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I have a Mac desktop. I have a mac laptop, my wireless network is built on mac’s Time Capsule. I have several ipod iterations, an Ipad, and to complete the collection, an iPhone. You could call me a mac guy. You could also call me an aging wanna be hipster who glommed on to a product identity that became essentially unsustainable with the death of its defacto creator, Steve Jobs. Apple is an idea and an identity. Unfortunately, that identity truly lived in the heart of its biggest supporter.

Apple captured the idea of cool at two points in my life. During college I looked at those boxy one-piece computers with the funny faces and said: Nerd Chic. I was all in. Unfortunately, all mac ever gave me back then was a picture of a bomb and an error message informing me that my latest story had suddenly become the victim of a terrorist attack. I caught the bomb so many times I thought I was Laos.

Fast forward to the next thousand years and mac is back and on the back of Steve Jobs, a meglomaniac ‘meanie’ whose constant health battles and innovative thinking captured the hearts of a generation of tech supporters. I bought right back in to Jobs’ vision. I wanted to shell out thousands for a macbook and as soon as I did I ordered a wicked cool sticker from Tokyo to show how my nerd chic had evolved. It made every bit of sense to go all in. Mac products are (as one friend put it) hermetically sealed. You buy all the products you need from their line and the set works together seamlessly. There are no driver errors as one often experiences with mac’s bigger and far more wealthy competitor Windows. From OS to end user, mac works as it should–on the surface.

Dig deeper and you find that in the absence of Jobs there is a decline in product usefulness and efficiency. My iphone, for instance, doesn’t hold a charge at all. While these errors happened in the time of Jobs, that leader understood that the experiences of a handful of end users could shape and thusly unshape the cool in a way that made it necessary to put out a product that not only worked but allowed the end user to feel good about themselves. Jobs’ macs were green machines that had a minimal impact on the environment (despite being assembled in Chinese sweatshops–but you can’t blame a corp for doing what every other competitor is doing). Post-Jobs macs are not green. That entire movement has been scrapped in pursuit of a higher profit margin.

I am not saying Jobs wasn’t a money loving fool. I am saying that he had enough of himself in his corp and enough history and awareness of what that corporate identity means to understand the value of a good product. These new guys understand the value of a good quarterly report. Mac is going to be pushed further down the road of maximum profitability for minimum product. Before long the hackers are going to catch on to how badly Apple has strayed from its vision. That’s when they’ll take action. That’s when the fall begins.

I’m betting it starts with the iPhone

First you have to be uncomfortable.

Nobody ever got better by being satisfied. In fact, being satisfied makes it more difficult to improve yourself. Look at the disparity between the (perceived) work effort of professional and collegiate athletes. You hear time and time again that the college guys want it more, and that is because they haven’t cashed that fat Tom Brady paycheck (or wandered into Giselle’s bedroom). You hear time and time again that the inner city street kid with 7 brothers made good in the NFL and brought up his entire family. That happens because that kid has to do it. It is his only way out.

Then you gotta have fight in you.

This is the hardest part. It is easy to lay down and to blame and to say, well this is my situation, so I guess I’ll make the best of it. Fighters say, this is my situation and I’m going to change it entirely. After they say it they act and they suffer and they push through all of the adversity. The rest of us see an overwhelming amount of adversity and stop once we’ve been overwhelmed. Fighters see overwhelmed as just the beginning. Remember: how we respond to failure is how we are defined by the world and by ourselves.

Winner’s don’t take days off.

You better bring it. When you slack, when you don’t give your all every moment of the time you get to walk this planet you are cheating yourself and you are telling yourself that it is okay to be a slacker because tomorrow you can be better. Well every tomorrow you are a moment older, less capable, less willing to change the way you lived yesterday. After long enough of living like this you hit the tipping point and you discover that getting back to being better is going to take more fight than you have left.

I say this for anyone reading and I say it for myself. Bring it every day, because before too long potential becomes an obstacle you never could overcome.

Normally, horror films are the things that get me excited about movie going. Between the tropes and the sheer number of new releases that fall on to the big screen each year, I always assume the next film is going to have a twist that makes it worthwhile. There has to be something, right? We are desperately removed from the era when someone can throw a load of poo into a projector and call it cinema. Or are we? After watching The Purge and taking a few minutes to consider what could have been, I am convinced that the worst days of cinema are yet to come.

I’ve watched all the Resident Evil movies. Though tempted to fast forward through them, I sat and watched just to see what what happens next would look like visually. I knew what was coming. I telegraphed each successive death and reveal like a middle linebacker marking the QB’s next play. I stuck with the films because visually, it was worth the cliche. The Purge is a bit like that. While the director attempts to draw your attention away from the actual ‘Bad Guy’ scenario, he does such a shoddy job with foreshadowing that you know the twist the moment it starts to unfold and you find yourself saying, ”bout time’.

Visually, the purge was a mess. It often felt like character choices where driven by the director’s shot selection. Wherever the director wanted to make a shot work was where the character’s were pushed towards, often moronically.

The dialogue was thin and lacked the gravitas of what is an exceptional discussion idea/plot: America is made new again by purging its poor and defenseless once a year. I wish I could say that the film captured this idea and put a great spin on it, but what you read is basically what you get.

What I got was an opportunity to eat some popcorn and see a few solid scenes in the middle of a hot mess.

I’ve reached a point in my product cycle where I’m forced to buy a new washer –my first independent washer purchase ever. The last washer came with the house and now that the POS finally pooped out, it is time to do the research. Here is what I learned: Research costs money. Most of the sites I attempted to access required membership, which tells me that while there are people online that do review for free, Google points at the ones that do it for cost. Speaking of cost, the price of a washer dances around that famed $1000 price point. That price point became known to me when I was shopping for TV’s. Above and below 1K is a major dividing line that determines who your buyer is.

I’m a buyer who is looking below the 1K line, largely because I’m a bit old school and cannot fathom spending the kind of money that would keep me in video games for over 3 years on a singular item that can be bought (in a cheaper fashion) for half the price. I’m also married and don’t do a great deal of laundry, so it isn’t really my call to make.

My wifey is aware of the 1K line and being a thrifty type chooses to play below it (thus providing her more cash to buy sneakers–which have a priceline all their own). She’ll dance closer to the line though, and I suppose we’ll spend 8 or 9 on a washing unit. I can’t complain. I like my clothes clean and my family happy. If that takes a few extra bucks, so be it.

ABC found the sequel to Desperate Housewives and it is cut from the same conflicts. The newest ABC hit, Mistresses, seizes upon the idea of marital conflict and raises the bar by hitting the notion of infidelity from every possible angle. Mistresses is sexy beyond comparison with stars whose names you’ll know from other hit shows (Alyssa Milano, Yunjin Kim), and secondary stars that sizzle (Shannyn Sossamon, Rochelle Aytes, Jes Macallan). Perhaps most interestingly, Mistresses represents the new normal. The show presents ABC’s version of multiculturalism with their standard of black, Asian, white, homosexual, and of course, blonde.

To begin, black beauty still doesn’t mean dark-skinned. While we’ve seen progress in the media, black beauty still must conform to european standards. You must be light-skinned. You must have straight (or appropriately curly–not kinky) hair. The Asian standard is the same, but not much change is required by Asian women to meet this standard. As we know, the standard of beauty is blonde and no show would be complete without the standard setter. Interestingly enough, IMDB lists the blonde actress first though Milano and and Kim are clearly the more well known and more important players in the show. That choice reflects the dominant ideology that being blonde and beautiful is supremely important when it comes to sexual attractiveness.

Sex sells and ABC is Avon. All of the people in the show are beautiful. Much like The L word, all Lesbians are viewed as Lipstick Lesbians, which is entirely in keeping with the show’s all is beauty theme, which though powerfully unrealistic is what draws the viewer’s eye.

Maybe I love this show because I don’t have enough drama in my life or maybe I still have a crush on Alyssa Milano. At any rate, I believe the show works to perfection in replacing Desperate Housewives and capturing an audience that is looking for something frivolous, detached from reality and super-engaging in that soap opera way. I haven’t seen the numbers, but I think this show is going to succeed in a big way.

One of the uncomfortable realities of flying out of JFK is your flight is likely to be delayed. I spent a ton of money taking a cab to the airport to make sure I wouldn’t be late for my 4pm flight. It turns out the flight is inexorably delayed, taking off perhaps three hours later. At least it gives me ten minutes to collect my thoughts.

New York was a life raft in a sea of sharks. I feel like I can finally remember the value and breadth of life. It seems a bit much, but the fact is this city is my muse. I came from here and I am connected to this place in the fundamental fashion a child is connected to a mother or a people to a planet. I will never feel that way about Arizona, despite my love and dedication to the land. I will always be a New Yorker first, and I believe that mentality will reward me well in my AZ dealings. Even when I run for office, the idea of NYC and that upbringing will influence the way in which I attempt to direct the campaign and eventually the city.

Big plans are what NYC is about and perhaps a bit of what I lacked. It is important in life to be a little uncomfortable. You need to have goals that are not ‘just out of reach’ but so close to you yet so far away that they are like the heat from the sun that powers you to build a ship and go out there and catch you a sunburst. I grew up in Harlem in a nice but relatively poor area to the 81st and madison wealth that defined my elementary school. I felt that sun everyday and built me a ship that took me all the way to college, a bit closer to the goal of having everything I wanted. Of course, what we want changes as we shuffle through life. What I want now isn’t what I wanted even 4 years ago. I am no rush to lead my college. I want to be a best selling author first. I want to travel and see things that will inspire me to be better and do more and live this one life that I have to the fullest.

It is hard to come upon those feelings in the suburbs.

Perhaps it is fitting that I sit here in NYC back at the 210 lb mark. After all, it was here in NYC 20 yrs past that I sat at 165 with hopes of being a muscular 200 lbs. I over shot the mark by 10 lbs, none of which are muscle. This feels like a metaphor for my life which has brought upon me a weightiness I did not expect through travels and events I could never have imagined. Yesterday I met up with many of my closest friends from high school. While there were eight notable absences from that inner-cadre, the ones who made the journey 29 yrs in the making helped me to remember the lessons that catapulted me into the world in the first place.

This is the first time in a decade I’ve gone somewhere and not dragged along work with me. I brought the bones of a novel on my honeymoon. Needless to say I was the guy who never quit. After a decade, the constant need to work eroded the quality of that work and of my mind itself. I lost my way and my will and my nerve to be creative. My quality of work and life degraded as responsibilities piled up and for a very long time I believed my best work was behind me. It took a reunion and a look at some old writing to remember the blueprint of what was and what is.

My point is this: It is normal and even expected to get beat down by life. As we go on we forget what can be and drown in what is. Find time to remember who you mean to be.

I’ve always found it strange that so many New Yorkers call Phoenix home. Sure, they’re both cities, but the title appeared to be where the similarities ended. Sitting above 24th street in New York on an abandoned railroad turned park, I decided to give the connection a bit closer consideration.

For starters, the lifestyle between NYC and PHX could hardly be more different. PHX is a horizontal community more prone to urban sprawl than proper use of space. New York is vertical. There are almost no buildings on manhattan island shorter than three stories. Thanks to the clearly defined borders of the island, the real estate magnates were forced to build up. Building up is not part of the plan in Phoenix. In fact, building up is regulated by law. In most suburbs you are not allowed to crest two stories let alone three. Of course, this is a bit of an unfair comparison in of itself. Manhattan is incomparable to anywhere outside of London proper. Still, Manhattan is what people think of when they think of NYC. It is the home of the World Trade Center ruins, the Empire State Building, and the actual City in Sex in the City.

Phoenix is best known for Scottsdale, a town slightly east and north of Phoenix proper. Scottsdale is known for money and golf courses and the bloody wealthy and frivolous folk presumed to live there. This is no presumption, of course. While there are a fair number of regular folk who call the dale home, there are an equal number–if not more–of folk who require a kickstand for their noses. The same can be said of NYC and anywhere on the westside with a street number below 90.

In the end, I can find some thin similarities in some of the people who live in the city, but the places themselves are so different as to suggest no relationship whatsoever. So, I am left to wonder why people choose to move from one place to the other. Maybe it is the same reason I moved. Maybe everyone wants a really big house.

Some Thoughts:
1. In retrospect, $150 for a three hour reunion seems a bit overpriced. It may not be. We will find out in a few hours.
2. I really do miss NYC. I am a different person here. I am a better person here I think. I am more driven to accomplish things.

I’ve been playing mind games. Not the ‘mess with someone’ variety, but the sharpen your brain variety. Ipads are good for that. I’ve been playing a few like Room and Machinarium, but I am also playing the Hasbro classics Risk and Scrabble. I learned that my brain isn’t as sharp as it was at the ripe old age of 18, but I can still do the complex thinking if I do it in chunks. The key to living as a thinker is thinking. Our society is geared towards limiting our need and opportunity to think, so we as individuals are responsible for taking up the weighty challenge of critical thought. By extending myself to think quite a bit more than I am required to I am undoing a lot of damage and remembering what it feels like to be an intelligent human being.

Don’t get me wrong, what I do as an educator requires intelligence, but what i do daily becomes a pattern and familiar patterns fail to expand and ignite the brain. The key to knowledge is new; expanding the parameters of what your mind is expected to do every day.

Some Thoughts:

1. I struggle to imagine how vast and desolate an abandoned city like Chernobyl must be. Moreover, I am left to wonder how many other abandoned cities we don’t know about.

I’m writing this post from the back of a US Airways Airbus on the aisle side of two of my kids who can’t remember the last time they’ve been on a flight. This has been the most stressful day of my life. I am not sure if it is the impending class reunion, the stress of bored kids in summer, or the heavy knowledge that I still have much work to be done before the month is through.

My 20th class reunion is on saturday with a tour of the school on friday. This little jaunt down memory lane promises to ignite some memories of the past. I dot remember terribly much about High School (further proof of the suckiness that is impending Alzheimers) nor have I located any photographic evidence outside of 1 photo that proves I ever attended high school or even lived in NYC for that 18 yr stretch. I am a digital ghost from 75 – 93. I suppose most of that is my fault for not wanting to be in pictures and not having the confidence that the camera could stand my face. I do remember one small bit of H.S. I remember cheating on my girlfriend with Anna Maria Stanomir (sorry for the public bust out). I even remember why: My girlfriend publicly revealed she’d been writing love poems to some dude she hooked up with out of country pre-us. Man that ticked me off. One or both of those ladies will be there, but that isn’t what worries me. Not remembering people and having nothing to talk with people about is what worries me. I get the concept of class reunions, but what I don’t get are the expectations. What do we all still have in common after 20 yrs? Those of us who remained connected don’t really need a reunion to connect and those of us who haven’t may not understand how to navigate our way back towards anything resembling the friendships that locked us together for 4 meaningful years in the late 80’s to early 90’s.

My kids are coming up in the 10’s and may not make it to high school if they continue the cooped up bickering and screaming that defined last summer and is beginning to define this summer. At 109 degrees in AZ, we are bound to feel a bit cooped, but add in the conflict of Minecraft where all they want to do is digitally play out the ‘who has more stuff’ game and it promises to be a long and stress-filled summer.

Adding to that stress is the knowledge that there is work to be done and no real schedule to complete that work. I think I don’t want to think about that at least until this weekend vacation is over. Then when I get back from the city I can give my attention to my job and develop a workable schedule to get the tasks done. At least I want to get working hard. That is a change from a few weeks ago.

Some Thoughts:
1. I get wanting an iPad you can slip away easily, but I don’t get the heavy price tag for the iPad mini.
2. Speaking of heavy price tags, US Air charges you for everything. A blanket costs money, food costs money, and they spend the first 20 minutes of the flight trying to get you to invest in a credit card.
3. The (2?) year old girl across from me has dragged her mom to the bathroom three times and we took off a half hour ago. At this rate mom is going to run out of diapers or smack her kid. I’m betting on the smack.
4. Was able to catch the end of the Heat-Spurs game at the airport. The Spurs continue to look impressive. I still say MIA in 7.
The problem with a daily blog is that sometimes you have a lot to say and sometimes you dont.