When The Smaller Person Is The Bigger Person

For my money, there's nothing quite like walking through a retail hub to find yourself back in touch with humanity. I suppose that's why I enjoy going to the mall at Christmas; you just feel like you're part of the crowd, living the human experience, instead of just observing it. But you know, you sometimes have to take the good with the bad.

Tonight, I had to stop at CVS to pick up some photos on the way home. Yeah, there are other places to get fast photo developing, but this CVS is around the corner from my apartment, and they're open 24 hours a day, which trumps Wal-Mart times two. Of course, you still get some of the Wal-Martesque crowd. That, and whenever I decide to show up, five people are waiting for a solo cashier, but that's just bad timing on my part.

I walk in, receipt in hand, to find that exact scenario: one cashier, three ladies in front of me. Hot on my heels, I hear a woman coming in behind me, in conversation with her daughter. Since it's going to be a few minutes, I shift into observation mode. She's maybe 40, the daughter a well-spoken ten or eleven. She's buying detergent, because she has to do laundry. Her daughter requests some kind of hair product...I can only imagine conditioner. Around this time, a second cashier saunters up and starts serving the next woman in line. I inch forward.

Anyway, Mom objected to her daughter's request. "You can spend your own money, because I don't have that money," she insists. And so it goes. The two start going back and forth, the usual discussion between a child and parent about wants, needs, and where money comes from. I actually tuned it out, because sometimes, a kid needs to get that lecture. Half the problems we have today come from kids who get exactly what they ask for, without question or objection, and if parents would step in and say no now and then...hey, it builds character. Meanwhile, a second line has formed behind the second cashier. That's cool, I'm next in line anyway.

Then Mom becomes aware of her surroundings. Namely, that the cashier in front of us has departed her register to rectify an apparent problem with the woman at the counter. No big deal, it'll just be a few minutes. Mom observes the line to our left, and declares loudly, "There's already one line here." I nonchalantly say, "Was," laughing a bit because it's not that big of a deal. "No, still is," she retorts. Apparently, it is a big deal tonight.

The best part is, at that point, the little girl cuts in:

"Mom, don't talk so loud please."
"I'm saying it so people will hear."
"You're embarrassing me."

Embarrassing me, too, actually, since I happened to be in the same line as Harpy Mom. Of course, when the person left the remaining cashier's register, the cashier asked for the next one in line, and no one dared cut in front of me. I got my pictures, got out of the way, and booked it out of there. Harpy Mom was hot on my heels, too, as if she was afraid someone would cut her in the six-foot amble to the register. I couldn't feel her breath on my neck, but I wish I could have, because it'd have been more poetic.

If there hadn't been that second line, I was tempted to turn around and say, "Ma'am, you're clearly in a rush, so why don't you go ahead of me?" But I didn't. I'm not that confrontational, I didn't want to embarrass the girl, and I didn't want to cause a scene, when I could quickly cash out and leave. I'll bet it'd have gotten some props, though. Seriously, I know we all lead busy lives, but it's a CVS pharmacy on a Tuesday night. Is life so dire that you need to get worked up into a fit over the queue at a cash register? Is a two-minute inconvenience really that great of a tragedy? And in the end, all she did was make herself look like a bitch. At least, that was my parting impression. I feel for the guy who fathered the flock of kids in the minivan she drove.

I guess it just bugs me to see people unnecessarily take out their day's frustrations on the low-paid clerk at a store or a bank. The person behind the counter is paid to ring up your purchases, not to deal with your attitude. If they haven't given you any of their own, there's no need to give them any of yours. After all, most of us were on the other side of that counter at some point, too.

Another Donation To The Cameron Fund: Reviewing "Avatar"

Before last night, I could count the number of movies I've seen in the theater more than once on one hand. In fact, on one finger. (With all due respect to UPAC Cinema of RPI fame, I'm not counting $2.50 second-run flicks in a college amphitheater as multiple viewings; I'm talking strictly first-release film viewings.) At that, I hadn't seen a movie twice in its initial theatrical run until this spring, when I saw "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen" in IMAX and later in standard digital. Anyway, I've qualified my assertion enough.

I saw "Avatar" last night for the second time. I was actually kind of surprised I decided to go a second time, but after I'd bought the ticket, it was something of a fait accompli. I ended up meeting up with some friends who were going for their second go-around as well. Unlike "Transformers," I opted for the IMAX show on this run, too. There really isn't a point to seeing it in any other format.

I admit, I'm still surprised at the success of this one. This movie came out six weeks ago now. Adam and I went the Saturday after Christmas to find that both evening shows were already sold out in advance, and the lobby was mobbed. We tried the next afternoon to buy tickets, but it was another sellout. (Third time was a charm, but Adam also bought the tickets at 11am for a 3pm show.) The theater last night was still packed, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were a sellout...I bought my ticket online and got there 45 minutes before showtime, and stood way back in line just to get in. The crowd was laughing as they'd announce seating for other films, and no one budged, all waiting for that 10pm IMAX showing. Granted, there's one IMAX theater in this state, but you'd think the enthusiasm would have faded after six weeks of nightly showings.

And all this pomp and circumstance for a movie that, according to the critics, isn't really about story. The more harsh reviews suggested it was "'Dances With Wolves'/'Ferngully' in space," and one notable image meme going around shows a brief summary of the story of Pocahontas with characters' names swapped for their equal from "Avatar." This being something of a review, I can't really get away without a brief summary, so here goes. The year is 2154, and a corporation from Earth is mining a distant moon in another galaxy for a mineral worth a small fortune back home. The richest mineral deposits, of course, are under the key habitat of the indigenous alien population. In the interest of trying to get them to move without resorting to genocide, scientists have developed "avatars," human-alien hybrid bodies controlled by a mental link with a genetically-bonded "driver," to interact with the Na'vi population. Former Marine Jake Sully arrives as a replacement for his highly-trained (and deceased) twin brother, and inadvertently becomes embedded in the Na'vi race, as he tries not only to assimilate into their culture, but also to figure out what will convince the Na'vi to relocate peacefully.

Of course, the Na'vi don't want to move. And with shareholder value on the line, the humans decide it's time to make them move.

Yes, the political/ethical commentary and allegory here are about as thick as you can spread them on. I suppose you could draw parallels to the Iraq War here, when one military man vows to "fight terror with terror." And I cringed when another character comments on a promised "shock and awe campaign." I think the more apt parallel would be to our own westward expansion and Indian relocation. The difference, of course, is that wars are waged with government resources, and in "Avatar," it's not the government driving this move, it's a business. So now you get the bonus commentary on heartless monolithic corporations. When chief researcher Grace Augustine (played by Sigourney Weaver) lobbies for the need to further study the Na'vi and negotiate peacefully, RDA exec Parker Selfridge (played by Giovanni Ribisi, who I barely recognized the first time from his appearance in "Gone In 60 Seconds") reminds her callously that stockholder value is on the line, and quarterly financials are paramount...though genocide isn't really a favorable alternative, because it's a PR nightmare. In the end, your sympathies lie anywhere but with the human mining team. But when you have human ex-military men going all Rambo on the natives, you'd have to be heartless not to feel yourself tugged in that direction.

And as with most sci-fi, a few minutes of thought reveal some questionable and even annoying plot elements. The first was the fact that they're mining a mineral called "unobtainium." Yes, that's the name of the mineral. Supposedly, it was an inside joke that stuck after no one suggested a better name, but where unobtainium is kind of a generic trope name for some kind of insanely-expensive and hard-to-procure element, I thought keeping the name in there, even as a joke, was sort of lame. (I mean, they spent years with linguists devising a spoken language for the Na'vi, and couldn't come up with something better than unobtainium?) The air on the moon of Pandora is unbreathable by humans, though they can walk around unprotected without medical problems, as long as they have a respirator. An avatar driver has to be carefully networked to the mental bridge, but the avatar can be awoken and driven without being near anything resembling an electrode. And did I mention the use of the term "unobtainium?"

But none of that matters.

Oh, it matters, but not as much as you'd expect, because "Avatar" is not a story-driven movie. It's a special-effects orgy. Carmine and I had this discussion today, how he feels "it's surprising people can still be impressed by special effects." In a sense, it is. It's more evident when you see an older movie (like "The Terminator" or "RoboCop 2") that relied on extensive stop-motion animation, then you see something like "Terminator 3" where cyborgs were replicated not with makeup and stop-motion but with chroma-keying and digital effects. If the effects are good enough, you should look right past them.

With "Avatar," you're not supposed to. Part of that is the 3-D imagery. Yes, you get special glasses to watch the movie with. No, they're not blue and red like the ones that you got as a kid. Yes, they fit over my regular glasses (though I think last night's pair fit funny). Then, as you watch Jake Sully emerge from cryostasis in a zero-gravity spacecraft, you think he's doing so right in front of you, close enough to touch the screen. Ferns rustle around you, floating seeds fall in front of you, a golf ball whizzes past your head. (That last one is about as gimmicky as it gets, actually...and with three hours on-screen, there was plenty of time for Cameron to shout, "Look, y'all, we're filming 3-D here!")

The other part is that this is a believable, realistic digital world. The humans are pretty much real, yes. But the Na'vi are ten feet tall, giant blue cat-people with tails and nerve-infused ponytails. No amount of makeup is going to make that look good. So Cameron, who achieved great things with that water-tendril in "The Abyss" and the T-1000 in "Terminator 2," used motion-capture animation to translate actors' behavior to the animated Na'vi. Never mind all the animals, from insects to winged creatures, that needed to be realistically animated, too, and all the plant life. Animating a digital landscape is nothing new. Doing it in a way that looks as believable as the live-action segments of the movie is the achievement here. And we're not talking about some dingy dystopia, either. The flora are bioluminescent, glowing after nightfall. The terrain of Pandora is amazingly-sculpted. The one thing that did catch me off guard, and it caught my eye the second time I watched too, was a particular scene where the camera is closed in on one of the Na'vi. At first, it looks like a poor makeup job, and it feels like it spoils the moment. In retrospect, the Na'vi character is in war paint, so of course it should look like that. But this is a beautiful movie.

Maybe that's where the amazement comes in, that a movie that's little more than eye candy is such a hit. It's not that the story is bad, it's just not remarkable. There's no amazing unforeseen plot twist, and plenty of foreshadowing. But those special effects on the big screen are raking in cash. One Farker today pointed out that the 3-D and IMAX 3-D showings are higher-priced tickets anyway, making for a bigger take than if it were just a regular movie. A good point, but then, I have to ask if people would be turning out in droves the same way if it weren't shot in 3-D at all.

Which leads me to DVD sales. I didn't plan to buy this one on DVD anyway. But how can you replicate that cinematic experience at home? I doubt the movie will be released in 3-D, complete with glasses. And so I wonder how well "Avatar" will do after its theater run expires. Of course, how quick will movie theaters be to get rid of "Avatar" in the first run?

So I'm glad I got to see "Avatar" twice. I don't think I'll ever see it again quite in that fashion. There's always the sequel; James Cameron says he has enough of a story behind the movie to generate a couple sequels. Now that he has, as one publication put it, "money for his money to burn to keep itself warm this winter," we'll probably see at least a second movie. However, given the seven years it took to get from "Terminator" to "Terminator 2," I don't think it's wise to count on that for a while.

A Broken Past Beats No Future

So for both of you who still read this, apparently with all the fascinating things going on in my life, the most important thing I could elaborate on in the past four months has been a douchebag making a scene on an awards show I didn't even watch. Yeah, I'll work on that.

Actually, I was going to do some kind of annual recap. Not that anyone really cares; anyone who knows me knows what I've been up to the last year and some. Facebook status updates work, too. But what has me inspired to sit and actually write something is, interestingly, a Facebook status update from an old college friend, who pointed out the thoughts in his head surrounding Dick Clark's appearance on "New Year's Rockin' Eve" this year.

To summarize: Dick Clark's been the ageless host of an annual New Year's Eve countdown program featuring pop stars and so forth to ring in the new year. It makes for passable background noise at a party, though I suppose some might actually sit down and watch it front-to-back. A few years ago, Dick Clark suffered a stroke. Surprisingly, after some time off, he came back to host again. I think he might have limited himself to the countdown the first year. It was immediately evident why; the timeless voice and cadence of Dick Clark had been replaced by a muffled, sluggish version, the after-effect of that stroke. It was Dick Clark's face on television, still practically ageless, but the voice that came out was not Dick's.

As we gathered this year for New Year's Eve, once again someone pointed out how he'd missed a digit during the countdown, and he just couldn't keep up with the second-by-second count. It reminded me a bit of going to see Journey this fall, and seeing the new lead singer on the big-screen closeup. The voice was that of Steve Perry, but the image showed this little Filipino guy singing, which was a little creepy. With Dick Clark, it was more sad. You could see in his face that this was the Dick Clark, the one who'd ushered in his fair share of New Years, and he was happy to be up there holding court. But the voice that came out was tired and broken and...not right. In a way, it almost felt like they kept him on the show out of pity.

The funny thing is that I've never really marked the New Year with Dick Clark. Maybe my folks did. But until recently, I can't say I've ever been one to usher in the New Year in style. My parents always encouraged early bedtimes, and so our New Years celebrations consisted of waiting for an hour and a half to get seated at a restaurant or (more often) ordering Chinese takeout, then going to bed like usual. There was one year that I sat at my computer, connected to a Hotline server, downloading QuickTime videos of ancient Apple commercials. Sadly, that's the only New Year's Eve I really remember in any vivid detail, and that was hardly scintillating. So I didn't grow up on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, though I was well aware of who Dick Clark was, and aware of that old "Far Side" comic that depicts Dick "inexplicably aging 100 years in 60 seconds."

So as I stood there in the Kowaliks' living room, watching this shell of Dick Clark holding court yet again, I asked myself, "Why doesn't he sign off for good and let someone else take the reins?" I don't want to deny the man the pleasure of doing what he wants to do, but I almost wish he'd retired with dignity intact, so we could all remember the Dick Clark that was, not the Dick Clark that became. Maybe dignity is something only we assign to all of this.

And then I asked the really important question, maybe the question that answers why Dick Clark remains on TV...who would be able to replace him?

It's sort of like when Bob Barker retired from hosting "The Price Is Right." He hosted that game show for 35 years, long enough to transcend generations. In a lot of our minds, Bob Barker was "The Price Is Right." It wasn't the same when Rod Roddy died and someone else took over the announcer's chair, and it doesn't feel quite like it did with Drew Carey at the helm. Dick Clark was like that. His image transcends generations. Our parents grew up with him, we grew up with him. On camera and on the stage, he truly had this emcee persona, that he was the man in control and the man of authority...and maybe even someone to aspire to. (Maybe I identify with that more because he's more like a grandparent to me than a parent, in terms of age.) It's probably what Dick Clark was shooting for all along, much like when Bruce Morrow took the radio moniker "Cousin Brucie." For years, kids confided and trusted in Cousin Brucie. I didn't—that was far before my time—but I see that kind of thing in Dick Clark. Here's this solemn, sincere, but fun guy ushering in the New Year, the official master of ceremonies for the calendar to turn a page, offering words of inspiration and anticipation and meaning every syllable of it.

Who else can do that? We no longer have emcees; we just have hosts, usually in tandem, as if it takes two personalities to fill the void one used to satisfy. Today's hosts are transitory figures, here when the ratings are strong, gone when they slip a point to some other flavor-of-the-week host, or when their generation grows up and leaves them in the dust. Is it because the newer generations are reluctant to embrace their elders' authority figures, or is someone telling them they should be? Either way, we end up with hosts who have personality but no authority, because their staying power is only as strong as the ratings they pull down this time around. It's why someone like Ryan Seacrest won't be the Dick Clark of the future; he's a pretty face, but he doesn't command any authority. I'm not really sure that he even wants to.

I also can't help but wonder what role the Internet has in terms of our celebrities. Frankly, I don't know anything about Dick Clark, as far as his relationships, his affairs, whatever goes on behind the scenes. Wikipedia tells me he's been married thrice, and since 1977 in his current relationship. However, pre-Internet it was a lot easier to make all that behind-the-scenes nonsense disappear. Now, every rumor becomes an extension of reality, not to mention it's easier to "research." The personal lives of today's celebrity material are laid bare for everyone to gawk at, and so today's celebrities probably seem far less wholesome and sincere as people. (Granted, our values system has shifted, too.) I'm sure when he was in his twenties, Dick Clark had his share of good times with the ladies, then settled down when it felt right. We just conveniently missed out on all of that. TMZ wasn't around to report every juicy detail.

And so we're left with a celebrity landscape that really isn't designed to produce or sustain another Dick Clark, not as we remember him. And so Dick Clark remains on TV because there really isn't anyone who can ever fill those shoes. Sometimes, it's easier for us to hold onto a bad version of a good past than to face an uncertain, unfulfilling future. When he finally does sign off for good, it'll leave a void. There'll be New Year's Eve specials with all the pop stars and celebrity appearances and annual retrospectives. They'll be more sizzle than steak, more razzle-dazzle than sincerity. But that's sort of where TV's going anyway.

It hurts me to see Dick Clark the way he is, because I remember a little of who he was. But I suppose it's easier to stomach than two hosts with no emotional investment counting down the ball-drop.

Bling Can't Buy Class

I'm not even trying to be a hipster archetype by saying this, but it's been a while since I've sat through the MTV Video Music Awards. It's not that I'm too cool for them or anything. The last one I can really remember watching was when Chris Rock hosted in, what, 1999 or 2000? He was funny, threw out some pretty good lines, and I laughed. I'm ashamed to admit that, because if I'm watching the Video Music Awards, shouldn't I be watching because of the music? If I want to see comedy, there are plenty of channels that offer that.

Truth is, I don't even know if they play videos on MTV anymore, it's been so long since I've watched. It used to be getting-ready-in-the-morning filler material on TV when the news was uninteresting. Ever since MTV became a mélange of genres I don't give a tenth of a care about, I've had no burning need to check in. Actually, I didn't even know the VMAs were tonight until I saw an ad for it on MySpace (yeah, don't ask why I picked today to peek at my neglected and unnecessary MySpace account).

So why am I writing about it? I've been in for the night, and next thing I knew, everyone's Facebook status was abuzz with something Kanye West did. I guess that, in itself, isn't news. We're talking about the guy who took advantage of some airtime on MTV to once claim that President Bush didn't like black people. I don't know if one incident an attention whore makes, but it'll do in this case.

I'd have let it go, but then I saw the video from the award ceremony, before it was removed from YouTube. (I'm sure there'll be other copies in the coming days, popping up faster than Viacom can submit a copyright claim.)

For those who haven't seen it, Taylor Swift is on stage, accepting her award for "Best Female Video." I have no idea which of her songs was up for the award, but from what I've heard of her music (okay, so that's limited to a ballad titled "Teardrops On My Guitar"), she's pretty likely to be, thematically, worlds apart from her competition in the category. So here's this cute country gal, all of nineteen, winning a rather unexpected award - as she started to say, "I sing country music, so thank you all for giving me a chance to win this award."

Started to say. Enter Kanye West, stage left. In a classy move, Kanye commandeered the mic and declared, "Taylor, I'm gonna let you finish, but Beyoncé [Knowles] had maybe one of the best videos ever! Just sayin'." He hands the mic back to a speechless Taylor Swift and exits stage left, while Taylor just stands there, kind of shocked, finally gathering it back up to wave to the crowd, ending her abbreviated acceptance speech. Cut to commercial, or the next segment, or whatever they do.

Where do you even begin? I mean, you're a guest or whatever at an awards ceremony. An award is given to someone whose music pretty much isn't on your genre's radar; I mean, unless it's a radio-driven show like the KISS Concert, I'm guessing that no one will be booking Taylor Swift to open for Beyoncé Knowles anytime soon. It's not like this is some kind of rivalry; diehard country fans probably don't care what happens in the world of R&B and hip-hop, and R&B/hip-hop fans probably don't care about the country music scene, either. It's not like Kanye was on stage for an award, or as a presenter, or anything really. So what was the purpose of all that? It sure didn't make me think anything good about Beyoncé, I'll say that for sure. Moreover, whoever votes on the VMAs apparently they didn't think Beyoncé's video was as amazing as Kanye felt, either. If you've got to comment, there's sure to be plenty of press to cover the "I think we got ignored" angle later on. And come on, it's not like Beyoncé or Destiny's Child had any shortage of awards years ago.

What it did accomplish was it ruined an evening. Taylor Swift managed to say that she'd always dreamed of winning an MTV Video Music Award, and that she never thought she would. (Standard, but believable...over the years, it seemed that MTV had become the home of hard rock and rap music while top-40 and crossover country were relegated to VH1, with "real" country only inhabiting the specialty annex of CMT.) Here she was, accepting that award that, as a kid, she probably thought it would be cool to win. Awards are a fickle kind of thing; you can quantify album sales and downloads, but no matter how good you are or how hard you work, you can't guarantee voted awards. If you're lucky enough to win one, you might never be fortunate enough to win another.

And then, two sentences into a speech she'd probably rehearsed in a mirror but never knew if she'd get to say on stage, some dude from another musical world entirely takes the mic from her, basically disses her award on stage (indirectly, of course...but indirect insults are sometimes even more harsh than a petty "you suck"), then gives the mic back to her. She's left speechless. What would you say? What could you say, in her position, to follow that up? The rehearsed speech and the grateful thank-yous and the moment in the limelight were all gone at that point. From the video I saw, she looked totally deflated. Taylor Swift will surely win plenty of awards if she hasn't already; there are the Teen Choice awards, and I'm sure there's plenty of genre-specific celebration where she'll surely get recognition for her music. But to Taylor Swift, I'll bet that VMA - an award voted on against stars of all other backgrounds - had a certain special meaning. She didn't disrespect any genre or any musician, she simply won.

Kanye West ruined that moment of recognition for her, and that's something no pile of money or double-platinum album can buy back.

This shouldn't bother me, but it does. I'm not a country fan...I have a weak spot for cute girls with lovely voices, but I can take or leave country music. It doesn't really make a difference if it was Taylor Swift winning that award, or Lady GaGa, or Kylie Minogue. What Kanye West did tonight was completely tasteless and disrespectful, no matter who he disrespected. I guess I wouldn't care so much if someone like Kylie or Madonna were snubbed, because they'd have the grace of years in the business to shake it off and put Kanye in his place. Maybe it is more tasteless that he disrespected someone as new to the business as Taylor.

Before tonight, I'd acknowledged his past transgressions, but Kanye West was never really on my radar, musically or for his extracurricular pursuits. After tonight, I'll rank him right up there with Perez Hilton on the douchebag scale. And that's some pretty dubious company.

Put Down Your Remote Control, Throw Out That TV Guide

I don't tend to watch a lot of TV. Admittedly, that's because there's nothing on. Adam, my roommate, vehemently disagrees, but then, he enjoys "Mythbusters" and the sci-fi fare that hasn't yet been excised from the recently-renamed Syfy. All the same, we just have basic cable; why would we need anything more? I'd rather have a fast Internet connection.

So tonight, Adam discovered we have a new channel on our package. It's not really a new channel, per se, and I knew my parents got it, but my parents have two HD boxes with a couple packages that ensure they'll have HBO for "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and Speed for NASCAR coverage. Anyway, Adam discovered tonight that we now get RTV, the Retro Television Network. Much in the vein of what TV Land does, RTV broadcasts series from the '50s through to the '80s. In the background, I hear commercials, but I was just treated to the theme song of "The A-Team." This after Adam watched David Hasselhoff in "Knight Rider." And as I mentioned to Adam, RTV also shows episodes of "Airwolf," which he and Carmine adore with a sort of fanaticism.

For us here in Manchester, RTV resides at Channel 20 on the Comcast package. Not thinking, I did some research on Wikipedia. It's then that I determined RTV is indeed tied to the most awesome semi-independent TV channel in Boston.

When I grew up, in addition to our local ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX affiliates, we also had some independent channels. There were WNDS-TV 50, WGOT-60, little stations like that. The days of those stations and callsigns have long since passed, but many of them live on, broadcasting for networks like MyTV and formerly the PAX network. A bunch of them used to show shopping channels, too, or Univision.

One of these was WMFP-TV out of Lawrence, MA. WMFP-TV actually broadcast the Shop At Home Network for a bunch of years, relegated to flashing its callsign once an hour between shows. If you're morbidly curious like I was, the full story on WMFP-TV is here on Wikipedia, which we know is 100% factual and correct. Anyway, after SAH went under in 2006, the station was sold to Multicultural Television, and showed some other jewelry shopping channels for a couple years before they picked up the Retro Television Network feed in 2009.

That's not the cool part. It dawned on me that, while clicking channels, I'd seen the channel number for WMFP-TV. It may show up as Channel 20, but if you'd had to tune it in via rabbit ears, WMFP-TV was...Channel 62. In fact, while they've discontinued analog UHF and now broadcast solely on digital UHF channel 18, they still use virtual channel 62.1.

Nerds will recognize the significance of this. For those who don't, "Weird Al" Yankovic released a movie in 1989 titled "UHF," starring himself as a big dreamer who inherits control of a failing TV station and gets to make his imagination reality. After opening against a litany of summer blockbusters, the movie tanked, becoming a cult classic years later on DVD. If you haven't seen "UHF," you're failing yourself; it's a great period piece, box-office numbers be damned. Anyway, in the movie, Al's character George took control of none other than UHF Channel 62.

So, greater-Boston-area TV viewers, there you have it. WMFP-TV 62, your local carrier for Retro Television, is indeed UHF Channel 62, "The Reason Television Was Invented!"

Now, they just need to pick up Wheel Of Fish and Raul's Wild Kingdom, and I'll be pleased.

Cellular Dissonance

I had a scare this weekend. Nothing along the lines of a full-scale panic attack, mind you, and years ago I'd never think I would succumb to this. But as we were playing pool Saturday evening, between attempts at shots and lucky breaks, I'd peek at the screen of my cell phone, hoping it would offer up something more than illuminated white pixels.

Nope. Just more white, mocking me. Good luck reading those text messages, sucker! I mean, it was Saturday night, so it's not like I was in high demand by any stretch, but there's a disturbing feeling about being off the grid. Much as white people need to be prepared by wearing their performance outerwear, you never know when someone's going to try and get ahold of you to tell you something totally awesome is happening, worth dropping whatever you're doing at the moment.

It's funny enough I'd be so concerned over a phone, anyway. The only reason I got a cell phone in the first place was because my parents wanted me to have that safety net once I had a car. I'd told myself I wasn't important enough that I really needed to be accessible by phone all the time. I had a dorm phone, I had my parents' phone, and if I wasn't near one of those and wasn't online somehow, then anyone who would call me was probably already with me. Eventually, I started talking with a girl or two who had an affinity for the phone over online communiqués, and so I realized that, being one who likes to talk in real life, I didn't mind talking on the phone, either. I still didn't need text-messaging, until I got involved on the McCain campaign and everyone was just texting in lieu of making phone calls. After racking up $50 or $60 in pay-by-the-text messages in a month, I added texting to my phone.

And so, here I was, balancing a pool cue in one hand, flipping my ailing LG VX5400 open and shut, hoping for a different answer each time. Actually, as timing goes, Saturday night isn't really a bad night for a phone to die. What had my mind racing was the question I've been trying not to answer for quite a few months.

Is it time for the smartphone yet?

I'm odd as far as nerds go. I have two computers in my room, a laptop in a case not too far away, and more computers in the garage than I've had girlfriends in my life. My license plate is a geek reference that's lost on everyone else. I speak in memes, I gawk at Apple notebooks in libraries and coffee shops. And yet, I can be a stubborn laggard when new tech-toys emerge. Part of it is thrift, and part of it is an inexplicable hipster-like tendency to not want to be the bandwagon-jumper. Maybe I don't want to be associated with failure, who knows?

And so the guy most people assume is a slave to his CrackBerry or iPhone is a nerd who sends and receives 800 texts a month off a phone with a numeric keypad, hammering the keys the prescribed number of times to get full sentences under that 160-character limit. With apologies to Chamillionaire, they see me textin', they hatin', T9-ing and trying to catch me writing QWERTY.

The last time I upgraded my phone through Verizon, it wasn't much of an upgrade. That was sort of by design. I can text plenty fast on a numeric keypad, so I don't need a phone with a keyboard. If I got a phone with a keyboard, I would have to get a BlackBerry or something requiring a data plan, something I didn't really think was worth the cost. And ever since I broke that first Palm IIIxe back in high school, I've been leery of trying to tote something with a good-sized screen in a pocket like that. My sister can stow her Voyager and my mom can stow her enV2 in their respective purses, but except in the J. Peterman catalog, purses just haven't caught on among men.

The other thing was, I keep feeling like I'm not important to need a BlackBerry. I've got this stigma about the things, that they're tools not for personal use, but for the businessperson who can't or doesn't want to break away from work. If I got one, I know I'd tie it to my work e-mail account. I'm always thinking about work already; I don't need to make it any easier. And yet, that's exactly what I'd do. I'm already doing it in other ways. Part of me feels it's expected, not by my company, but by the customers. It's the one e-mail that comes in after you've left the office for the weekend that makes you feel like you should have been checking e-mails all the while. I don't want a smartphone to turn me into one of those work zombies who never unplugs, but then, the device doesn't turn you, you turn yourself.

And so I can't help but think that my next phone has to be a smartphone. From a work standpoint, I could tether my e-mail to my smartphone, I could check drivers through Field Force Manager's Web portal, I could install Skype Mobile to keep in touch. From a personal standpoint, hell, it'd be cool to be permanently wired. Gmail and Wikipedia access at a moment's notice are worth a glance, for sure. I'd finally have an excuse to join Twitter, too, though that's hardly a motivating factor to buy a smartphone.

As it turned out, it was a non-question in the end. To my surprise, my phone was covered under warranty (I figured they sold insurance so they didn't have to provide warranty coverage), and so I walked out of the Verizon store with a new, identical phone sans the paint chip sustained when I dropped the phone on a stone walkway doing door-to-doors in Wolfeboro. (The bastards gave me back my old, worn battery cover, though.) I kept my contacts, not that I couldn't have recreated them, and I walked out without spending an extra dime.

And yet, as I sat in the car, I felt a little bummed out, because in a moment of weakness, I was warming to the smartphone. Not to the slave-to-work element of it, but just the coolness factor of having the world at my fingertips, like just about everyone else, none of whom are concerned over how important they are and whether they actually warrant having a BlackBerry or not. I'm still a little lukewarm on the whole thing, like even though my new phone still works just wonderfully, I'd consider upgrading to a BlackBerry or a Windows Mobile phone tomorrow.

At least this week, I'm hanging onto this old-school phone. But I can't help but wonder when I'm finally going to decide this is one upgrade I can't keep avoiding.

School Daze

One of my friends just started her last semester of law school. She's hardly the only one; I've seen from plenty of Facebook status updates that people are going back to school, starting classes again, or teaching if they're in that line of work. At first, it seemed so early, but then, last Monday was August 24th, and now I'm staring September down the barrel already, wondering where the hell summer went so fast when it barely showed up a month ago.

But this isn't about fleeting time; that's for another day. Rather, it's about those people going back to school.

I'm not going back to school. I admit there's a certain attraction to being a career student, but I've already accumulated my fill of student loans, and I frankly have no idea what I'd do if I were to go to graduate school, other than to say "I'd go get my MBA" with the same awareness I had when I asserted I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was six. I have a mailing from RPI that reminds me when Homecoming Week is (October) and subtly hints at this fall being our five-year college reunion, which also means I'm only halfway to that ten-year benchmark most of our professors discussed when pointing out how many high-tech entrepreneurs had taken ten years between achieving their undergrad and graduate degrees.

And yet, something makes me wish I could go back to college. Not with the pressure of taking classes, of course. I'm just talking about loading my life into the back of my dad's blue Dodge pickup, driving three hours west on winding mountain highways, and pulling into the crowded fire lane behind the Quadrangle to unload boxes into a vacant dorm room. I'm talking about getting everything unpacked, and taking in the calm before the storm, where everyone settles back into a life they put on the shelf for a few months, acclimating to the campus network and off-campus weekend dinners and apartment living without doors and with friendly neighbors. I already had a dream this summer where I moved back into college only to discover I'd somehow been entirely unprepared for any of the classes I somehow hadn't registered for. I think "nightmare" would be a better term if I hadn't woken realizing college was way past tense by now.

I still remember that first weekend, maybe not as vividly as I wish I could, but there are the details that stand out more than others. I remember one spot in the triple already being occupied when I got there, as Liam had been on campus for Air Force ROTC orientation. Greg had gotten there just as I did, and we'd all accepted the furniture layout of the room as it was, because with the space we had in our forced triple, there weren't any other alternatives. I was the only one who'd brought a computer along, as I had my old Power Mac G3 when we would all be receiving our laptops before long. Part of the day was spent doing orientation activities, much as we'd done when we visited the campus for freshman orientation in mid-summer. When I was able to get online, I immediately logged into Napster and downloaded Nina Gordon's "Tonight And The Rest Of My Life," because I'd heard the song on the radio a couple times during the drive over. I'd been hopeful to catch the Bristol NASCAR race that evening, but we were committed to a so-called "Communiversity" event in scenic downtown Troy, somewhere along the Hudson that I can't even recall exactly where something quite so picturesque would be, though Google Maps would probably help. I don't recall how I got back, either, because I doubt I stayed for the whole thing, and I know Liam and Greg didn't, because they'd brought Rollerblades to expedite their escape. We got our new laptops sometime Sunday morning, but in between there, I'd allowed a few people to check their e-mail on my Mac.

What was my first class of the week? I'm sure I have a schedule sitting somewhere, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter what it was. There were greater things happening, greater things to be remembered, than class.

It's hard to accept that was nine years ago. It dawned on me last spring, though. In a way, we had our reunion, sort of coming full-circle. Carmine's brother Chris and Joe's brother Jason were graduating, so Carmine asked if I'd want to come out for the festivities. We left after work on Friday, meeting the Sarnos in Troy. After dinner, we ventured to Hattie's for mojitos, wandering the Saratoga streets like the Broken Lizard actors in "Beerfest," finding a bar I couldn't take you to without walking the steps myself. The next afternoon, as we broke down the dorm room Chris and Jason shared that Carmine, Joe and I had shared in 2001 and 2002, we admitted that while we'd graduated four years before, we'd actually moved to campus eight years prior. Eight is a pretty small number, but when you're twenty-six, eight years seems like an awfully long time. The world was a pretty different place then.

And we were pretty different people then, too.

I mean, it's romantic to suggest how great it would be to go back to school again. Not as a twenty-eight-year-old with something resembling perspective and life experience, but as a largely-naïve twenty-year-old whose biggest taste of freedom was the lofted bed in Hunt III 1004, the option of choosing whether to go to Sage for dinner or venture to the Union for a grilled chicken-and-cheese sub or just call Hao Wei for takeout. I guess lots of things in life are like that; I started writing a book about the great experiences of my high-school career, but some of the luster wore thin when I realized how much more amazing college was. I'd venture to say my adult-life experiences have been richer and deeper still, but partially because in college, I was still measuring myself against others' expectations instead of living for myself. Those who know me know my fascination with "The Butterfly Effect" and the notion of how one change in the timeline can change everything down the timeline. And so if I sent myself back to college, I'd go as that twenty-year-old armed with just enough advance knowledge to make decisions a little differently. Part of me wants to relive all the good times, just to reinforce the details. Part of me wants to go back and make a few changes, maybe out of greed, because I'd love to have seen how both sides played out.

It'd be nice to go back, but somehow, the prospect of work tomorrow isn't quite as daunting as the prospect of class.

The Price Of Entertainment (Or, Keeping Butts Out Of The Stands)

Last night, I spent a couple hours at Starbucks. Remember that episode of "Family Guy" where they make fun of those people who go to Starbucks with a laptop to be noticed as writers? Yeah, I was one of those. Nothing says wannabe writer like a person at a table for two with an Apple laptop and an overpriced coffee beverage...except maybe being a barista at said overpriced coffee chain.

Originally, I'd been flirting with something I haven't done in several years; a trip to one of the local race tracks. Those who don't follow auto racing (stock car racing, particularly) often don't realize that the big NASCAR shows aren't the be-all and end-all of stock car racing. (More accurately, they aren't aware of it, much as someone indifferent to baseball might not be aware that there's a middle ground between Little League and the major leagues.) Thanks to NASCAR's marketing approach, I'm not so sure a lot of casual new-age viewers realize there's a world of racing in their backyard. But it's there. On Friday and Saturday nights (and Sunday afternoons when the weather gets too cold...in October), or Thursdays if you live in northern Vermont, little quarter- and third-mile oval tracks put on their own racing shows. My grandfather used to pooh-pooh the short-track atmosphere as "where they race the jalopies," and while there are still entry-level classes with first-time racers running resurrected junkyard beaters, there are also prepared divisions shaking the grandstands every week.

In my neighborhood, there are a few options. Closer to the seacoast, there's Lee USA Speedway on Route 125, a third-mile oval. A little closer to Route 101 in Epping, there's a quarter-mile oval called All-Star Speedway. When my dad and I went, it was called Star Speedway, but the ownership of the track changed hands a few years back, in the midst of a track closing due to, shall we say, poor grounds conditions. We always considered ourselves fortunate that we didn't fall through the grandstands at least once. We were never weekly regulars, but we'd catch the special shows, when the regular weekly divisions were joined by the Busch North or the Featherlite Modified touring series. There are those who go weekly; they're mostly the diehards, rooting for someone they know or someone they've followed forever.

I can't be sure, but the last time I went to Lee might have been the Busch North opener in 2000. The series (and track) opener were held on a chilly Sunday in April, so after 2000, I couldn't be home for the opening race. Not long after that, my dad fell ill, and he can't negotiate those old-style wooden bleachers anymore. It's been a while. But I've wanted to get back to the track, maybe with someone who would enjoy it. I know drivers have come and gone, but it doesn't matter who's driving if the racing is good, right?

Last night was a special race at Lee, featuring the International SuperModified Association. The SuperModifieds are open-wheel cars, loud and light alcohol-burners with wings that zip around the track faster than a heavy stock car could dream of. The local tracks run so-called "small-block" SuperModifieds as a weekly division, but the touring ISMA cars are a bigger deal. I figured it would be a fun way to blow a Friday night.

Then I saw the ticket prices. $30 for an adult admission ticket. I'm no stranger to that; we used to pay $25-30 to go see the Busch North cars at Lee or Star. But that was a major NASCAR touring division, a 150-lap feature race plus all the local divisions. This was for a race half that length, plus the weekly stuff. If a ticket was closer to $20, I could have rationalized it; I think weekly admission is around $10 or $12. But $30 for an ISMA show seemed a bit steep. I talked to two of my co-workers Friday; both had considered going to Lee themselves, but the ticket prices were a turnoff for a short race.

The reasons for high ticket prices are many, and I could burn another blog post that'd be interesting to about three people considering the high price of motorsports, making up for lagging attendance and not being able to gouge the teams to pay their own purse, and so on. But especially in this economy, it seems like it would be better to charge a little less, and maybe entice more people to show up, than to turn people away. Friday-night racing isn't the only option out there. You can pick up good seats at a Fisher Cats minor-league baseball game for $15. An evening showing of a movie at a good theater is $10, and if you're up for a second-run flick, the Hooksett theater has prices lower than that. If you have a good stereo system and a nice TV, Redbox rentals are a buck a night. Or, if you're a nerd, you can get a venti Mocha Frappuccino (with whipped cream) for $5, and sit in an air-conditioned Starbucks for a couple hours slaving over your PowerBook.

The annual promoters' workshops in Daytona used to say the same thing; that you're competing against a lot of different options for entertainment dollars. It's even more important now, when people have less money to spend. Thirty dollars wouldn't have set me back too badly, but if I'd wanted to invite Jess and Mark (if they were here), they'd have passed at that price. My roommate Adam probably would have. I can't blame them. Hey, last weekend, after shopping and dinner, we retired to my apartment for hours of playing Rock Band 2 and the Forza demo. If you leave dinner out, and ignore the video games Adam bought on impulse, we had a pretty cheap night and still had a great time.

The same thing crossed my mind earlier this year, when the staff at Yankee Stadium decided to keep ticket prices in a sort of prestige bracket even though they weren't selling out games. Yes, I understand it's the Yankees. But wouldn't it be better to cut prices a bit, if it meant bringing in a few more butts to sit in the seats? People don't go to games alone. They bring friends, family, kids, so right off the bat, if you're selling one ticket, you're probably selling two. When we went to Loudon as a family, that was four tickets at nearly $90 a piece. That's a $360 day in tickets alone, never mind the other expenses of entertainment. A family can't do that more than once or twice a year. My parents rarely went to professional hockey games for that reason. A pair of good Bruins tickets could cost maybe $200, I have no idea what they were running at face value when my parents used to go. But for the same $200, you can get five pairs of minor-league tickets to see the Manchester Monarchs. The name's not the same, but the entertainment value certainly is. For that matter, a family can afford four tickets to see the Monarchs. And they can probably afford four tickets a few times a year, versus one special event. My dad got to enjoy ten or so Monarchs games last year.

You could say the same for concert tickets. I skipped out on the Fleetwood Mac show this spring, partly because I had no one to join me, but partly because the prices for good seats were a bit steep. I'm sure Fleetwood Mac was good, but not $90-100 good. Sure, I could have grabbed cheap seats somewhere, but I'm a bit of a seat snob. I admit that I did pay $190 to see The Eagles last year. Steep, but it was worth every penny, and I don't recall seeing many empty seats. I guess the best price is whatever the market will bear, and there are always plenty of wealthy parents to bankroll their kids' attendance at *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys or (more recently) Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers concerts, but those are more the exception than the rule.

I guess someone has to have done the math, but from where I sit, without a sports-marketing background (but with two first-place trophies in some DECA roleplays on the subject!), it just seems like it'd be better to fill seats and earn on the volume than to gouge those who really, really, really want to go and leave those on the fence feeling like they're getting ripped off. Entertainment doesn't have to be a charity, but it doesn't have to be a luxury, either.

ISMA's supposed to be coming to All-Star Speedway in September. I wonder what ticket prices will be like for that show, though something tells me I'll be choosing Starbucks over All-Star.

Shop 'Til Your Packets Drop

This is starting to become a habit.

Just yesterday, I was musing on the questionable future of a particular retailer, and how they've somehow clung to life like a cockroach after World War III. I also hinted (yes, foreshadowing in a blog entry) that I'd touch on this on a macro scale. Well, here I am, following through on promises made.

The store I'd pointed out in particular was RadioShack, a chain in the midst of a new branding approach (according to Engadget, the chain seems poised for a branding shift to "The Shack"). Ironically, a few nights before this article appeared on Fark, my roommate Adam and I made the offhand remark, "[We] wonder how they're still around." I'm not old enough to appreciate everything RadioShack once was. But I do remember the days of store-branded Realistic stereo equipment and home electronics, of radio-control cars, bins of electronic components, musical instruments. There were days when one had a reason to go to RadioShack. (In those days, there was a space between the two words, before the InterCaps trend caught on with all things electronic.)

I've seen an evolution away from that, but then I walked into the store at the Mall of New Hampshire just yesterday. Compared to the RadioShack with a space, it's like a different store. I'm not even talking about the evolution of technologies themselves. The second-rate home-theater equipment was nowhere near the front of the store, but I could find all manner of cell phones and iPod accessories. It's a small-format store anyway, but this isn't your father's RadioShack, seriously.

Of course, I pondered that for the $3 and change I paid for my coax coupler, I could have found one on some Web site for a fraction of that (plus shipping and handling, of course). And that's what got me thinking that maybe I needed to put this to hypertext, because I've wondered it more than a few times.

Those who read Freakonomics will recall the chapter in which Levitt and Dubner discussed how the Internet affected the term life insurance market by making information (quotes) accessible, and making it harder for third-party insurance brokers to charge more than the price the market would bear. Surely, the Internet's affected all forms of commerce like that. I remember standing in Best Buy with Carmine and Adam, frustrated that we couldn't access Circuit City's Web site for a price check (and trying to find a Web-based VNC client so we could skirt the firewall). More than just disseminating information, though, the Web has driven a new model of purchasing and distribution. You can't think about that without wondering how much responsibility it held for the closing of electronics chains like Tweeter and Circuit City, among others in all segments of retail.

I admit, I'm old-fashioned and still driven by instant gratification. There's something to be said of the tactile nature of taking a package off the shelf and paying for it. It makes cognitive dissonance more tangible, at least! I still go to the bookstore to buy a book, but if they don't have it, I rarely get on Amazon to place an order when I get home. I buy my electronics in person so I can play with them right away. I buy clothes in person...well, that's obvious. Also, I don't like shipping things to the apartment, where I don't know if someone will help themselves to my parcels if I don't get right home after work.

But there's not that much, aside from maybe groceries, that I can't buy online. If I weren't so enthralled by the act of getting out and spending money in the real world, I'd easily never have to set foot in a mall again. I have plenty of friends who do all their shopping with their fingers and a credit-card number. Even my mother buys most of our gifts online, and she's mildly technophobic. My dad's new camera was ordered through some Amazon-affiliated retailer for about $75 less (shipped!) than the store price at Best Buy. Most of my computer parts have been ordered through NewEgg, whose prices are way more competitive than Best Buy (or formerly Circuit City) could dream of being.

But where would that leave retailers?

I guess part of growing up is all about paradigm shifts. Evolution is survival, and clinging to the past is the most direct route to failure. Look at the RIAA; when potential customers embraced file sharing as a way to obtain music, instead of finding a way to fulfill and profit on a new market demand, they clung tightly to the old way of doing business, and used litigation to discourage the new technology. It's certainly done no favors for goodwill toward the RIAA. The news media is in the same boat now; newspaper subscriptions are dwindling among a younger demographic, but people still demand news. Some media companies found ways to embrace the new technology; others simply cried that subscriptions were falling short, and eventually closed the doors. More will close with time.

Such is the problem with retail. Since college, if I've needed something for my computer and didn't need it immediately, I'd order it from NewEgg. Service was fast, and the shipped price was better than any brick-and-mortar store. Plus, NewEgg had plenty of things (OEM drives and processors, anyone?) that the physical stores simply don't stock. Physical space is limited at a store. A warehouse outside LA is a little more accommodating. NewEgg has facilities in New Jersey now, and who knows where else. But the upkeep on those, say, five or six warehouses is far less than the capital expense of every Best Buy store and distribution center, never mind the floor employees necessary for each store and the staff that operates their Web site. It's obvious that Best Buy is going to have a lot more expenses to move the same product.

That's fine if you can provide some kind of added value. Store retail has an obvious value; you can see and try the product before you buy. For some lines of merchandise, that's more important than others. If I'm buying clothes, I want to try things on, match colors, and feel fabric. You can't do that effectively through a catalog or through the Web. So fashion retail may never entirely die. Electronics, on the other hand...I find it beneficial to try out a camera or a laptop, but if I'm going to go home and order it online, I've just made Best Buy's showroom my bitch, for lack of a better term. Then there's book and music shopping. With music and movies, if you know what you're looking for, it's not as if you're passing up the chance to try before you buy if you order online. Same if I know I'm looking for Dennis Lehane's new book; I don't need to see it to know I want it. But if I've never heard of Dennis Lehane and I'm just browsing the Mystery section at Barnes & Noble, then I think having the book on a shelf would be appealing.

The question is what that added value is worth. In the case of RadioShack, the added value used to be knowledgeable staff. The Fark play on the store's motto was "You've got questions, we've got blank stares." Part of keeping costs down means hiring employees who work for less, and the knowledgeable people will avoid that retail hell, leaving "associate" jobs to kids who know nothing but how to parrot back "Do you need any batteries today?" Was it worth $75 more to my dad to be able to touch the camera in person? Not when he had the tools to order it another way cheaper. On the other hand, my friend Erin paid the premium but walked out of the store with the camera that afternoon. Sometimes, you need it now. Newbury Comics was one store that did have the advantage of knowledgeable staff, but when their CD prices soared to FYE-level, that's when I stopped going in. I love music, but knowledgeable staff and buying local isn't worth a $5 premium on a CD I can buy for $10 at Best Buy.

This is a rambling entry, I know, but I just often wonder at what point we'll outgrow the very notion of brick-and-mortar retail. I'd like to hope we never do. There are two things retail has going for it. One is the showroom aspect. The other is the shopping aspect. Shopping online has never felt as natural for me. I'll stare at Web sites for twenty hours of the day, but aimlessly browsing a store isn't done online, it's done walking through aisles and touching shelves and looking at packages. TigerDirect, another electronics e-tailer like NewEgg, acquired the CompUSA brand through their parent Systemax, and is retaining some of the physical CompUSA stores as a sort of test approach. Some products will never translate to the digital realm. Plenty will, though. And so I can't help but wonder if, at some point, it'll simply be too costly to operate those big-box stores when a company could transition from retailer to e-tailer.

There's another element to this, too. Maybe I'm just not the typical retail customer. Let's look at my recent purchase of my pocket camera. I made probably three visits to Best Buy to look at the camera I ended up buying. I wasn't going to save a ton of money over the Best Buy price buying it online, and I had a gift card to use up, so I bought the camera there. But then, I said no to the extended service plan they wanted me to buy. They say that restaurants break even on the food and make their money at the bar. I've heard similar said about retailers, that they make the money off the service contracts and extended warranties they sell. And Lord knows you can't buy anything more than a CD at Best Buy without being offered an extended warranty. Here's one from real life: after my mom ordered my dad's new camera from that Amazon affiliate, they called with a post-sale confirmation call to confirm the order. They also recommended the purchase of rechargeable batteries, as "Canon strongly recommends against using conventional AA batteries in their cameras." Seeing as the camera is designed to work with AA cells and even ships with conventional batteries, we laughed this one off. My dad's theory was they sold the camera at a loss, hoping to profit on the accessories.

What I'm getting at is that the saving grace of the retailer isn't the savvy shopper who does his or her homework, uses the store to test the product in person, then makes a calculated buy. The saving grace is the impulse buyer who has no idea what they're really shopping for, and can easily be steered one way or the other. Or they know what they want, but they need that service contract to avoid problems in the future. I'm actually guilty of this myself; when I went shopping with my friend for a laptop, I was all for her getting an extended contract on it. It's a laptop; things are bound to happen, and while it's no big concern for me to swap a laptop hard drive and reinstall Windows, we both know that's outside her scope of ability or interest, and she can't always count on me being within a few miles with time to bail her out. I'd rather she have that line of defense. When I get my new MacBook Pro this fall, I'd like to say I'll opt out of the AppleCare coverage. But I'll bet I get the laptop at the store so I can play with it in a half-hour instead of a few days.

And if the paradigm of retail does change as we know it, where does that leave our malls? Where will kids shop? Hell, where will they hang out? "Oh, let's go to the food court, then go shopping for clothes and looking at blank storefronts!" Part of the evolution of retail may have to be toward a service orientation. That's one thing I'd thought about in the conversations about the desolate Bedford Mall. The Bedford Mall, of course, has about 20 slots for retailers, and maybe six or seven occupied. The end unit where Alexander's (and later the Drug Emporium and MVP Sports) was has been vacant since MVP/Decathlon moved out, and the Chinese buffet is gone next to it. The movie theater is long gone. With the closing of Linens 'n' Things, that leaves Staples, Marshall's, Papa Gino's, Bob's Stores, a couple one-off merchants and Michael's School of Hair Design. What retailers are you going to invite? The obvious candidates would rather be at the more-accessible Mall of New Hampshire. The Gap left the Bedford Mall for greener pastures years before, and other stores followed. But what can't be replicated at the big mall are local service businesses. It makes little sense to have another Old Navy in the Bedford Mall, but an optician's office would be a good fit. Maybe that's the shift we'll see with retail in general. You can't shove services down a fiber-optic backbone, and convenience will win out if you can put them all in one place.

I can't imagine how hard it will be for retailers to make money the old way, but I can't imagine it dying out altogether, either. But hey, as long as I die before Starbucks becomes a brothel and coffee shop, I'll be okay.