Purchasing an iPhone in the midst of the worst economic shitstorm since the other one is no small thing, especially for a struggling twenty-something with a propensity toward parking violations.  This would need assistance, a voice of reason.  It would require the counsel of Scott Bell: roommate, bass guitar player, paper merchant, and, for our purposes here, a numbers guy.  This is Scott toward the end of our journey.  Look how happy he is there enjoying a pint of Guiness and Harp:



Scott would be a crucial player in my fiscal analysis of the situation.  After all, I was about to purchase one of man's greatest achievements during one of the worst economic crisis' of the modern age.  That said, in the Great Depression of the 30's men were eating their boots -- during this one men are downloading Apps and watching the doped child's post-op babbling on Youtube.

I find my numbers guy still laying in his bed under the ladder, fully dressed from night before, idly gazing at the ceiling.  He grins sheepishly.

"Hello Joe."

"Hello Scott"

I brief him on the plan and promise food, which seals it.  Scott scoops his hat up off the floor, stands looking disheveled, then proclaims, "I'm ready to go.  Let's go." 

We go.

I anticipate a mountain of red tape and paperwork, but canceling my Verizon service is more convenient than ever at the Apple Store on the 3rd St. Promenade in beautiful Santa Monica, CA.  I'm helped by one of many hip twenty somethings in monochromatic t-shirts -- iPeople, if you will.

"I'll join your 3G network," said I, "but I'm keeping my awesome phone number."

Let him stick that in his core duo.

"Oh, we'll just port it over with our cellular telephone number porter.  The only thing you need is your account number from Verizon and then we start porting numbers."

And there it is, a catch to ruin the big adventure I'd planned for Scott on a Saturday.

My numbers guy paced behind me, distracted.  What good's a numbers guy if he doesn't remind you to bring your numbers?  Well, here's where the dream dies.

"I don't have my account number with me."

The iPerson doesn't blink. 

"No problem.  If you have an online account with Verizon you can simply log into your account using this Macbook Air and find your number there," said the monochromatic iPerson. 

The dream lives!

This guy's good, very convincing.  He makes me feel safe.  I stare around the store at the army of monocromatic twenty-somethings -- little trouble-shooting elves of the future. 

I can trust these people, look how efficient the all are.  They understand my plight as a consumer.  Hey, there's my friend, Aaron!

I was beginning to see my iPerson less like a big goofy looking skeeze-freak techdouche trouble-shooting gnome creature from the future, and more like a human -- an iHuman -- my iHuman. My iFriend... toy.  My iRobot.  Will Smith.  The Willenium.  Ahhh, Y2K was weird!.... See, my iPerson (I've named him Soto, but I don't tell him that) understands me, in the same way that Steve Jobs understands me, and I he, and we need each other during these hard economic times.  Has Benjamin Buford Blue taught us nothing?  If we're not going to lean on each other, we're gonna hafta sleep wit our heads in da mud. 



I was able to cancel my Verizon plan, port my number, and switch to the 3G network in a matter of minutes.  In a matter of a few minutes more I was carefully rubbing concentric circles around my iPhone screen with my American Apparel t-shirt.  I also bought a case that feels like the future.

I enjoy holding my iPhone, I mean, I am physically attracted to the idea of holding my iPhone.  I like the weight of my iPhone in my hand.  The soft texture of my hard black incase cradling my iPhone makes me want to pet it.  My iPhone whispers to me when I'm late for work, and nudges me when someone's trying to get my attention.  My iPhone keeps photo albums and shows them to all our friends.  My iPhone always knows of great restaraunt close by, and she's great with details too.  For instance, I can never remember dates, or phone numbers, or which Stiff Little Fingers album Alternative Ulster was on (Punk - The Jubilee), stuff like that... you get the idea.

See, my iPhone gets me, and I her.  We're all we've got.  Happy Valentine's day, iPhone. 

(Another great thing about the iPhone is bitch don't be runnin' her mouth, am I right?)

After a recent series of small technological disasters in my life, I realized that while I love technology, I'm bad at taking care of it.  If technology is rabbits, I'm John Malkovich -- I love petting the rabbits, but then I collapse their lungs with by big dumb mitts.

I recently fell asleep wearing my white Apple ear-bud headphones (petting rabbits), but at some time during the night I rolled over and yanked the computer off the table (collapsing rabbit lungs under the weight of my dumb mitts).  I woke to find the screen of my Macbook Pro looking like a modern art piece, smashed in the lower left corner, fracture lines webbing out against the gut-black sludge that now glows over the damaged half of the screen.  The other half of the screen is still working, and the computer itself is unharmed, but its a rather pathetic thing to behold.  See:



In addition to this technological disaster, the screen of my LG Cherry Chocolate cell phone has been blank for almost two weeks, meaning the phone works, but the screen does not -- my contacts are there, but I can't read them -- I can call out, but I can't see who's calling -- I can receive texts, am alerted when I receive a text, but I cannot read the received text.  This little racket was beginning to make me paranoid.  Imagine, people are trying to tell you things, and you having no idea what, or why, or how important it might be to your social or professional life, and no way of explaining to everyone why you've been ignoring them.  It isn't nut cancer, but still unnerving.

With no where else to turn, having broken most every gadget that connects me to the world, I decided to trade in my ol' click-wheel slider for the best damn gadget on the market, the Apple iPhone. 

Now, there are some (Maddox), who will claim the iPhone is not the best phone on the market.  These people are wrong, and their phones look like early VCR's (Maddox).  It should be noted that when last I ran into Maddox he was not using the phone referenced in the rather dated article there, but a contraption that resembled a Speak n' Spell.

"But it has the full version of Quake on it!," you (Maddox) insist.

"Quake!?  Nice.  Where does the Grolier's CD ROM go?"

"But there's no Grolier's CD ROM... oh, you're making fun of me."

"Your phone sucks."

"But I have the best page in the universe," you (Maddox) claim.

"You really don't.  Your page looks like it's run by one of the Smokers in the Post-Apocalyptic society, Waterworld." 

"I, Maddox, love the movie Waterworld, and The Postman was Costner at his best."

"Tom Petty."

With Maddox irrefutably bested, I set out to join the 3G network, and an age of man unlike any we have ever known -- that perfectly reflexive global society, where our collective consciousness wears an incase and syncs with my Google contacts.  Man is evolving for whatever Post-Apocalyptic society comes next, and seeing how well my keyboard fared against but one drop of water, let's hope it's not the Sea-Doo Apocalypse.  Oh, and thanks for tracking me down to deliver this credit card offer, The Postman, but have you ever heard of Mobile Me? 

*****
Stay tuned for my continuing coverage of the future.  Also, this:

http://www.kevincostner.com

The iPhone is greater than the moon landing. 

Exhibit A:

Gil Scott Heron's Whitey on the Moon

Also, it's high time Science began living up to its promises.  You talk big with your Hadron Colliders and Tofu, but dammit, Science, if we can go to the moon, a hoverboard is not an unreasonable request.  We have the internet in our hands, figure it out!

Also, the printing press is a terrible idea compared to the iPhone.  Steve Jobs makes Johannes Gutenberg look like... like a dumbass, that's what.  Shut up, Gutenberg.
 

In order to be a working actor in Los Angeles, I've had to become a working office manager.  Now, please don't be deceived, I'm terribly grateful to have a job and to be able to support myself while I chase the carrot, but, as is the nature of work, it can be frustrating and humbling at times.  These are the experiences that keep us from becoming douchebags, and for that, I am thankful. 

Office manager by day, improv and sketch comedian by night, these worlds could not be more different.  The following is a glimpse into that other life, the one that wakes me in the morning far before I am ready to be awake.

Tuesday, 13 January 2009: The P.O. Box

The task is simple enough: Locate post office box 490941 in Brentwood, retrieve all items, and return to the office. Also, ship two letters certified mail and make additional copies of suite and restroom keys. And grab lunch. You have 1 hour.

Traffic in Santa Monica is predictably terrible, and only gets worse approaching Barrington. It takes me much longer than expected to find the post office -- it turns out Barrington is much closer to the 405 than I anticipated, and the post office is much closer to Oregon (Barrington and Sunset). The intern's covering phones for now, but he's leaving at 1:30 to go find out if he has Pink Eye or just a pink eye, and when the phone starts ringing, my absence will be brooded over. I've gotta make this quick.

After several circles, backtracks, and illegal phone calls from behind the wheel, I manage to find the post office tucked neatly away behind a thick wall of pines with nary a flag pole in site.

I park in a hurry and jump out.

I'll jog. There, I'll just park and do a brisk jog across the parking lot, that'll save some time.

I jog briskly. I find this:

Now multiply this picture by thousands and thousands and you'll begin to see what I'm up against. That, and the number I was given is incorrect -- there is no 940941. But I don't know this yet.  I show the number to an employee and she gestures toward the thousands of post office boxes all around us.

"Look around here maybe... there's a lot of numbers, but I don't know if there is a 941..."

Me neither.

Head height.  Let's see, Stephen thought it was about head height... ok... hmm... what if he's shorter in his memory?  Or taller?  I bet he thinks he's taller.  This thing could be anywhere. How tall is Stephen anyways, 4 rows high, 5 rows? How many U.S. Post Office boxes would I stack on top of one another to equal Stephen? Or:

                                              Stephen divided by Post Office boxes = X. 

16?  That probably isn't the answer.  I doubt he's 16 Post Office boxes high.

I scour the stacks of numbers until they lose all meaning. I've forgotten how to count. I begin searching indiscriminately, hoping I'll recognize the shape and feel of the number when my eyeballs pass over it.  I try to think Zen, but I can only picture one of those tiny desktop Zen gardens.  There it is sitting on my desk beside my computer.  Tiny little stones.  Sand.  A tiny rake.  A tiny Zen gardener walks across a post-it-note, pauses to wipe his forhead, then picks up the tiny Zen rake.  He makes smooth straight lines in the sand with the rake. The phone rings, I answer it kurtly.  The Zen gardener covers his ears in vain, dropping to his knees, blood spewing from his ears.

Back in the Post Office I'm reminded of the game Mindsweep -- just one false move...

The numbers are crowding together.  I squint and try to focus on one number at a time.  This is taking far too long.  I'm going to get fired for doing my job.  This is unreasonable. Where's the card catalogue, the key, the legend, the Dewy-Decimal system? Where the hell is the Post Office box librarian?  Surely someone knows how these numbers are arranged!  I want to speak with a manager!  I want the Post Master General!

The numbers wiggle and shake and hurt my eyes.  I can't look.  I've got to stare at the ground to keep my sanity while I search for 940941. Then things get ugly. The 9's climb up on the 4's and commit lewd acts right in front of the 1's and 2's. And the rest join in, the 5's and 7's the, 8's too, all writhing about indecently. Someone should say something, there are mothers and babies in this place, respectable citizens. This is criminal!  This is unAmerican!  Attica!  Attica!

And then, I see it:

I insert the key and the door swings open revealing mail, glorious mail!

It turns out there is a 49941, but there is not a 490941.

****

Stay tuned for "iBama."