Can You Hear Me Now?

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca.--We have been feeling a certain dispiritedness of late over the state of cell phone reception. 
   Inasmuch as we use an iPhone, we are, for the moment only, stuck with a massive carrier the name of which rhymes with Ayy Tee and Tee. Their transmitter technology, in a word, blows. Calls consantly drop like standards at closing time. 
   Another company, the name of which rhymes with Ver-I-Zon, has won the right to work with the iPhone. This may be good news. We do not yet know. (For more, see "UPDATE," below.)
   We do know this. We grew up using land lines. The transmission was so clear and the sound so perfect that the party with whom you were speaking seemed close enough for you to reach out and touch inappropriately. Well, or, you know. In addition, calls never dropped. 
   With cell phones, what we've gained in portability we've lost in the consistent intimacy of conversation. We don't know about you, but countless times we've been in the midst of a deep, personal discussion only to have the fucking  phone go dead. We can't think of anything more frustrating, except perhaps the fact that a certain Northern political entertainer, whose name rhymes with Kara Talin, is in any way considered a bright and shining light of, well, anything. 
   It is easy, God knows, to be curmudgeonly and lament the so-called good old days. But to do so is as intellectually lazy as is Kara Talin's every utterance. That said, it's odd, not to say occasionally infuriating, that our primary communication device, wonderfully transportable though it is, has returned us to the days of two tin cans and a string. 
   Honestly, they sent a man to the moon; you're telling us it's impossible to make it so that a friggin' cell phone convo can be enjoyed without it turning to ash and blowing away in the wind of Kara Talin's hot air? 
   Please.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal reports today: "Verizon Wireless said the number of iPhones it sold in the first two hours of availability Thursday exceeded the one-day total for any other device's debut in the carrier's history." 

   The newspaper, reporting on its website, neglected to say how many Verizon-compatible iPhone 4s were sold between 3a.m. and 5a.m. EST Thursday, a fact that does not boost confidence in the information-gathering skills of the Fourth Estate. 

   Nonetheless, Feb. 10 is the phone's official launch day. Stay tuned. 

   

   

The World at Your Fingertips (and Palm)

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca.--Perhaps you noticed the iPad-touting bus-shelter poster campaign still in evidence a month or so ago. 
   There is an obvious overt message to the graphics: just as you once relaxed with a book or magazine, so can you do the same with this easy and efficient new gadget. 
   But is it us, or is there a subliminal message to the imagery as well? 
   Hint #1: What's one of the top three uses of the internet? 
   Hint #2: The New Yorker can, in many ways, be considered intellectual porn. 

Gratuitous Photos of Gorgeous Guys the World Over (Speedos in the Heat Division)

BERKELEY, Ca.--Last night and today the University of California at Berkeley men's swim team, ranked No. 1 in the PAC-10, trounced, respectively, the University of Southern California and Cal State University Bakersfield at the Spieker Pool on the UC Berkeley campus. 

   Should you be in the neighborhood, Cal is hosting No. 2-ranked Stanford mens team Feb. 19 at 1p.m. It is safe to say First of All will be there with bells, if not Speedos, on. 

   Interested in results of last night's and today's meets? Check the Cal mens swimming website: http://www.calbears.com/sports/m-swim/cal-m-swim-body.html. (We apologize for the old-school cut-and-paste offer. Hyperlinks disappear from this blog within a day or so, alas.) 

   Here at First of All you'll find no stats, merely an appreciation of the aesthetics of the sport--and the sportsmen. (Click on the pix to supersize the goodness.) 

Cinema Notes From All Over (Double-Wide Division)

CELLULOID-LAND, The Universe--We just watched a ten-year-old comedy called Sordid Lives and can't think of one reason you shouldn't too.
   Shot for next to nothing, based on a play of the same name, and billed as "A Black Comey About White Trash," it stars the extraordinary Bonnie Bedelia and, in an expanded cameo, Olivia Newton-John. 
   Packed with vivid performances, the film tells the story of the death of a matriarch of a poor but spunky Texas family. Her passing sparks all manner of family and small-town drama both madcap and solemn. 
   The film's main theme is the way it takes courage to to live one's own life, propriety be damned. The matriarch's grandson struggles to be honest about being gay; her son comes to grips with being a Tammy Wynette-obsessed cross-dresser. One of her daughters and a friend go on a Thelma-and-Louise-inspired tear, confronting the men who have in some way denied them agency. 
   Sordid Lives also limns the importance of family, no matter how non-functioning the brood might be; the claustrophobic nature of life among the lovably eccentric characters in a small town; and the odd ways that, in the end, love, truth, and a solid sense of spirituality trump life's complexities. 
   If this sounds a little earnest, that's our fault. Sordid Lives is a fun little comedy, camp beyond compare. Do yourself a favor and see it. And invite friends over. It's no fun to laugh alone. 
   (A side note: the movie contains gay themes and momentary full-frontal male nudity. If this is a problem for you, then why on earth are you reading First of All?)

The Fading Power of the Fourth Estate (Lindbergh's Baby Division)

JOURNALISM-LAND, The Universe--We had a disturbing thought the other day as we ruminated upon the crumbling newsprint industry. (We often spend, which is to say waste, our increasingly foreshortened time on earth ruminating about such things. Better that, however, than ruminating about, say, the paralyzing horror of an incipient Sarah Palin presidential run, don't you think?)
   There are plenty of reasons to despair about the imminent disappearance of newspapers and magazines. Most all of them have been written about in The Columbia Journalism Review. 
   Except one. 
   What, we wonder, will kidnappers and bank robbers do? How will they construct ransom or robbery notes without newsprint letters to snip from magazines and paste onto paper? 
   Is it possible that, along with the print one, the entire kidnapping and bank robbery industries will disintegrate too? In this sense, is it a societal blessing that, say, USA Today will one day no longer exist? 
   We do not know, but we suspect it can't be long before the Columbia Journalism Review tackles the issue. We can't wait. 

Gratuitous Photos of Gorgeous Guys the World Over (Swimmer Division)

PALO ALTO, Ca.--First of All likes to recall our outrage when, decades ago, we learned that a British tabloid--was it the Sun? We believe so--ran a photo, on page three, of a different topless woman each day. The women became known by a quite sensible shorthand: the Page Three Girls.
   At the time we thought the feature sexist, demeaning to women, vulgar, and a whole bunch of other stuff that we can't remember but that we probably wrote somewhere in our journals.
   Ah, the outrages of youth. Ah, the wisdom (and fading muscle tone) of age. Upon reflection, gratuitous photographs of a comely person are not, ipso facto, horrible things. Beauty enlivens even the darkest day. 
   And so, taking a, er, page from the Sun's page-three shenanigans, we herewith establish a new feature: "Gratuitous Photos of Gorgeous Guys the World Over." We hope that viewing these photos will enliven your day as much as taking them did ours. 
   Today's efforts were snapped at yesterday's Stanford vs. University of the Pacific swim meet, at the Avery Aquatics Center on the Stanford campus. The No. 3-ranked Cardinal squashed UOP 159-92.
   We do not know how points are scored and we do not care. We just think swimming is a beautiful sport whether it's practiced within the pool or without, the swimmers thrashing through the water or simply standing around in little red Speedos. We are hard-pressed to believe that you would not agree. 

   We took these two at a Stanford meet last Nov. 10. 

Crime of the Century (Uncharitable Acts Division)

HONOLULU, HI--At this moment in the new year, Christmas is but a fading memory, New Year's Eve but a cipher of a dimly remembered past. 
   For this reason, stories of holiday heartlessness can seem so, you know, last year. But wickedness knows no time; it is eternal in the human heart. Herewith, then, the story of a pair of holiday criminals who seem, in their reckless nefariousness, shockingly insensitive. 
   Plus, they are total dumbasses.

   "Honolulu police arrested a 24-year-old Makiki man and a 43-year-old Makiki woman for allegedly breaking into a van belonging to a charitable organization on Christmas Eve." 
   So reports the Dec. 27, 2010 edition of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. The story, which does not name the charity, says witnesses spotted the pair "in a van... at about 4 p.m. Friday" and confronted them. The pair fled but "were arrested at Makiki District Park."  
   This story, like others to which First of All recently has alluded, arises from the Star-Advertiser's "Police Blotter." These just-the-facts accounts detailing the city's police and fire-related incidents are short on color, so one is left to fill in the blanks. 
   The man is twenty-four, the woman forty-three. Mother and son? Young man and so-called "cougar"? (This appellation recently has come to signify an older woman who enjoys the company, in and out of bed, of young men. At one time it referred to Puma concolor, a mammal of the family Felidae that is native to the Americas. It also referred to super-badass car.) 
   Or were the man and woman drug-addicted confreres for whom, when it comes to stealing stuff to pay for shit, age simply was not an issue? 
   Did they understand that the van belonged to a charity and that charities, as a rule, do good things for people in need? Did they realize that the holiday season is predicated on exactly that concept? Were they so desperate for money that they simply didn't care that they were acting not just illegally but immorally? 
   Or, on the other hand, did they so frantically need a ride--say, to an ailing family member's distant home for one last Christmas get-together--that they were willing to hotwire any vehicle at all, including one belonging to a do-gooding organization? 
   For the purposes of First of All, if not of the judge, lawyers and jury members in front of whom the pair may one day appear, these and many other questions will go unanswered. This thought generates within the heart a certain amount of gloom. 
   Our spirits brighten, however, when we repeat, like a mantra, the word "Makiki." Hawaiian words and names are charmingly long on vowels and repeated alliterative syllables, so they can't help but bring cheer to even the most despondent soul. 
   One occasionally fantasizes about moving to Hawaii. There, one idly imagines, life would be chockablock with sun, sand and surf. It would be defined by the kind of indolence considered alluring by terminally lazy writers whose very best artistic efforts result in reinterpreting odd news stories for the amusement of four or five nonexistent readers. 
   Sun, sand, surf, indolence--these may not, in themselves, be enough to sway the mainlander teetering on the brink of a life-altering decision. But add a bit of "Makiki" and one is convinced that Hawaii is, indeed, a paradise. It is the kind of place in which unscrupulous robbers always come to justice. In at least one case they have done so in a no-doubt well-sculpted recreational area the name of which includes an enchanting and entirely compelling mantra: "Makiki."
   (Makiki. Makiki. Makiki. Makiki. Makiki. Etc.)