Last night I went to Music in the Park in downtown San Jose with my girlfriend to watch a Beatle's cover band (appropriately titled "The White Album Ensemble"). At the park there we met up with a middle-age couple who are friends of my girlfriends parents. They're the sort of baby-boomer generation types who grew up listening to the Beatles. You know - they actually remember when the White Album was new. They are also big Mac users, each one clutching their new iPhones.
Do you ever feel vaguely irked when you see these young kids, say on American Idol, who during a big power ballad sway their cell phones back and forth like they were holding a lighter? Well folks, that's just sooo 2005! During the final encore this middle-age couple whip out their iPhones, fire up an application which shows a video of a burning lighter and proceed to wave them back and forth as if they were real lighters!! Take that hipster kids! Nowadays we don't use cell phones as faux-lighters, we use cell phones projecting pictures of lighters as faux-lighters!!
The post modernism of it all baffled me in the way the definition of "is" baffles a semiologist. I'm not sure where we're going next ladies and gentlemen, but by the time we're middle-age I don't even want to know what kind of symbol-as-symbol-as-symbol we'll be waving around.
6 comments:
That's freaking hilarious, zrbo. I've heard of the little apps on the iPhones that show a picture of a lighter or dog or whatever. It's like those DVD's that people get so their more than adequately large flat screen will look like a crackling fire or a fish tank.
We can't be bothered to have real things any more. If middle-aged hipsters are spitting in the face of nostalgia to embrace a digital symbol of a symbol to out-do even the hippest young hipster, by the time we're middle aged we'll be holding up our iPhone2000's with pictures of the current iPhone with a picture of the original iPhone on it while were all at a concert for "The Rubber Soul Company" which is a cover band for "The White Album Ensemble".
I think you just blew my mind ninquelote.
*holds up image of head exploding on iPhone*
So I'm sitting at home last night enjoying a nice, relaxing dinner, when I suddenly get a text message that says "Im watching a Beatles cover band in san jose right now." Stop the presses, hold the phone, call the UN Security Council! I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing.
But tell me, how was it? What did they play? Anybody request any obscurities? I would've annoyed the hell out of those guys. "C'mon, you don't know how to play 'Hey Bulldog'? What about 'Blue Jay Way'? Can you do 'You Know My Name (Look Up The Number'?"
Well, my knowledge of the Beatle's is pretty slim compared to yours LE. There was Back in the USSR, Let it be, Come Together, SPLHCB (reprise), and A Day in the Life. And many more that I can sing along with but have no idea what their names are.
As it was a "Music in the Park" kind of event, it was mainly a lot of hanging out on a blanket, eating food, and sort of listening to the music as you talked to other people kind of thing. I didn't really 'watch' the band until near the end when I texted you. And shortly after that my mind was blown, as I mentioned here.
People don't smoke much anymore and bay area culture values gadgets as a symbol of cultural solidarity.
As a fan of burning things, fireworks, and explosions in general, the iPhone just doesn't do it for me, but then I never held a lighter at a concert anyway.
Actually, now that I think about I vaguely remember waving someone else's lighter around - but was it at a concert? Any recollection of this Ninquelote? It certainly sounds like something I might do.
Figuring your propensity for pyromania, yoggoth, it would not surprise me to see you waving various tools of fiery destruction though the air. However, no specific instances come to mind.
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