my iLife

I have owned and loved a lot of Apple products, many of them introduced by Steve Jobs.

Performa (mid-1990s) My first computer and it will always hold a place in my heart. I learned Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, and basically everything on this computer. I was introduced to video games (beyond Solitaire) like MYST and the Sims and Caesar 3. I lived in Brooklyn and went to New York City's first Apple Store in midtown and put in my order to have it delivered. It came in the hugest box I ever saw and I spent a very happy day unpacking it and setting it up.

Powerbook G3 (in 1998, the bronze "Lombard" edition) I was sick of desktop life and wanted to go portable - I have never gone back (at home — a desktop was unfortunately unavoidable at the office.) I bought this one way downtown at J&R Music World and carried it home on the subway, clutched tightly to my body.

Powerbook G4 titanium 17" (2004) I got this at an Apple store in Virginia (D.C. still doesn't have one) when my G3 powerbook was slowing down and my daughter arrived — perfect excuse to get a new computer and load it up with tons of new baby photos. I still think this design is one of Apple's most beautiful.

iPhone 3G (2008) I retired an MP3 player and my digital camera and just used the iPhone for everything. It's still an indispensable part of my daily life.

MacBook Pro 13" (2009) My lifeline, and faster and even more portable than the 17". I justified this new computer when I wanted to still be able to work on the computer during the evening, while my daughter was playing, but wanted to be able to sit on the couch, be in the same room with her, wherever she was at the moment.

iPad (2010) My daughter has ended up using this more than I do, but I do read books on it, check the internet, play games, etc.

iPhone 4s (In another week or so) I've been wanting to update my iPhone for quite a while — I cracked the glass a month or so ago when I dropped it in the garage. I want the better camera, iCloud, etc.

Honorable mention - how fabulous is iTunes? — I haven't bought a CD in years.

Thanks, Steve. For everything.

r.i.p. steve jobs : (  ♥

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"—Steve Jobs to John Sculley, from Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple

I'm so sorry for the family of Steve Jobs, who have lost someone very special to them. I'm also sorry for the rest of us. Steve Jobs truly was an original thinker and he changed the way Apple and the rest of the industry did business. Everyone else is still trying to catch up to products he made indispensable in our lives. It's not that there aren't other innovative minds out there, at Apple and beyond. But the combination of "thinking different" mixed with his sheer force of personality, what made Steve Steve — that will be impossible to replace.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”—Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement speech, June 2005

Apple released this statement:

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."

In just a few short years Steve Jobs helped change the way we think of phones, computers, the internet. I can't imagine not using my MacBook, my iPhone or iPad. They have become integral tools in my life. And my daughter's life. He cut through the clutter — he shook hands with the "Evil Empire," and made it clear that floppy disks, music CDs, and even the program Flash seemed obsolete in his mind. He gave us iTunes and Pixar.

"I want to put a ding in the universe."

R.I.P. Steve. When you stepped down last month you let us know how seriously ill you must have been. But we still didn't want to believe it. You will be truly missed. Good luck, Apple. Good luck American business.

the way we listen to music changes ... again ... except, maybe not

iTunes revolutionized the way that most people listen to and purchase music. Personal music players fueled with downloaded tunes are now the norm. Yesterday, in a one day only promotion, Lady Gaga gave a major gift to her fans and nudged the music industry at the same time by offering her entire new album, Born This Way, one of the biggest new albums on the pop music horizon, to be purchased and downloaded on Amazon.com new MP3 cloud player for a mere 99 cents.

Plenty of folks will still fork out the full-price (15.99 on iTunes) for the album, but it sent a strong message that social media is a great marketing tool — the cut rate offer was tweeted and picked up and spread across the twitterverse like wildfire. Folks that probably never would have bought a Gaga album, might not have downloaded even one tune from it, signed up to pay just shy of one dollar. Why not? People love a bargain.

I was intrigued that this could signal be a new way for folks to buy music, and maybe even give iTunes a run for its money — that is until I checked my 99 cent download and only was able to get two songs from the album. And I'm far from the only one. According to Amazon: "Amazon is experiencing high volume and downloads are delayed. If customers order today, they will get the full Lady Gaga, Born This Way album for $0.99. Thanks for your patience."

I'm still unable to download more than track 13 and 14, but Amazon was quick and efficient when it came to emailing me my .99 bill of sale. Oh well. It was a nice idea, this cloud player thing. Call me, Amazon, when you get your act together. And when the rest of my album turns up. Until then, iTunes still rules.

i think i finally get what's wrong with glee

Apart from it's a teen show that's most definitely not Buffy.

I love old movie musicals, and even some more recent ones, so I should like Glee. I've tried. But it's so annoying. There's a lot about it that bugs me, like breakout star and purported diva Lea Michelle and her what's-his-name costar are insufferable and bland, in that order. But they are not precisely what's wrong with the show.

My mom and daughter love this show, so we keep tuning in and I keep thinking, maybe this will be the week it wins me over. Or doesn't piss me off. But no. It always manages to screw things up one way or another. I'm not a total hater. There are some great moments, which I'm sure is why there are Gleeks. But you have to sort through so much not-so-great stuff. Mostly, any plot line involving the aforementioned power couple and the creepiest high school teacher ever (and I had some skeevy ones), Mr. Schue.

The kid is six going on seven and there is some PG content in the show, but I'm not too worried about her catching some of the make-out sessions. Although she usually conks out by the first commercial break, so it's never an issue. And I keep watching. Go figure.

What I do think isn't appropriate for her (and the rest of us) to watch is how downright nasty they are to each other. I'm not referring to the brilliant Jane Lynch as Sue effing Sylvester. Or even the bullying drinks-in-the-face, although that gets old. It's how Michelle talks to everyone, it's how Will Shuester is constantly a dick to his students and colleagues but we're supposed to like him because he sings an a capella Over the Rainbow and makes puppy-dog eyes? Where's the damn Big Gulp for me to throw?

My daughter dances happily to whatever song they're butchering as I cringe and smile. There are a few good songs, when even I got a little caught up. The Lucky duet between the blonde surfer-looking dude and Quinn the cheerleader was wonderful, as was the Barbra/Judy mash-up with Rachel and Kurt. The all-boy choir doing Teenage Dream. But the music is not the problem, it's the highlight of the show and why anyone tunes in.

The problem with Glee is that it should be about misfits. It should be this generation's Revenge of the Nerds without the revenge. But the show has styled the uber-obnoxious Rachel as a heroine. As whiny as she is, she's no outsider. She's dating the world's most boring ex-quarterback. They are a completely unbelievable couple and keep telling each other and us that they care about each other, but they have no chemistry and give the audience no reason why they should be together. And even more egregiously, they get way too many lead vocals. Michelle is a great Broadway-style singer, but there are a lot of good voices on the show and the amount of screen-time her character of Rachel and lovebird Finn gets is unwarranted. Their characters would be much more effective if they weren't so obviously the stars of the show and so endlessly front and center. More misfits, less star couple.

The peripheral characters are much more interesting. Quinn, the head cheerleader, is everything the character of Finn isn't. Cory Monteith's Finn talks (and talks and talks) about how hard it is to be popular and still want to be in the geek club, but those are just lines from the script coming out of his mouth. Dianna Agron's Quinn actually makes you believe her parallel dilemma. Coach Beiste is a fantastic character, as are cheerleaders Brittany and Santana. If Glee could focus more on the lives of all of the glee club members and less on everyone being in love with Finn (why?), or Rachel being such a beyotch (duh already), the show might have heart and not just an assortment of songs that show up on iTunes.

The show creators seem to understand how to use Jane Lynch. Just a little bit each episode and she always leaves you wanting more. Or maybe that's all her performance. But they could learn from her and try the same technique with the rest of the cast. And let some of the other actors stand in the front of the chorus from time to time. There are some tentative moves in this direction, but not enough yet to convince me that's where we're headed. I'll give them a pass on the Xmas episode. But they need to keep going this way next season. Then maybe I just might finally really like this show and not just parts of it.

like a rolling stone

You know when you have that moment of recognition, when the meaning in a song's lyrics, which you have been singing along to for quite some time, becomes clear? I can picture the exact moment, when I got what Mick Jagger was singing about in Brown Sugar. It wasn't a life-changing moment or anything. The song isn't particularly deep and it's quite misogynist, but I was suddenly not just mindlessly singing along to the chorus anymore.

It was a raining, and I was sitting in the back seat of my dad's car, rolling up newspapers. He owned and ran a local weekly newspaper and Wednesday was publication day. I sat there, stuffing them into plastic bags, so when he tossed them out the window to deliver them, they wouldn't get soaked in the rain. Because no one likes a wet newspaper. My dad's paper was The Hometown News, where he was not only the editor and publisher, but chief reporter, photographer, and frequently, delivery man. I was in junior high and bored with having to help out. I would have much rather been over a friend's house after school watching Match Game on television than stuck here in the car driving through suburban South Jersey developments with Dad. And then Mick started singing about black girls and I grew up, woke up, a little.

Our house was always a Beatles house. My mom was a huge fan. She used to play Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds from Sgt. Pepper to lull us to sleep at bedtime. I wasn't really familiar with the Stones, who I lumped in with my mom's music. We heard them on the radio—Ruby Tuesday, As Tears Go By—but Mom didn't have any of their albums. When I was old enough to start buying my own records I was into a later British invasion— the Clash, the Police, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. I did become familiar with a few Stones songs that were popular when my bands were ruling the airwaves—all from their Some Girls album, which was apparently a bit of a comeback for the band at the time—Miss You, Beast of Burden, Shattered.



When I moved to New York to go to art school the first place I lived, the Parsons dorm, was a high-rise off Union Square Park. My dad was the opposite of thrilled and kept referencing Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park. I was a little scared to be out of the house and on my own for the first time in my life, but mostly thrilled. Andy Warhol's studio was a few buildings up from the dorm and I used to see him walking around the neighborhood quite often, always flanked by two tall blonde young men. Our building was also the home to the fashion illustrator Antonio, who frequently had celebrity visitors. The only way to get upstairs was by the elevator, so one day some bedraggled freshmen art students got to ride a few floors with Mick Jagger, who got off at Antonio's floor. I thought at the time that Jagger was visiting on a professional assignment, but apparently Antonio was a great friend of Jagger's long-term companion and eventual wife, Jerry Hall.

Antonio discovered Jessica Lange in 1974. He discovered Jerry Hall and lived with her in Paris at the beginning of her modeling career. ... [he] also discovered Grace Jones and Tina Chow.—Wikipedia

The other evening our local PBS station was featuring the 90s Julien Temple documentary, Rolling Stones: Live at the Max, apparently the first IMAX concert film, as part of its end-of-year pledge drive.

One of the first attempts at presenting an entertainment film in the IMAX format was The Rolling Stones: Live at the Max (1991), an 85-minute compilation of concert footage filmed in IMAX during the band's 1990 Steel Wheels tour, edited to give the impression of a single concert.—Wikipedia

I had never seen the film before, or the Stones in concert. Jagger was 48 when the film was made. He and Keith seemed pretty congenial, more so than they might be these days. There were so many songs in the film that made me realize I need to spend some iTunes dough. Even though I may not have been fed a steady diet of their music as I was growing up, somehow they must have infiltrated my subconscious—Tumbling Dice, Paint It, Black, Gimme Shelter, Sympathy for the Devil—are still fabulous and just as outrageous as ever.

O.K., I've got to track this down.

Brown Sugar is in no way my favorite Stones song, but it did wake me up to the fact that not all of the music from mom's era was bright and sunny. The Stones are the ultimate bar band. While I was watching the concert, even with all the pyrotechnics and Mick's larger-than-life posturing and stage crawling, I could still picture them in a smoky, dirty, bluesy little dive, just playing, playing, playing. Letting their gritty, wonderful songs come through. As Keith Richards says in his recent biography Life,

To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart, is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. 

The Stones have definitely managed to give us some wonderful stabs to the heart. What more could poor boy do?

Related articles

• Listen: The Rolling Stones 'Gimme Shelter' Deconstructed (rollingstone.com)
• Mick Jagger or Keith Richards? (telegraph.co.uk)