in the pleistocene period
due to the ongoing recovery of our author from the head and chest-wracking flu, we present guest authorship: the author circa August 2008. Please check back for fresh fodder in ensuing days.
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for the longest time I wished I could have my own personal soundtrack following me wherever I went, punctuating my life events with appropriate percussion and lyrics. I suppose now I could have that, had I an iPod (I haven't one). Yet lately my post-30 old man has been curmudgeonly griping at everyone walking/biking/living with iPod buds in their ears, shutting out even the minor remaining vestiges of interpersonal contact with others.
I propose a re-emergence of the ghetto blaster: the dual speaker tape deck perched on one shoulder, where you can hear your music but still have your auditory senses available to the world around you as well. I guess this wouldn't work well on crowded trains and buses. Maybe in that case earbuds with tiny external microphones to mix in the outside world with your inner (between the ears) soundtrack.
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for the longest time I wished I could have my own personal soundtrack following me wherever I went, punctuating my life events with appropriate percussion and lyrics. I suppose now I could have that, had I an iPod (I haven't one). Yet lately my post-30 old man has been curmudgeonly griping at everyone walking/biking/living with iPod buds in their ears, shutting out even the minor remaining vestiges of interpersonal contact with others.
I propose a re-emergence of the ghetto blaster: the dual speaker tape deck perched on one shoulder, where you can hear your music but still have your auditory senses available to the world around you as well. I guess this wouldn't work well on crowded trains and buses. Maybe in that case earbuds with tiny external microphones to mix in the outside world with your inner (between the ears) soundtrack.
random bits cobbled together by j-dub
5 Comments:
They still have ghetto blasters in the Tenderloin! It is one of my favorite things. In fact, whenever I walk through the 'loin it feels like going back in time. I don't think the area has ever left the '80s. There are two possible reasons I think this:
1) The area obviously hasn't gotten a lot of money for development, and probably *hasn't* changed much since then, and
2) Sesame Street.
I often wonder if, in the current recession, our cities will experience more urban decay like in the '70s and '80s, as opposed to the rampant gentrification of the '90s and '00s.
Back in the days of the ghetto blaster, there were still Walkmen. I was plugged in back then, I just had to listen to the same cassette tape over and over and over.
Churlita, that's a damn fine point. But why are ipods so much more pervasive than the walkman ever was? Is it just the small size and convenience of not having to carry around the tapes? Or am I just getting old and crabby and there are just as many ipodders now as there were walkmanners then?
anytime someone talks about the Tenderloin I sing Belle & Sebastian.
"we hung about the Tenderloin and tenderly you tell about the saddest book you ever read, it always made you cry..."
I am one of those people. Some days, by the time I get done at work, I just don't really want to talk to anyone new. I'm all pleasantried out. And on those days, I've been known to wear my iPod into the grocery so that I don't have to chat with other shoppers.
I actually wore my iPod less on the East Coast. Strangers weren't as chatty as they are here. I didn't have to make small talk with people buying milk.
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