Goofball Jones

Imagine a hot, summer day….it’s around 2pm. The sun is glaring down and you can smell the hot-dogs cooking outside the ballpark as a crowd of kids huddle around the player entrance, looking to see their heroes leaving in hopes of getting an autograph. Scandal has shocked the game recently, but some are still hopeful.

As Google slowly walks out of the player locker-room into the street outside, his head held low and trying hard not to meet anyone’s eyes directly, a little boy walks up and tugs on his pants-leg.

“Say it ain’t so Google….say it ain’t so.” the little boy says, tears glittering his eyes. 

Google says nothing, but sadly looks away. Turning his back to the little boy, he continues down the path he set for himself and walks to oblivion.

There was a recent broadcast of This Week in Tech (TWiT) in which Leo Laporte expressed his concern about the Apple iPad, (which he admits he loves) being a “consumption” device and not one meant to create content. He said he was troubled by this and I’ve been reading the same thing on a number of blogs and opinion pieces; the iPad is just for consumption…as if this were some evil, twisted concept. Consuming information, and not being able to create it, has become a pariah for some strange reason. But only in relation to the iPad.

Yes, the iPad is mainly a consumption device. Let’s admit that right now. You consume information, in a myriad of forms, through it. It’s a reading machine. You can read the long drawn-out articles on the web that are just plain uncomfortable to read on a desktop computer…even a laptop. Normally I’ll only skim an article on the web when I’m at my desktop, but on the iPad I find myself reading whole articles from start to finish. This thing was built for reading! There’s books (iBooks, Amazon, B&N), magazines, RSS feeds, newspapers, forums, Twitter. That doesn’t even touch on the different apps for watching TV shows, news and movies. Radio also is “consumed” with this gadget and the list goes on and on.

So why the hand-wringing in calling the iPad a consumption device? Why is this such a bad thing? Where’s the indignation for an X-box 360? That big-screen TV sitting there doesn’t seem like much of a creation device either…and that’s been an consumption-only machine for over 60 years. Radios, novels, magazines, newspapers…all consumption, no creation. I’ve never heard someone complaining about reading Jaws and saying “wow, great book, but I wish I could create something on it instead of just reading.”

Are people complaining to just complain?

I was never a traditional comic book fan. I mean, I would would read a superhero comic from time to time while growing up, but they never grabbed me in any significant way. I was a lover of the printed word though, and I read books and short stories from a young age and that love continues to this day. I did have some love for the horror comic though, mainly the old EC Comics like Tales from the Crypt or Vault of Horror. I can’t remember exactly where or how I found these comics when I began reading them in the early 70’s, because they hadn’t been published since the 50’s. I can only suspect my older brother had gotten them somehow, and I’m glad he did. They didn’t center around the artwork of the comic but the content of the story they were telling. I mean, quite frankly the artwork in these magazines was pretty mundane, but the stories were anything but. It was my first lesson in substance over style. 

I still didn’t become a mainstream comic fan. The stories of the Hulk or the Amazing Spiderman still didn’t intrest me. The only comic magazine I bought on a regular basis was Mad, mainly because it was different and it had something to say. Sometime in the mid 70’s though I found in my brother’s stash of Playboys and Penthouses some Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers by Gilbert Shelton and a few Zap comics illustrated by R. Crumb, and that’s exactly what they did to me….they zapped my brain. Mixed in with my reading/education with the Playboys and the Penthouses was the wonderful world of the dirty and unhinged. The world of underground comics.

I gobbled up everything I could find by these artists and that’s how I remember reading them…not by the subjects, but by the artists. The drawings were great, but it was the content that grabbed me. They were so over-the-top it’s hard to describe in words. It’s just something you had to experience. I also became a fan of the erotic comic, which was like a story filled porn movie. Even when they were trying to titillate, they still had content of substance. They were still, for the most part, content driven. Near the end of the 70’s, while I was in a border school, I was introduced to Heavy Metal magazine and international artists such as Moebius and Druillet. Giger and Corben. I read every issue. Absorbed it. But looking back, I could tell it was starting to go from substance to style. The slick artwork seemed to take precedence over the story….and quite frankly, they were pretty thin stories. I didn’t notice it at the time, like a frog in a pot on the stove where the heat was slowly being turned up, I didn’t know anything was wrong until I was cooked. 

Style had taken over. And I suppose that’s okay in a way. The artwork is certainly nice to look at, and a talented artist can show a story from artwork alone, that is if they’re really gifted. But I wanted the whole package. I wanted excellent artwork and a compelling, intelligent story which would engage me like a novel or short story would.

That’s when I discovered American Splendor and Harvey Pekar.

I was looking at getting the iPhone 4. I currently don’t have any phone, but I do have the iPad and I love it….so naturally I would think that going with an iPhone would be a logical choice as I can use many of the apps I have on the iPad with the iPhone. 

But I also listen to people like Leo Laporte. He LOVES Android phones and talks about them all the time. So I looked into possibly getting an Android and this is what I found:

1. There is no “Android Phone”. With the iPhone you don’t really have to make any choices, it’s the iPhone. You get it, you use it. The only real choice is to either get the 16gig or the 32gig. You get the iPhone, you run the latest iOS on it.

Not so with Android. There is no one Android phone. So…do you go with the Nexus One? The Incredible? The Droid X? The Evo? The Eris? They are all different…some have different cameras, some have bigger displays. Some even have different UI’s….which brings us to #2.

2. Several different UI’s on Android. With the iPhone you have iOS…that’s it. Now some may say that it lacks customization and it doesn’t give users a choice, but on the Android you see where this becomes a quagmire. Some of the Android phones run Android 2.2, some run Android 2.1. Some don’t even run those versions. So when you get an Android you may or may not be running the latest software. You may or may not be able to run certain apps because you don’t have that certain OS version that it may need. And we’re not talking about older phones that may not be able to run certain applications like older iPhones do. Where’s Android 2.2 on the Evo? That’s a brand new phone, isn’t it? Why is it up to the phone company and manufacturer to insure the OS is upgraded?

Why do some phones have a different UI than other Android phones? Get an Evo and you get this pretty Sense UI on it. Have a buddy that has a Droid X? Sorry pal, your Android phone doesn’t run this. But wait, I thought it was all Android? Why do some Android phones run some things but others can’t? I want a Droid X with Android 2.2 and the Sense UI on it…do I have to jailbreak the damn thing just to do this? I thought this was all an open free-for-all system.  

To be fair though, there may be some confusion with the new iPhone 4 and the older iPhones. Some new games may need the gyroscope only found in the iPhone 4 for instance…but I think the API is that you can still run those games on the older iPhones, just not with the same level of control. In my opinion it’s still not as confusing as the myriad of different options that you get with Android…which is both a blessing to some and a curse to others. To me it’s a curse. I’ve always found that less options breed more creativity in me. I know that sounds paradoxical, but it works for me. 

Next time you hear someone talking about Apple’s “Walled Garden”, think of this:

You come into Apples walled garden…it’s a nice place. Big variety of plants and flowers and bushes and trees. Very clean place, very peaceful, very safe…calm…sunny, albiet with a lot of rules. HEY, get off the grass buddy, can you see that sign? HEY miss, pick up that soda can you just threw down and put it in the trash receptacle right over there…what the hell. YOU KIDS stop rough-housing and play nice!

But then people walking by Apple’s walled garden go “there’s a better park just down the street. It’s kind of cool…there’s no law there telling you what you can and can’t do. You don’t have “The Man” breathing down your necks. Go check it out”. 

So you head down to the the Open Park. Yes, look there, you can do whatever you want! Look, that couple is having sex right in the open in front of everyone. Look, that group of hoodlums is harassing everyone and throwing their beer cans everywhere. Oh my, all the plants are dying from everyone openly peeing on them. Oh sheesh, what did I just step in? That’s disgusting! Wait! Someone just picked my pocket….got all my cash and credit cards…WTF! Wha? This guy is saying I got a “real purty mouth…”

BTW, keep in mind that Apple’s walled garden is only for the apps that run on their devices…fire up Safari on the iPhone or iPad and you too can go visit Open Park and pee on the trees like everyone else. 

Everyone has come down on the privacy concerns over Facebook. How they want everything private, yet be able to share everything too. People are appalled when their bosses or potential employers look them up on Facebook to see what they’ve been up to. Doesn’t the solution to this seem so obvious to everyone now? LIE!

Seriously, use the non-privacy of Facebook to your advantage. Turn on everything to make your profile as assessable as you can, then lie your ass off.

Write how much you love your job and how great your boss is.

Write how this weekend you went down to volunteer at the soup-kitchen or helped illiterate people learn to read.

Post fake pictures of you just staying at home, reading a nice sensible book.

Write how you “don’t consider myself a prude, but I’m saving myself for marriage”.

Write how you can’t stand the taste of alcohol and would never think of ever doing drugs as it’s just not something you’ll ever be into, but it’s okay if others like that (as you don’t want to alienate people or be “holier-than-thou”).

Be as creative as you can, but don’t go overboard. Think of it as a fake personality. Invent someone who you think an employer would admire and want…then construct that person on Facebook, with your name. 

My wife and I and our 15 year old son went over to my in-laws house for Memorial Day yesterday. Living with my in-laws are my wife’s sister and the father of their baby. I’m not sure what else to call him because she seems ambiguous to him at best. I suppose “boyfriend” can be used, but since the only clue that they’re a couple is the product of their supposed love-making, I don’t want to presume. Calling him simply the “sperm donor” would be a little harsh, even for me.

My in-laws themselves are polar-opposites of each other. My father-in-law is the type of guy that would literally give you the shirt off his back…a real sweetheart. My mother-in-law though is the closest incarnation of Endora from the television show Bewitched as you can get. She fits the stereotype of bad mother-in-law to a tee…and I think she relishes her role. Needless to say we don’t get along, so I’m not sure why I just wrote it. 

My in-laws also like technology…but only in an esoteric sense, as they have no idea how to work any of it. They’ve had a wide-screen LCD TV for a few years now but they still haven’t understood the concept of “aspect ratio” when watching programs. They’ll watch a regular TV show that’s in the ratio of 4:3, yet fill it out to the full width of the screen…making everyone look stretched out. While I’ve tried to point this out to them, they say they don’t like the wasted space on the sides if they don’t. It’s almost like they want to say: “We paid extra for that wide screen and dammit, we’re going to use it!” 

So it was no surprise yesterday when we walked in the aspect ratio was off kilter. But they had gone an extra step this time. They had on the movie The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly which was being shown in anamorphic wide-screen. But they had somehow gotten their TV to swash even that. So even though it filled up the width of the screen, it was in ultra letterbox or something. One hit of the button the remote returned it to “original aspect” and it looked fine. Yet they had been so used now to everything looking squashed, they said it looked wrong. So the put it back and Clint Eastwood returned to looking like a hobbit with a cowboy hat.

I just kept my mouth shut at that point because there was no reason to try to explain, as it was obvious I was the only one that even cared. My wife said later what’s the big deal…and I guess she’s right, what is the big deal? I guess I strive to be right all the time that when I see something wrong, I make an ass out of myself telling them they’re wrong. Alienation, my constant companion.

So again, I kept my mouth shut. And when I couldn’t keep it shut, I kept it stuffed with hotdogs and hamburgers which always seem to turn cold mere seconds when they’re taken off the grill. In this house you have to get what you want to eat right when it’s made because they put all the food away 5 minutes after they set it out. I’ve literally been in the kitchen with a full spread of food laid out and filled my plate up, but when I come back for seconds it’s as if the food had never existed. The kitchen is spotless and everything has been put away. I’ve taken to just filling up two plates of food for myself to make sure there’s still something left out for seconds. It’s like you load up your supplies before heading out into the wilderness. It might also be the reason why I’m 300 pounds. 

Wired has this story about other companies working in their versions of the iPad.

And they’ll all probably fail.

For one, and many people don’t get this still, it has to be better than just the sum of it’s parts. It has to be better than just a spec-sheet. Everything has to come together to make a viable product, but what we’re probably going to see in the next year or so is everyone rushing to get something out there without thinking the whole thing through. I’d like to see someone come out with something new and different and stop trying to out-Apple Apple. Stop trying to make the iPad or iPhone “killer”…forge your own paths!

All my life, I’ve endeavored to be creative. I started out, around age 12, wanting to be a photographer and now that I’m 48 it’s still the thing I’m best at, artistically speaking. It’s a very expensive art though, in terms of the equipment needed to get the results that I want or see in my head. Besides, photography isn’t really an artform that one can really stand out anymore. The proliferation of digital cameras everywhere, there’s really nothing new I personally can bring to the art-form. Everything seems to have been done before so it will either come out as pretentious or derivative. 

So early on I’ve tried my hand at other forms of art. Writing, music, drawing, painting…all with limited success. I am incredibly lazy and since I have no ingrained talent to speak of, everything I do in those fields is an uphill battle. It’s hard work to be proficient in the craft of those arts…much less being good or even creative. Mediocrity springs from laziness I believe, at least in my life. Things don’t come easy so when I’m learning a new musical instrument for instance, I get frustrated that I’m not progressing quicker…so then I start looking at a different instrument to learn. Then it goes down the same road. Same with writing, drawing, 3D modeling…you name it, I’ve pretty much tried it and failed at it.

I’m a grand consumer of art though. I love watching movies to see how they lit the scene. How they chose the composition of the scene. It goes back to the photographer inside of me. I love reading books, especially literary fiction. Savoring every word that the author chose to use. I adore going to art museums and seeing the works of the masters…yet just a little sad since I can’t do any of those things. 

I know this is just an excuse. I know this little essay is to justify my laziness. If I were to pick one thing and stick with it, I might be able to do something to curb my creative hunger. But I always second guess myself. Instead of learning the piano, maybe I should concentrate on writing. Instead of writing maybe drawing. Instead of drawing I should pick up my bass and master that, or my guitar. 

Indecision…