My confession. . . Though I grew up in New York and have made my home in Brookline, MA for more than thirty years, I go online to look at The Orlando Sentinel at least once a day. I enjoy reading whatever stories and blog entries my daughter, Daphne Sashin, and her husband, Etan Horowitz, may have posted. As a woman who thinks of herself as an involved and caring mom and mother-in-law, I also set up Google alerts for both, friended them on Facebook, and follow @Dsashin and @Etanowitz on Twitter.
A consumer technology columnist, Etan writes about new gadgets or new uses for gadgets already on the market. He frequently uses Daphne as the guinea pig, such as yesterday, when he wanted to try the new Qik video application for his iPhone and got her to jump up and down inside the bounce house at the Orlando Fringe Festival. I saw this because the link to the video came to me on Twitter. Athletic and seemingly free of inhibition, Daphne seems not to mind.
Having had computers in their homes as young children, Daphne and Etan take gadgets for granted, and often tutor me on how to use my own, limited supply, consisting of just an iPhone, Flip Video Mino, digital camera, and a MacBook. I grant them Cool Kid status.
Still, Etan’s latest column, published this morning, gave me pause. Acknowledging that there are people – myself included – who do not like putting iPhone buds in their ears, he spoke of a new mini-boom box craze, the result of people using their iPhones and other smart phones to play their “own personal soundtracks,” sans headphones.
Etan, I beg your pardon. I was doing that long before reading your column – much to the horror of your wife, Daphne. The first time I did it was last November, the weekend of your wedding. When I went into the “fitness center” at the Congress Hall Hotel early Sunday morning, I realized that the likelihood of other guests competing with me for the single treadmill, elliptical machine or stationery bike was remote.
Without benefit of ear buds, I peddled away to the sounds of The Four Tops, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Archie Bell and the Drells, and for some contemporary flavor, Usher. I assured Daphne that I completed my workout before anybody else was even awake.
During the March visit to Florida, I needed something to keep me going during a punishing 60 minutes on the treadmill at the Grand Bohemian at 4:30 a.m. Praying that nobody else would enter the once again tiny exercise room, I felt my heart sink as a middle-aged man walked in mid-way through my workout. As etiquette required, I offered to turn my iPhone off. Thankfully, he declined my offer.
My personal soundtrack for that particular workout was a bit heavy on Philadelphia Soul, with ample doses of both the Delfonics and the Stylistics. Fearing that “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time?” and “Break Up to Make Up” may have been too much for others at that hour, I offered a mitigating remark, saying I hoped he didn’t find my choice of music annoying. He thanked me and said he loved my music.
Etan, you make reference to boom boxes, capable of playing rap, hip-hop, and I suppose classical music, at decibel levels evoking displeasure from non-aficionados. My own frame of reference is a small, Motorola transistor radio. Although that, unlike the iPhone, came with just a monaural ear cord, people like me never worried about whether others shared their musical tastes. The difference was that the transistor radio could only play Cousin Brucie at relatively low decibel levels.
I hear what you’re saying about people in their own little bubbles. Earlier this week, I found myself walking through the Public Garden. A man was playing tenor sax, and I put a dollar in his basket. He wasn’t David “Fathead” Newman, but I was glad there were no iPhone mini boom boxes to drown out his sounds.
Fun Links
Orlando Fringe
Smart phones become tiny boomboxes — is it polite to blast tunes in public?
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