My Flip Phone

                                   

Yes I have a flip phone. It makes calls. It gets calls when it is on. I never set it up to text or make pictures. It's cheap and I'm perfectly happy.

It's hard because todo el mundo has fancy schmancy phones. They have iphones, they have Androids. People sit around all day comparing their cellphones. I feel left out at times. I read in the news that Lindsey Graham has a flip phone. Well he had a flip phone.

Last week I saw a movie in one of those new fangled movie houses where they have airplane style seats with foot rests that pull up. When I was leaving I noticed I no longer had my flip phone. My neighbor found it in the grill of the chair. "Wow a flip phone! I didn't know they still made those!"

I am on the Internet at home. I am at the Internet at the office. I don't need to have the Internet when I'm eating eggs in a diner. As we get older we become like our fathers. We still had a black and white tv in 1967.

Editor's note: My flip phone, a nifty clock radio and a cabinet that could use a paint job.

Air conditioning at the office

July in the workplace. Years ago, I remember a co worker saying he looked forward to halter season all year. All the young lady’s in their halter tops. This is the time of year when you can wear your sporty t shirts and on casual Fridays, your monkey t shirt.                                 

But, alas, this year I have gone back to long sleeved shirts, sweaters, and I celebrate casual Fridays with my lumberjack clothing. The air conditioning is up so high, and with no windows in my office, it is darn chilly at work. The women at work are walking around with several layers of clothing on. No halter tops here.

Life is full of disappointments. All my stylish short sleeve shirts sitting in the closet while I look like I'm dressed for snow. It's real fun when I go outside for a walk and am bombarded with 90 degree weather and I'm wearing a sweater.

I don't like Will Ferrell

I watch a lot of movies on tv and with my Netflix subscription. I notice THIS has a lot of free (if commercial loaded) movies and occasionally if nothing else is on, I'll give it a try. His movies always start promising enough. Will Ferrell is a single Dad with the kids for the weekend. Then things start happening. I know that Will Ferrell is considered by my fellow countrymen to be the funniest man in comedy. Somehow, I always am disappointed with Will Ferrell movies. Maybe it's because he's in so many things, that some of his projects turn out to be dogs. He is in a lot of movies.

Naah, I just don't like Will Ferell.

Old money trumps new money

I have finally discovered the key to owning antiques. If you bought something at a garage sale it probably isn't worth any money. It may be valuable to you but it probably isn't worth that much. A close inspection of Antiques Roadshow reveals the source of most wealth. It's coming from old money.

If your grandparents had money and bought nice things and these things are handed down through the generations they will be worth money. That watch or painting or lamp that your aunt bought in 1920 in Boston will be worth money today. That painting your father bought in Paris when he was a G.I. during WW2 won't be worth much today. Parisians sold millions of things to American soldiers during the war. Most of it junk.

If your grandparents bought an original oil painting in Greenwich Village in 1918 it will be worth money today. If your father bought a chair in a flea market in 1980 it probably won't be worth money today. The secret of having nice things is to have grandparents who bought nice things back in the day.

An artsy fartsy summer

Last weekend I was making an appearance at Peddler's Village and decided, perhaps unwisely, to go through Lambertsville and take the bridge to New Hope and continue on Route 202. As I was driving I encountered throngs of crowds along the way. I got excited at first. "They must be giving something away!" I was thinking. Perhaps new computers, or antique pottery. Perhaps they are giving everybody new cell phones! I was wondering what brought thousands of motorcycles, hundred of baby strollers, and hundreds of thousands of idlers to these relatively small towns.

When I finally went to a couple of shops I realized, no, they weren't giving anything away at all. A painted water jug was going for $50. A set of cups was going for $200. Why you can buy these at K-Mart for pennies on the dollar, I thought.

What is the attraction that makes normal human beings want to converge on these towns en masse? I guess it's the atmosphere. The lost youth of baby boomers. We were all going to become cabinet makers and potters and guitar makers until we put on ties and got jobs with insurance companies or found ourselves in  civil service. We go to Bucks county to relive what might have been.

When visiting dignitaries come to our doors we need someplace to take them. We can't take them to the Shop-Rite. They have those in their towns. So we buck traffic and take them to Bucks County. When we have new companions we want to show off our hip creds to we don't take them to Walmart. We take them to Peddler's Village and pay five dollars for a scoop of ice-cream. I know, for millennials Bucks County is about as hip as Branson, Missouri.

From DOS to Cortana

Some men are nostalgic about cars they used to own. At a barbecue they'll tell stories about the old Camaro or Chevelle. Other men get nostalgic about their former wives. I guess I wax nostalgic about Microsoft operating systems. I remember the first DOS computer I had to use at work. It came with three floppies, big ones, that you had to load to get the thing to work. First you put the operating system in the drive. Then you put the program in the drive. Finally you put the data disc in the drive. You felt so modern, so with-it those days. You knew how to use a computer. And your waist size was 32.

The first computer I ever bought came with Windows 3.1. It was and will always be, my favorite operating system. Easy, fast, and it did everything. It even got on the Internet back in the day when the Internet was text only and ran at 2400 baud. The good old days.

Things got fancier with Windows 95. You had to pay for the Internet (the old dream that the Internet would never be commercialized but would forever be the province of academics and idealists soon faded). Now you got color. Images didn't move around yet, and we were all happier.

Windows 95 wasn't perfect. I can remember reinstalling my Windows from discs at least once a month. And backing up the thing with floppies every Saturday morning. But it wasn't so bad. I could drink as long as I wanted then and not have to worry about gout or triglycerides. Soon Windows 95 became Windows 98. With the new century we got XP.  A few years later we got Vista. We watched movies now on line and more importantly, met women. The modern age had begun.

Now I am living with Windows 8.1. I learned to live with it's quirks. But why does it keep looking for a proxy when I have none?

In early August I plan to take advantage of the free download of Windows 10. Having Windows 10 will give me something to talk about in the break room and at parties. I'll be able to talk with authority on life with Cortana and Edge. I'll be older and wiser and get a discount on going to the movies and have Windows 10 waiting for me at home, next to the cane.

The truth about reality tv

Unreal is a new summer Lifetime tv show on Monday nights at 10 and repeated in various places including online.

Since the advent of the form,  I have believed that reality tv was just that. An unaltered view of random events in people's lives captured by a television camera. I always believed that what I saw was an accurate view of America as it is lived by real people. I even believed that the Bachelor was completely true, unfabricated, and an unvarnished look at true love, at least as it exists in Southern California. The tears I cried during the show were real tears, responding to real people and love in all it's incarnations.

Now, thanks to Unreal,  I have learned that what you see on reality tv is made up, directed by behind the scenes people, not even pleasant people, with gizmos in their ears. These assistant producers even direct what happens among the real people being photographed. This program has taught me a lot about  American media. Today I've become a man of the world.