Keynote? Ninja PLEASE.

The good folks at Apple have come out with a new iPhone again. While no one can deny the amazing technological advances, the build up, hype and massive interest is...well, let's just say it's something to think about. It's quite possible that not all of that thinking is good. It's a phone, but it's not just a phone - and yet, it is just a phone.

It's a hand held ADD device - among other things. Spend five minutes driving and you're certain to see more drivers passing you on their phones than you will that are focused on the task at hand. Mad props to the moms out there who are skilled enough to turn an SUV while talking on their phone, because that's talent. Who would've thought there would ever be an operating system that makes messaging, Facebooking, emailing and texting so much easier...while driving, working, being with friends or family, or any other time when your attention should be directed anywhere else but towards an electronic device?

Remember when push button land line phones were revolutionary? Imagine that keynote:

Corporate Suit:  Hello and thank you all for coming. I'm very pleased to unveil our incredible new push button dial phones. With these incredible new phones, you won't have to stick your finger in a little hole and move in a counterclockwise circle, release and wait for the dial to fall back in the resting place before you stick your finger in ANOTHER circle and repeat that whole painstaking process up to eleven times if you're calling long distance...you can now simply press a button - and when you press that button, you will get audible tones to distinguish the buttons from one another...

Enter oohs and ahhs and faint applause - don't worry, there will be more applause at the end, once those in attendance have seen the wonders of this incredible new touch tone phone.

Alright, that keynote would've been brief - and certainly with a lot less wow factor than Apple's keynote for the new iPhone. Point taken. So too, would the keynote for a cordless land line phone - though that would've been a bit more exciting. It's not that technological advances aren't a good thing. It's not as if the new iPhone isn't cool with all of its features - but let's face it, Maxwell Smart had the predecessor to all cell phones/smart phones - the first cell phone ever. It looked like a shoe. It was a shoe. No keynote there - that shit was top secret and shit like that needs to be kept on the serious down low. Did you see that? That dude was talking into his shoe! How did he do that and where did he get that? Damned if I know - that's some top-secret shit up in that shoe.

All these new features are well and good - but really, they are just more reasons to live on the damn electronic devices, even when we're with people, when we're doing things that should have our undivided attention and interacting with others. Here's the thing about those land line phones with the boring and brief keynotes:  None of us who remember these devices spent much time or fuss talking about the devices. A simple wow-that's-cool would do. There wasn't really much to marvel at and give so much of our attention to - it was the phone call itself that mattered. What a person said. The call was much more important than the device it was made and received on. The message. Why? Because it led to people.

These new devices are putting a new strain of ADD into the overwhelmed majority. They're filled with features that take away our attention from the people and things that we're right in front of. Even if we're interacting with an actual person, we're not but an eye blink away from diverting that attention towards another person, place, time or event - because we just gotta look at our phones. Not only do we have to look at our phones, we look for them too. Of course you're going to want to know where you phone is at all times when many of these devices are approaching the better part of a thousand dollars in cost - but financial cost be damned, the most concerning cost here is attention. Cool as these new gadgets are, they're costing us attention - from one another, from tasks we should be doing and giving our undivided attention to. We should interact more with one another, less with these devices. Life is too short. Interact. Look at people, less at devices - and when we're looking at people, let us not be so quick to find a reason to look away and back to a device.

End semi-nostalgic rant/blog post now, while my antiquated iPhone, not a 6 nor a 5 is charging. So unhip.

Underwater?

In retrospect, he'd gotten this job far too easily. It also stood to reason that if he were to buy into the hype they'd given him - along with the ridiculous looking brightly colored necktie that they required servers and bartenders to wear at work, that with a bit more looking around, he could do better. The hype of good money and giving diners an underwater dining experience was not looking so great.

Did he want to learn all about the various and sundry aquariums in every direction on the walls, all of which surrounded a giant aquarium in the middle of the dining room that was so big they had a diver in the water feeding sharks and other fishes? Fuck no. Did he really want to spew random facts at his tables before he took dinner orders? Fuck no. He loved kids, but considerably less when he was at work. Suddenly it became all too clear what he would be dealing with on a nightly basis - multi-tasking on the floor would take on whole new meaning when he was expected to answer an endless slew of questions, most of which would be repeated more times in a single evening - and every single evening, than there were grains of salt in the sea horse shaped shakers that adorned every table in the dining room - and incidentally, are available for purchase in our gift shop, and yes, he'd be happy to get a set for them and put it on the bill. Fuck that. Restaurants and gift shops should keep their distance in his not-so-humble opinion, again, fuck that.

Also high on his list of things not to do, was carrying a big tray with six entrees and four appetizers on it, out onto a deck where patrons could sit in the hot Texas sun and look out at the brown ocean water. The minute he got out the door with the tray that he was holding between shoulder and ear level, Seagulls would swoop down boldly - and those nasty fuckers were often good at reducing the number of shrimp in appetizers and entrees. Fuck that. Bay Sky Rats, he called them. The best he could say about them was that it was amusing sometimes when one of the other servers made a totally amateur move by trying to out maneuver the gulls and angle the large tray away from them. Such a move seldom worked out well for the server - or the customers sitting anywhere close. The result was more often than not, a combination of a loud crash, plates and/or glasses breaking, food and drink in customers laps and all over tables and walking areas - and sometimes it included swearing, which he liked. As an added bonus, every now and again some of the swearing was from a server or bus person instead of just a patron who was demanding a dry cleaning voucher and unlimited free dining for life. Fuck that. On a side note, employees lacking in social graces such as F-bomb silencers/filters, were terminated in short order - it seemed that even under such circumstances, swearing in front of customers and coworkers was against company policy - read your handbook - page 12, under the heading, Maintaining acceptable conduct in front of guests and coworkers, paragraph 4 - Use of offensive and profane language on company property. Yeah...y'know what? Oh come on! - say it with me - fuck that.

It wasn't the fact that he was older than 98% of the people he would be working with. It was more the fact that 96% of them had to constantly be reminded that they were supposed to have the tools they needed to do the gig with them, on their person while they were at work. How many times did he have to explain to someone, the same someone, um, like what aioli was? He lost count of how many times they would ask him to borrow a pen or a wine key. Fuck that. Worse still, was the fact that because most of these people didn't have these things on a regular basis - despite constantly experiencing the anxious moments of not having them, and being reminded that such possessions were mandatory, the manager would come up to him as if he were just like the rest of them - and 98% of the time, the same manager asked him borrow a wine key. Fuck that. 

And so the die was cast. The big ridiculous corporate ship? He envisioned one more scenario, walking towards a table with a tray of martinis and tall drinks in ridiculous looking corporate ship logo glasses...cool? No, but whatever ups your check average. As he passed the giant center aquarium, he'd forgotten all about the diver now landing on the floor beneath the surface of the water at feeding time....wait for it...."MOMMY!!! LOOKIT THE MAN FEEDING THE BIG FISHIES!!"

By the time one heard any kid scream MOMMY!!, it was already too late. If any server did manage to not fall victim to a fallen tray, impact with child/children, coworker, guest walking in a daze and not looking where they were going - and mind you this kind of thing happened on a regular basis, thus proving that a large percentage of the general public had at least a mild form of A.D.D., that server would not have fortune smiling on them at the end of the shift when their side work included wiping the tiny, greasy fingerprints off of the Aquariums with Windex and c-fold paper towels. Fun, huh? Fuck that.

Fuck this. The silly looking tie, the strict corporate regulations, the Sky Rats, the heat, the overzealous prick of a manager who while claiming to be such a stickler for details, always seemed to overlook the fact that he was always on time, had every part of his uniform that he was required to have, knew more about food, wine & spirits than his coworkers and his managers, and the employee handbook. Yeah, fuck all that. He would jump ship and keep looking. Better now while the ship is still reasonably close to shore, because he sure as hell wasn't going under - and he wanted no part of this silly corporate voyage...and so, he did.