Rabbit in the Moon

I saw Rabbit in the Moon perform at the 9:30 club last night. I could go on for pages about how awesome the music was and how thrilling the visual performance was, but that would take a bunch of space, and others have done it better than I would at the moment anyway. Instead I'd rather focus this post on the one part of the night that was most pleasantly surprising to me.

Let me first just mention that Rabbit in the Moon are touring to promote their new album, "Decade" - a most aptly named work. You see, my wife an I met at a rave a little more than a decade ago, and electronic music has long been a source of bonding between us. In fact, the last time we saw Rabbit in the Moon perform was almost exactly a decade ago. The whole brain-tingling experience last night made my life feel recursive in the best way. The crowd was great, giving off that awesome good-vibey, dare I say, "PLUR" attitude all night. I had thought that this kind of music-based, neo-techno-hippyish culture was dead and forgotten. I'm now thinking that thought was cynical, and am interested in trying to see if I can find that vibe elsewhere again.

One quick anecdote from the night and I'll stop gushing. Chris met the cutest pair of young kids who, with their small group of friends, thought Chris was a great dancer (I was somewhere else at the moment). The girl of the pair wanted to pinch Chris' ass while she was dancing, but was too shy, so her girlfriend did it instead, and thus introductions were made (I had come back at this point). Anyway, when these two young lovers found out that Chris and I were happily married, and had been in the techno scene for 15 years or so, and were still having this kind of fun, they just couldn't contain their happiness for us. It was really sweet. I could tell that they were looking at us as something like role models, an image of what their fresh pairing could look like in a decade. At one point, the boyfriend said, "You guys make us really happy". Great kids, I started feeling protective of them.

It's tough enough keeping a good relationship going right, and frankly if people hear you met your special someone "at a rave" I know from our own experience that people are skeptical that what you have is genuine, and think it won't last. I like to think that Chris and I are living proof that all those assholes were wrong about us, and will continue to be wrong about the younger ones making it work like Chris and I have and do. Props to the young.

iPhone

So I had been meaning to make this post for a little while now, but I thought I'd hold off until I broke the thing in. As you may have guessed, I bought an iPhone, the 8Gb variety. Chris bought one for herself too. Let me just answer your first question by saying that I love it so much, I want to wear it from a big fat gold chain around my neck (I've told that joke so many times now its eating prunes and threatening the kids on our lawn). There were however, some initial glitches. The biggest glitch was that Chris and I hadn't yet bothered to upgrade any of our Macs since OS 10.3.9 (the iPhone requires at least 10.4). There was also the little issue of not having any USB 2.0 ports on any of our puters. Chris solved the problem for herself by just buying a new laptop (which she really needs anyway for her home web development biz) I however had to do what I do best, which was to yet again upgrade my ancient Sawtooth. This time I plugged in a 20$ PCI card with 4 external USB 2.0 ports. I think that last upgrade makes it official, there is really and truly nothing left to upgrade on that machine. If I find it laking in some piece of hardware or performance need, I may just have to buy a whole new desktop model and start the whole upgrade process anew So anyway, after buying this new PCI card and upgrading to the latest OS, I was ready to activate my iPhone and go. I loaded my phone up with tons of crap, movies, photos, music contacts etc. all of which came in really handy for my recent flights to and from San Fran. For instance, I had bought and loaded the entire season 2 of Robot Chicken and laughed my ass off for a good 3 hours or so.

So far the funniest iPhone event I've had came on the Monday I was in San Fran. The week before I had been showing off my new toy to anyone who cared to see it. At one point, whilst demonstrating the web browser, a co-worker of mine asks, "hey can you surf for porn on that?!" I hadn't yet tried to so I simply answered, "I don't know but I will definitely give it a try and let you know." So now fast forward back to Monday morning. Four of us (including myself, my longtime mentor, another scientist from my lab, and our young business development representative) were scheduled to meet in the hotel restaurant at 7 Am sharp to go over a presentation we were giving later in the day. I was ready to check out of my room at 6:45 and, realizing I had some time to burn, recalled the earlier question about porn surfing. So I sit down and fire the phone up and sure enough, yes, I find that you can surf for porn on the iPhone. At the moment of this happy discovery, I realize it is 7 Am and so I hurry downstairs to meet my colleagues. When I get there I realize that in addition to the group I came with, we have a fifth, unexpected guest at the table. A fairly new, younger employee of my company whom I've only just started to get to know. After some brief inquires I learn that she is at a conference in the area and that the travel agent just happened to book us all in the same hotel without letting either party know about it. Anyway, we're all happy to see her as it gives us all a good opportunity to get to know each other a little better. So, to clarify the scene, it's four guys at the breakfast table and this one woman, who we are all happy and surprised to have with us. For the sake of anonymity, I'll just call her "Jen". At some point one of the guys asks me if I've shown Jen my new iPhone. "Why no, I don't think I have". Jen shows some of the excitement I'd gotten used to at the prospect of playing with this new gadget, and I proceed to take the iPhone out. It is in sleep mode at the moment I place the iPhone in front of her to demonstrate the main page, and am about to hit the little button at the bottom of the phone that will wake it up. As I'm saying, "So here's the main scr..." this (NSFW!!) photo pops up in full-screen mode. I immediately pull my phone away, tapping hurriedly at the controls as Jen gasps and my head suddenly becomes extremely warm. The other three guys at the table immediately ask what the hell just happened as I sheepishly explain that I just showed Jen a photo of a nude woman I had forgotten I was viewing about 15 minutes ago up in my room. A roar of laughter comes up and then the jokes start and continue on for what seems like years to me. Fortunately (after my immediate and repeated apologies) Jen seems to have understood, despite her initial shock, that this situation was a regretted mistake on my part and that the humor in it was entirely at my expense. So embarrassing. I'm just glad that the displayed image was of the more tasteful Playboy-variety, rather than my usual trans-sexual donkey porn (kidding).