Joining the 21st Century: My First Cell-phone

Technology has a way of making itself indispensable.   Perceived conveniences are quickly converted into perceived necessities (recently highlighted by the power outages we experienced this week: “You mean we can’t watch the baseball game tonight?!). 

Six years ago I still had dial-up Internet access and checked my e-mail maybe twice daily.  Now I sometimes check twice within the same minute.

In 2006, a friend of mine introduced me to a website called YouTube to show me a slide-splittingly funny skit from Sacha Baron Cohen’s character, Ali G.  Within six months or so, I was visiting YouTube nearly every day, and by now it’s so ingrained into my daily usage, I’d be hard-pressed to do without it. 

And now I’ve really joined the 21^st Century by purchasing my first cell-phone, nearly two decades after my father purchased his first mobile phone.  Yes, I was apparently the last man in America without one, and my daughters were unquestionably the last 13 year-olds on the planet without this All-Important-Basic-Right-Of-Every-Man-Woman-And-Child. 

My aversion to owning a cell phone over the years were met with a variety of responses:  one friend resorted to calling me Ted Kaczynski (known in most circles as the Unabomber).  Others were simply dumbfounded that I could function without one. 

“How do people contact you?”

“They call me at home when I’m at home.  Just like they did with you ten years ago.”

 “What if there’s an emergency and someone needs to contact you and you’re not at home?”

“Then they’ll have to call someone else.”

“How do you talk to people when you’re not at home?”

My flippant response was typically, “I don’t really want to talk to anybody anyway,” figuring that characterizing myself as a misanthrope would end the questions. 

But in truth, I just didn’t want to be tied to yet another piece of technology that I was living without quite comfortably.

I never wanted a cell-phone.  I couldn’t stand the moms who walked down the aisles of Target talking loudly to friends about personal issues.  Couldn’t stand the guy at the park who couldn’t tear himself away from his phone long enough to watch his son go down the slide.  Didn’t like my wife glued to her Blackberry when we were on a trip.

That all changed last year when a few logistical mix-ups with my daughters led to elevated blood pressure and unnecessary outburst by yours truly.  After negotiating with the girls about the issue for a while, last December I purchased three cell-phones with unlimited texting, one for each of us.

Expectedly, within a short six months, I have become tethered to the little beast. 

I love it.  I’m not crazy about talking on the cell-phone – the quality is poor and I don’t like being interrupted – but texting has now become a way of life, and though my fingers go at about half the speed of my girls’, I now send upwards of a dozen texts a day, more if there are logistical issues with the kids.  Now I can finally get a response from my wife while she’s tied up at meetings.  In January, I was able to give my daughter highlights of the Packers/Falcons playoff game while she was at a party.  And I’ve been able to keep in touch in a fun, quick way with friends.

In short, I’m now addicted to yet another electronic device.  Add it to the list.  Hell, I even caved last year and joined Facebook. 

What’s next?  I figure my next holdout is using Groupon.

“You haven’t used Groupon?  How do you shop?!!”

I’ll get there.  Just give me a few years to judge your addictions first before they become mine.

Exorcist Essay radio broadcast on 89.7 WUWM Milwaukee

Press play to listen to my essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM's Lake Effect program on June 20, 2011.

Still Haunted: The Exorcist Thirty-One Years Later

Recently, I saw a man dressed like Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.  He had the white makeup, the frizzy orange hair and the oversized bow tie, and looked kind of creepy, but not nearly as creepy as a different image the costume jolted from my memory: that of Linda Blaire as the possessed girl in The Exorcist, a film regularly voted as the scariest movie of all-time.  You’ll get no argument from me.  I haven’t seen the film in over thirty-one years, but I’m still afraid of ouji boards, furniture that moves inexplicably and pea soup. 

For reasons I can’t quite understand, CBS chose to air an edited version of the 1973 thriller on primetimeTV in February of 1980.  I was eleven, and edited or not, the horrific images I witnessed on our 19-inch Sony scarred my little brain enough to haunt my dreams for the next three decades.  I still can’t think about the movie without feeling like Satan is nipping at my heels.  My sister, who had watched the movie two doors down at a friend’s house, was so terrified to come home that night, my mother had to stand on our front porch and shout out, “It’s okay, Ellyn.  I’m right here.  You’re almost home!”

I’d first been made aware of The Exorcist when I was six.  My family lived in Menomonee Falls, and the nearby Victory Drive-in Theater on Lisbon Road was showing the film uncut, in all its devilish glory, which was fine for those who chose to pay their hard-earned money on a two-hour fright fest, but not so fine for the unfortunate residents of nearby Honeysuckle Lane and – get this – the eerily named Blair Lane (talk about omens!).  These two roads bordered the back property of the drive-in theater, which meant that families who stepped outside to enjoy a warm summer evening were instead greeted with a giant possessed girl’s spinning head and projectile vomit – all from the comfort of their own backyards. 

I imagine parents tucking in their children that summer saying, “Sleep tight.  And whatever you do, don’t look out your window.”  Had I lived in one of those homes, I’d probably be reading this essay to you from an asylum. 

Why my mother allowed me to watch such a disturbing film is a topic probably best left for my therapist, but in my mother’s defense, I should come clean and admit that even though I was petrified after watching The Exorcist on that Tuesday back in 1980, that didn’t stop me the following night from watching the network debut of a different movie.  You guessed it.  The Exorcist II.

To be Fourteen and Inspired

In a New York Times opinion piece last week, David Hajdu wrote about how the music we’re exposed to as fourteen year-olds correlates with the creative output of tomorrow.  Fourteen is an age for developing personal tastes, and as artists like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson turn seventy, it’s interesting to see how rock and roll’s infancy influenced and inspired these great artists when they were fourteen, allowing them to envision a world that up until then didn’t exist.  One minute they were listening to Perry Como and Nat King Cole with their parents, and suddenly Elvis burst onto the scene, forever altering the musical construct.

A friend of mine with whom I graduated high school pointed out this article to me, and then made mention of who was big when we were fourteen years-old.  He wrote facetiously, “Other than Juice Newton and 38 Special, I just don’t see it.”

Perhaps, though when I think back to 1981 and 1982, “Queen of Hearts” and “Hold on Loosely” aren’t the first songs that come to mind.  I’m thinking more like “Subdivisions” by Rush, “Shock the Monkey” by Peter Gabriel, Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out,” Prince’s “1999” and Duran Duran’s “Rio.”  But you could just as easily think of “Back on the Chain Gang” by the Pretenders, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash or “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes.  There was plenty of stuff – both good and bad – to capture the imagination of a young pimple-faced soul at the time.

You could make the argument that after the initial rock revolution, there were so many genres and sub-genres of music that it was difficult for a particular band or artist to be life-altering the way, say, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis or Buddy Holly were back in the day.  If you ask a hundred 70 year-olds to name the influential artists of 1956, I bet you’ll get the same answers nine times out of ten.  On the other hand, try asking a hundred 43 year-olds to highlight the music of 1982, and I bet you’ll get ninety different answers.  There was just so much to choose from, and so much of it could have been considered trailblazing at the time, inspiring future artists to take up a guitar, a synthesizer or a saxophone, but none of it was MOMENTOUS (with the possible exception of Thriller, though I’d happily exclude this from my playlist).

Today, now that the digital revolution has firmly taken hold, music is even further diluted.  I recall hearing stories about how in 1967 St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band could be heard up and down college campuses, and any summarization of my freshman year of college wouldn’t be complete without mentioning The Joshua Tree leaking through every doorway of my dormitory.  But today, I’m not sure there’s an artist that could command that sort of widespread appeal, not due to a lack of artistry or genius, but due to a fundamental change in the music industry.  My daughters turn fourteen this year, and there isn’t an artist that appeals to their class on the whole – tastes are all over the place.

So what about 1981 and 1982?  Did those years inspire the great artists of the next two decades the way 1955 and 1956 did?

Well, they must have made an impression on someone, because here are the artists who turned 14 during ’81 and ’82:

Kurt Cobain

Dave Matthews

Thom Yorke (of Radiohead)

Billy Corgan

Liz Phair

David Grohl

Gwen Stefani

Perhaps not in the same league as McCartney, Dylan and Simon, but still, not too shabby.

Broadening My Lexicon essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM Milwaukee

Press play to listen to my essay broadcasted on 89.7 WUWM's Lake Effect program on May 13, 2011.