posting a picture of my car. This is how the other half lives -- no frills, just basic wheels! The lot is at the store where I work, which is old, pockmarked asphalt and not some sleek northern California computer headquarters. My car is a 2002 Chevrolet Malibu, which was a year old when I bought it from a dealer in Sterling Heights, Michigan. It has the proper Michigan license plate, with up-to-date year tag. (California requires plates front and back, but Michigan just the back plate.)



If my car were in excellent condition, the Kelley Blue Book retail value would be about $4,900. Since part of the front bumper is broken in half (because I once accidentally drove over a concrete parking barrier in front of space), and there is a weird circular scratch on the trunk lid, I don't think I could get that much. But two things -- I try to park as straight as possible, and I never park in handicapped spaces anywhere. Around Detroit you will get ticketed for that if you don't have the permit, and since I don't know any judges or have millions to pay off tickets, and am not an arrogant Silicon Valley dickweed, I just use the regular spaces.

Picking at More Apples

I wait way too long between posts, but after watching TV a few days ago I have to continue wondering why Hollyweird is just so in love with Apple.

Fortunately, Steve Wozniak has been voted off Dancing with the Stars, where he never belonged in the first place. I pleaded for this in my previous post, and it took about two weeks too long to oust him.

I watched two of my usual NBC shows today on NBC's Web site, part of what could be the present time's "Must See TV," and both of them had Apple references. Arrrrgh! I drank half a bottle of wine afterwards just to purge the memories from my head, but alas, I couldn't completely stop them, so what I do recall is below.

30 Rock has made Tina Fey, former Saturday Night Live head writer, ready for prime time, as she again plays a head writer at a late night show at NBC.  In the most recent episode (from 9 April), "Cutbacks," Liz Lemon, her character, must submit a smaller budget for her show to George the Pharmacist from Desperate Housewives (well, Roger Bart as an outside consultant).

To try and win him over, she goes up on stage in her studio, clad in black turtleneck, dark jeans and white sneakers -- the exact same thing Steve Jobs always wore at his keynotes.  Liz stands before a huge stage, saying TGS, the fictional show in 30 Rock, offers comedy, variety, etc., using slick, shining graphics like you'd see on a Mac or an iPhony. Soft electronic music plays in the background, and a montage follows of sketch highlights -- it's like horrid Saturday Night Live outtakes, they're so hokey.  George the Pharmacist is not impressed at all and tells Liz make sure she submits her reduced budget ASAP.

30 Rock is guilty time and time again of Apple butt kissing. All the major characters in the show use Macs and have iPhonies as their mobile phones. I mean, every single character, from Alec Baldwin's high muckety muck Jack Donaghy with his iMac on his desk, to Liz's brief boyfriend, Don Draper (I mean, Jon Hamm), who must have ridden in on a time machine from Mad Men in 1962 to 2009 New York City. They're all Apple Heads. No one doesn't have an Apple product in 30 Rock, except maybe the kind, naive NBC page Kevin (an always good Jack McBrayer).

One show that officially has Hewlett-Packard computers in product placement is The Office, a sister show to 30 Rock. When you're in Dunder-Mifflin' s offices, everyone has HP desktops, and many employees can be seen playing Solitaire instead of working! Outside the office of The Office, though, several are Mac nerds, including salesman Jim Halpert (John Krasinski), and Mike Scott (Steve Carell), former branch manager.

Steve recently quit in a conflict with Stringer Bell from The Wire, who somehow survived getting shot by two hitmen, to become Mike's boss. (Idris Alba is actually a very good actor from England, who like Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House, or Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, does an American accent flawlessly.)

Mike Scott is trying to start up his own "Mike Scott Paper Co.," with Jim Halpert's fiancee, Pam (Jenna Fischer),  and former Dunder-Mifflin temp, then vice president, Ryan (B.J. Novak).  In the episode "Dream Team," Mike's first office is in his condo, which leads Pam to remark as she passes Mike's garage, that Apple also started in a place like that. Only you can see that the Mike Scott company will fail, while Apple was in the right place at the right time -- Silicon Valley, just as people were becoming interested in small, portable computers. And you know what? Ford Motor Co. also started in a garage, so take that, Californy and Hollyweird Mac nerds!

Mike also had a MacBook Pro sitting on his dining room table as part of his company's equipment, and in one episode a long time ago said he made a little movie for his employees "on my Mac." So they do love their Fruit Co. nonsense, and we have to suffer through these references endlessly in shows, though still only about 5 percent of t

he world, and 12 percent of the USA, is in the domain of Mac.

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Then things go from the ridiculous to the dangerously cult here in the real world. PodBrix is a company that has sold hundreds of little figurines based on Fruit Co. culture for the past few years, all constructed of LEGO blocks. Tomi, the designer responsible for this nonsense, now has a Steve Jobs doll -- or plush, if you want -- for sale.

A doll. Of a CEO. Of a for-profit, multinational corporation. 

I have never seen dollies that looke like Jack Welch of GE, say, or Lee Iacocca or even the legendary Henry Ford, and hopefully never of Steve Ballmer, the bald freak from Microslop who reminds me a lot of simple Kevin on The Office, a guy who can't even transfer phone calls. I mean, come on now? Has anyone before this ever decided the world needed a doll looking like a business executive, even one with as much undeniable yet nauseating charisma as Steven Paul Jobs? 

My niece Lissa always said dolls creeped her out due to their resemblance of people, and this is one that definitely makes my flesh crawl.  In the images on this page, where the crabby-eyed bastard is hanging out with other plushes, I'd scream, "Skedaddle, Yoda! Run away, run away, Mario! Book it, Hello Kitty! Leg it out of there, Link!" RUN!!! You know, like Talking Heads sang: "Psycho killer ... fa fa fa fa fa fa better ... run away!" Or Monty Python's warning to "run away, run away" from that vicious rabbit.

Tomi has put Jobs with a circa 1984 Mac, just to ram the point home about who the plush is. Tomi also claims that "Plush Jobs loves you"; but I need to correct you, Tomi: Jobs doesn't love you, he loves only yer money.

Jobs is 28 bucks, which I'd rather go spend on a dinner and movie on a cool late spring Michigan night.

On the other hand, in something that has nothing to do with Apple, I found this page of disclaimers, at the site of a Washington state man who wrote synopses of Shakespeare plays, to be quite funny and original. 

Rotten Apples, Everywhere

Holy Kee-rap! I go away for a couple weeks on vacation from cyberspace, from high-tech nonsense, and find out there is the stink of Cupertino all over. I shouldn't be surprised, however, because the first quarter of every year the peoples at Apple announce updated computers and sometimes a stray iPod.

Well, there are three Rotten Apples on this day, and due to my little escape to nowhere, I'm late on this, but I'll say them anyway.  No discourses on pop culture or conspiracy theory today, just rants on my favorite thing I love to hate, Apple Inc. I won't even bother with the new Macs, because I don't feel like it. But here are the things that did stick in my throat...

1. The iPod with No Buttons -- WTH? (Nicer cousin of WTF). The third generation shuffle has no buttons, nada, goose eggs. Just a shiny little rectangle thing with a clip on the back and that Bitten Out Fruit only, no words or anything, since that Fruit is so recognizable to people, I'd say. Introduced early March, this stinko can be controlled only with Apple earphones or third-party ones with a special Apple Only Official Authorized Certified

 Teeny Weeny Chip®. The new shuffle is also even smaller than the previous clip-on thing that I swear once tried to bite me at a Best Buy store, but that's another story.  It is but .7 inches wide by 1.8 inches long and .3 inches thick -- Completely Ready for Easy Losing.  Such an elegant little thing to lose, too, huh?

Stainless steel in black or silver replaces the aluminum of the second generation, which, if you dig a little on the Fruit Store site, can still be bought.

This product is typical quirky, vintage Apple, which comes up with something bizarre and shoves it down people's throats.  Like IKEA, Apple always makes these weird things with spacey designs that leave you scratching your head. IKEA makes pillowcases with this end flap thing I've never seen anywhere else, and the Fruit Co. sells an MP3 player with no screen -- and now no freakin' control buttons, except the power/shuffle/play in sequrence one at the top.

The shuffle also talks, probably in a voice like the cell phone of my boss of my friend Cross-Eyed Julie Novak, which sounds like a drunken female android: "Lossss offfffff suhhhhr-vissssssssssss" ("Loss of service," what it says when the signal's gone).  Or maybe like one of my niece's old toys, the Family Talking Dollhouse, which had these cheerful robot voices that turned on every time you moved a person around the rooms and put him/her on a activation base: "I'm--going--to--the--kitch--en."

VoiceOver is Apple's trademark for this thing, which tells you song, artist, track, etc. If you think about it, this is long overdue, as the shuffle never did have any friggin' screen and simply too random of a MP3 player for anyone to have in his/her possession.  I can just imagine -- VoiceOver is activated, and it sez, "Awlllllllllllllll--You--Need--Izzzzz--Love--Beeet--tulllz--Magi--Kull--Mizzz--tuh--reee--Toooo---Wer...."

The only thing that impresses me is that the shuffle now has 4 gigs of space, what you found just two years ago in a second generation nano. Otherwise, I would probably have a heart attack if someone tried to clip one of these little bastards to me. Or else throw it down the nearest sewer.

2. iPhony 3.0, oh my! People are raving about this. About an operating system. For a cell phone.  But of course I'd get the answer, "But this is Apple..." because the craziness of the Fruit Cult is that raging and thinks its products are so amazing. I mean, remember when they called the first iPhony the "Jesus phone," apparently because it was like the Second Coming of cell phones or maybe the savior of the cellular industry?

Announced on St. Patrick's Day, of all days, 3.0 includes things that should have been on the phone from the get-go in '07, like cut and paste, system wide searching and the ability to put images, videos, etc. in text messages. 

On its site, Apple sez there are 100 new features in the software, which will come out in June, probably with even more scary iPhony handsets that will remind me to stay away those malls in my area with a Fruit Store or AT&T shop therein. As part of this, Fruit Co. also released a new software development kit for all those thousands of loons who are doing the third-party applications for the phone.

I am not impressed with this, as you'd guess. But I had to begrudge 'em a little with these near-future things that will turn the iPhony into a blood pressure cuff or a glucose meter for diabetes monitoring. That's freaky, but, I'll admit, innovative. Has anyone ever thought to check their blood sugar with a BlackBerry or a Palm before? I don't think so. But it still doesn't make me want to throw away my Razr for a Fruit handset. Mainly because I heart my Razr, and have this little thing called a Contract binding me to it.

Gizmodo goes on and on about this future operating system here.

3. Dancing Fool -- Last, and certainly not least, is the horror pictured at right. I about fainted

when I heard that Stephen Gary Wozniak was going to be on ABC's Dancing with the Stars? What on earth? Did I hear you correctly? Is this an early April Fool's joke?

Nope. Since 6 March 2009 people have been subjected to this super-geek's struggles in the national ballroom. As many guessed, Woz can't dance. What he is doing on the floor, nobody really knows. Maybe Silicon Valley Billionaire Geek Aerobics? And it's worse now that he's hurt his knee.

As shown, Woz is dressed for dancin' in a pukey shirt in a shade of pink suitable only for girls age 6 and under. Who picked this out for him? He looks like a walking super economy size bottle of Pepto-Bismol! Bulky guy + hot pink satin = nightmare you have on a cold dark winter's night.

The funny thing about it is he looks so damn happy, as much as he does when zipping every which way on his Segway and promoting computers in the classroom.

You see him in the green room backstage at the show, with the other dancers and celebrities, and he always has this same shit eating grin on his face. It's almost like he didn't listen to his mom that if he didn't stop making such and such a face so much, his face would freeze up that way.  Even though he has no dance skillz, Woz appears to be having the time of his life and trying to seriously listen to his partner, Karina Smirnoff. But sometimes people just can't learn things. I can't sing, walk a tightrope or code in Linux, and never will. Woz can't ballroom dance and never will, either.

Watch enough of this, and you'll want to buy and consume that other Smirnoff available on the shelf behind the counter of your local party store.

After blundering about in a samba last night and getting a crappy 10 from the judges, I am very sure this geek will be sent packing for his mansion in Los Gatos, Californy this week. When he did a move called "the worm" across the floor, he may as well have been groveling across the floor toward the judges, begging for mercy to no longer wear corny formalwear and scare 5-year-olds into thinking that maybe they're seeing one of Maurice Sendak's Wild Things in person on their TVs in a the midst of a seizure.

May Dancing with the Stars fans be a bigger force than the Apple Heads in voting him away. That's the key. All DWTS fans must fight against the Apple Cult to get rid of this guy, or he's going to hang around like day old Wonder Bread. Please send him back to Segway polo and shooting his mouth off at tech conferences, pretty please? And while they're at it, send Steve-O from MTV's Jackass home, too.  These guys are just too scary.