IPW

Gadgets

Men, the little cell phones you have clipped to your ears are stupid looking. We men like to jump wholeheartedly on electronic fads and their accessories but really, those things make you look like refugees from a trekkie convention or the loser in the Swat team movies who is too busy fussing with your earpiece to notice the time-bomb count down to zero. You will be beamed up really soon. And by being 'beamed up' I mean punched in the teeth. I suspect that many of our macho friends out there hailed the cell phone as the first desirable wearable accessory since the six-gun. At once symbolizing your wealth and virility, these gadgets are now on public display and are foolish looking on all levels. Clipped to your belts like holsters? Fastest call answerer in the West? Sad! That said, there is probably much money to be made in stylish leather holsters that can facilitate the lightning fast cell phone draw. With some of these stupid ring-tones I say the faster the better. Although one time I did see a group of little g's on the subway gathered around a new cell phone trying out the ring tones. They were quickly scrolling through each cloying digitized melody, clipping them short after a few notes until they came across a pleasant, if metallic, version of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" by Mozart. They were all quiet and listened to the ring tone in whole. When it finished they continued searching the new features.
I am not innocent when it comes to jumping on these stupid fads. For instance, ours is a 2.5 iPod family. Not being very coordinated, you will find me standing pidgeon-toed on Bedford Avenue, tongue at the corner of my mouth, trying to stuff the ear buds in my ears (why won't they stay put? Are my ears so freakishly huge?), unwrapping and organizing the unruly cord like a string of Christmas lights and squirreling the minute device away in an inner jacket pocket where it won't be easily stolen off my person. Meanwhile I'm blocking the path of other, cleverer iPod wearers: The Dominican man listening to rockin salsa, the Orthodox lady kickin Talmud on Tape, the ratty hipster with oversized aviator glasses listening to a Ramones tape on her walkman cause iPods are so 2005.
What is on my iPod? Something you can picture me dancing in silhouette to in front of a primary colored background? Nothing so interesting. I read an article in which the author asked random people on the subway what they were listening to on their iPods, his theory being that you couldn't tell just by looking at someone what they might be listening to. Strangely enough, all the examples he noted supported his hypothesis! Amazing. The punk kid was listening to "Old Man and the Sea". The suit was listening to Biggie Smalls. The intellectual black woman was listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd (Freebird!). These aren't the actual examples, the actual ones were much more interesting than what I can think up. Which means the reporter was much more creative than me because I think it was all totally invented when his hypothesis crapped out. Either he made it up or he asked three hundred people and reported the four most interesting results. Do I sound bitter? A little! Probably because if you asked the boring white guy in the brown jacket what I was listening to I'd say, Oh! I'm listening to "(insert boring white guy in brown jacket music)". "It's real neat!" I'd say, just before getting my iPod stolen from me by a mean looking guy with more interesting taste in music than me.
I saw this guy Karl (he will be known as Karl) at work wearing his white iPod declaring earphones an interesting way the other day. They were upside down, the thin white cords wrapped suavely behind his ears. I asked him what the deal was and he told me that they sound better that way. Karl being cooler than me, I decided to copy him. I flipped my earphones upside down and walked several blocks to meet Magda after work, the music sounding no different to me at all (maybe sounded a bit upside down?). Magda wasted no time telling me that I looked like a fool and that was the end of that.
So you see, I might try on these little accessory fads, but at least when someone tells me I look like a jerk I cut it out. That being said, Karl is a pretty big guy, so I doubt anyone will ever tell him the truth.