beautiful, funny, sad & true

I had a strange weekend, in both good and bad ways.  Last night, I felt kind of tied in knots (still do, quite honestly), so I watched an episode of Six Feet Under to help me relax.  The episode I watched happened to contain one of my favorite scenes, which encapsulated everything I’d been feeling lately, and also gave me some advice which turned out to be exactly what I needed to hear.  Incidentally, it involves a bit of ‘adult’ language (which I only use judiciously in my blog), so if that’s something you’re sensitive to. . .well, you’ve been warned.

If you’re not familiar with the show, Nathaniel is the dead father (That’s not a spoiler, don’t worry; his death happens in the very first scene of the very first episode) and David is the younger of his two adult sons.  Nathaniel’s apparition appears to David after a particularly traumatic experience that David endured in a previous episode, which would be a huge spoiler if I revealed it here.

Nathaniel Fisher: You’re missing the point.
David Fisher: There is no point, that’s the point.
[pause]
Isn’t it?
Nathaniel Fisher: Don’t give me this phony existential bullshit, I expect better from you.  The point’s right in front of your face.
David Fisher: Well, I’m sorry but I don’t see it.
Nathaniel Fisher: You’re not even grateful, are ya?
David Fisher: Grateful?  For the worst fucking experience of my life?
Nathaniel Fisher: You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it’s worth something.  Well, let me tell ya, it’s not worth shit.  Let it go.  [to himself] Infinite possibilities and all he can do is whine.
David Fisher: Well, what am I supposed to do?
Nathaniel Fisher: What do you think?  You can do anything, you lucky bastard, you’re alive!
[pause]
What’s a little pain compared to that?
David Fisher: It can’t be so simple.
[pause]
Nathaniel Fisher: What if it is?

What if it is?  What if it is that simple?  Nice to be reminded every once in a while.

When I saw that La Maison en Petits Cubes had won the Oscar for being the best animated short film, I was stunned.  Pleasantly.  I say that because I love Kunio Kato’s work, and I’ve posted some of it in my blog before.   I am SO SICK of always being ahead of my time.

That’s a joke, by the way.  My tongue was planted firmly in my cheek as I wrote that.

Here’s Part One of the video. I trust that you can find Part Two on your own.

Naturally, all of this Mac nostalgia made me think of the comic strip Bloom County, in which the character Oliver Wendell Jones got a computer for Christmas which had a hilarious mind of its own, and which was obviously inspired by the first Macintosh.  It was called the Banana Junior 6000.

You can click on all of these to make them large and legible, by the way.  Here are two strips, from when Oliver first got the computer. . .

. . .and here are two from some time later, when Oliver and the Banana started to feel the effects of Moore’s Law:

This was the 1980’s, after all, so there was plenty of heavy metal music in the culture at large.  Some people listened to it, some people ridiculed it, some of us even got guitars and learned how to play it.  I told you that story so I could tell you that Kiss was one of the biggest bands in the world back then (you could argue that they still are), and one of their claims to fame was definitely Gene Simmons’s tongue.  The creator of Bloom County designed a hilarious mock-advertisement for the Banana, using Gene as the negative model for what will become of your child if he or she doesn’t grow up with the necessary skills and tools to survive in this cruel and unforgiving world.  Like any good, intrepid Kiss fan, I instantly recognized it as a classic, cut it out of the newspaper, and tacked it to the wall in my bedroom.

Still rings true today, eh?

I love the name of the program ‘Bananamanager.’  That’s just pure genius.  Somehow, I suspect that’s where he got the idea for the whole Banana thing in the first place.

Incidentally, I need to give special thanks to this blog and this blog, from which I scrounged up these strips.  Without them, I would have been trying to take pictures of my old Bloom County books, which would have been a huge pain, and wouldn’t have looked nearly as good either.  My hat’s definitely off to both of them.

Apple just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh, and I thought it would be fun to scrounge up the original television ad for it, from 1984.  It’s a classic.

The ad had a bit of a resurgence in 2008, when a parody of it was used for the Obama presidential campaign.

Here’s the first real life introduction of a Macintosh computer, hosted by the ubiquitous Steve Jobs, but the Mac speaks for itself, both figuratively and literally.

Before that, in 1983, there was a super-weird industry event called the “Macintosh Dating Game,” which was emceed by Steve Jobs, and which featured three software CEO’s, two of whom have become historical also-ran’s, but one of whom is someone who you will no doubt recognize.

It’s interesting in hindsight that Apple spent so much time taking pot shots at IBM, when Microsoft was the company they should really have been paying attention to.

There’s so much more I could share about all this.  I find the early days of the personal computer industry endlessly fascinating, because that’s when it was all being born, and I was just the right age to be interested in all of it, and what’s more important for this entry, just the right age to remember and be able to share it these many years later.

Now, as back then, Macs comprise about ten percent of the market, but as Douglas Adams famously said in an ad (which I’ve so far been unable to scrounge up), “They may have only ten percent, but it’s clearly the top ten percent.”  Well said, Douglas, well said.

If you’re so inclined, here’s an interesting collection of articles called 25 Years of Macintosh for you to share and enjoy.

Happy birthday, Mac!

In all the stress, I forgot to mention the good thing that happened.  As of yesterday afternoon, I have a second niece.

So there. . .yesterday wasn’t all bad.