You can have my Gadgets .... when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.

Hi Carolyn,










Thanks for getting me up to speed, a couple of blogs back, on the the perils of being Matt Damon.  Actually, it sounds like Mr. Damon is a genuine trouble magnet. If I saw him coming I'd be going the other way. Heck, he even gets into trouble off planet! 


 He does  have  that " Aw shucks.." disarming innocence about him, though.


 I  admit that I can’t think of a movie I’ve seen with Matt Damon that has left a mark on my cinematic consciousness. The closest I’ve come is the one  with Robin Williams where he was a janitor or something like that. In fact, I’m going to go check IMDB right now, to see which movie it is.


Be back in a flash…..







Okay … it was “ Good Will Hunting”. I guess the fact that I had to go back and look it up pretty well says everything about how it affected me, eh? I keep getting him mixed up with Ben Stiller or Ben Affleck. This is not to say that they are cookie cutter actors - it’s more indicative of my not being in tune with the current A-list big screen young bucks.

　Your minimalist take on cell phones got me to thinking, though.

I am anything but a minimalist when it comes to gadgets. If it’s small, shiny and has blinking lights, I’m on board. Oddly enough, that iphone I have is seldom used as a bona fide phone - unless you include texting with friends and family as phonecalls. In fact, I couldn't even tell you my cellphone number, offhand. Yet,  anytime I'm about to go out the door  into the big, crazy world I instinctively slap my pockets checking  for three things - my wallet, my keys, and my iphone.

 What I really use it for more than anything else ( and I didn’t  realize this, until your noting how you are happy as a clam with your clamshell model, made me look at my usage habits ) is as a radio. Three of my most frequented places on a regular basis are the SiriusXM, Stingray Music and CBC Radio apps - even in Mexico.  Sure, it gets used as a camera,  a photo album, an organizer, a shopping list maker and such - but I spend a lot of time on my newest of mass media devices accessing stuff on the first and oldest mass medium.

 

My gadgetlove is no surprise, though since I was in a gadget friendly environment from the start. We grew up in a three generation house which had been my paternal grandfather's home initially. He had always been a radio nut and had a big old Heathkit shortwave and AM radio that he had built from a kit and used constantly long before his grandkids came along. For him it truly was magical to hear voices coming out of a box and ultimately out of the air. 




 By the time my older  brother and I encountered it it was relegated to the attic. It still worked, though, and when we attached a wire to the aerial and then stretched it across the roof we were able to enter a wondrous land, especially after the sun went down and reception dramatically improved.

At night, it could pick up AM station WLS in Chicago and disc jockey Dick Biondi. It was my first door into Beatlemania. Even before the Fab Four appeared everywhere over here they were being played by WLS. The first airing of a Beatles record in the U.S. ( and by association, Canada ) was in February of 1963 when Biondi played Love Me Do. Alas, I wasn't there that night, but the rest, as they say,  is history.

　

While we're on the topic of radio history - as in the history of the very first mass medium - there's a documentary by Ken Burns that covers part of it in his unique style. It's titled " Empire of the Air " and it's quite interesting for any of us who did/do struggle to educate the minds of tomorrow whilst they endure a constant and highly sophisticated multi-media barrage on a daily basis. I believe it's now part of a PBS series of Burns docs known as " American Stories "

　

Sometimes, I think that one could get a pretty thorough, multi-faceted and rich introduction to American culture, and it's seminal influences, just by watching the collected video works of Mr. Ken Burns.

　

　

Anyhow, lets's  get to the two  Twains I want  to include here, since I missed one last time around.


 The first one came ( and is still coming ) from my fun dealing with the new Windows whilst attempting to move pics about. I'm still finding that there is a bit of the " it ain't broke so why fix it " about this method of importing pics ( and the final result may have some clumsy spacing and formatting because of that )

In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.

　

The second one fits this entry better since a fair bit of time and space was spent in the past, therein.

　

　

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

Okay, that's my two cents worth.....


(although, at the current Canadian/American exchange rate that would be about 1.45 cents )

Don. 

All images sourced from Google Images.

Fig. 1 - cinemablend.com

Fig.  2 - cultofmac.com

Fig. 3 - siriusXM.com

Fig. 4 - music.stingray.com

Fig. 5 -  CBCRadio.com

Fig. 6 - Wikipedia.org

Fig. 7 - pbs.org