What Did We Do Before?
Damn LJ won't space my paragraphs properly.
Yesterday our friend's Tom & Sue drove up from Tucson for an evening blues show, late dinner, and then drove back. That's a lot of road for a night out on the town, more than 200 miles round trip, but the act was worth it. Cheryl and I took the light rail from Tempe to central PHX. T&S picked us up at the station 3/4 of a mile from the venue. The Rhythm Room is in a tough neighborhood. That seems to be the MO for most good blues clubs, a dive bar in a bad hood. The RR celebrates their 20th anniversary this week as the best blues club in this city of millions.
I gave Tom the crossroads for him to key into his GPS. What did people do before that shit was invented? I find it strange that adults who navigated 40 or more years without the aid of satellite mapping suddenly can't leave town without their global positioning system. WTF? Tom is a highly capable, educated man ... but he can't find a crossroads in our city grid? This valley was developed like a checkerboard. All main roads go north-south or east-west, easy to navigate.
Tom defended his GPS. He needs it for business travel.
I still prefer paper maps, even if I print them from the internet. I will NEVER own a GPS and my people have been told to never buy one as a gift for me. I don't need to spend money like that. I have other shit to waste my paycheck on, like music.
I recall feeling the same way about cell phones many years ago. When I finally got one in 2000 thought I was the last adult on earth to sign an evil cellular contract. I wasn't. There are still tribes in the Amazon without cell service. I heard the Gobi Desert is a cold spot.
Now I feel naked when I leave home without my simple cell phone ... but I've avoided the need to own a smart phone. I don't see the point of having the internet everywhere I go. I'm not THAT important. I don't need to be in touch with the WWW 24/7/365 and I'm certainly NEVER to sign up for a Twitter account.
Nothing is more disinteresting to me than an on going narrative of everything anyone does every day of their lives .... not even the people I love .... never mind some dipshit pop culture celeb who can't compose a sentence. I realize instant media helped spread and fuel revolution in the Arab world, I get it, but I'm not riding the short attention span blogging wave. Besides, I can't say 'hello' in 140 characters.
What did we do before this technology?
When I was a kid we had a half dozen TV channels, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and a couple of crappy signal UHF channels out of Boston. They had the late night horror and Sci-Fi flicks I loved, in glorious fuzzy, grainy black & white. We had a handful of decent radio stations. FM was cool back in the day.
Now we have satellite radio stations for ever genre and sub-genre. We have over 200 cable television channels in high def and there's barely a program worth watching.I think a teenager today would take their angst-ridden life if you took away their 21st century media. I remember when mom kicked us out of the house in the 60's because we watched too many cartoons. So we played outside, started pick up baseball games, built tree forts, and found adventure and trouble in nearby woods and swamps on the edge of the city. When was the last time you saw kids playing sandlot baseball?
We didn't text, Google or Facebook. You rode your bike to your friend's house, without a helmet, and knocked on their door. There we no video gaming systems, not even Pong or Asteroids and no game levels to achieve unless you count how many trees you climbed, or what high branch you reached without breaking a leg. Do kids still climb trees? I bet their are villages in Indonesia where kids continue play in the forest.
Some day I will probably break down and get the web on my phone. I'll make up some lame excuse like keeping up with baseball scores and those odd moments when you can't think of the third male lead in some 1970's hollywood film, and we need to know that NOW. It might also become useful when you're downtown after a blues show and want to find a spot to dine.
The Tommy Castro Band was outstanding as always. The crowd at the RR was pumped with energy. We dined at Alice Cooperstown after the show. Alice has an excellent Megadeath Meatloaf. I get it almost every time we go there.What did we do before the days we could spew nonsense like this on the internet, on a late night whim? I probably mumbled to myself.
CB Radio. That's what my dad did. He would have loved the internet, but I guaranfuckingtee he would never have used GPS.