From time to time, The Awl offers its space to normal, everyday people with a perspective on national issues. Today, we bring this special report on technology from one of my Murray Hill Gramercy-adjacent building's porters, who enjoys golf, tattoos, talking about sports with the doormen and who may or may not have been a "dancer" in his previous career. (As told to Choire Sicha.)
So wait, I talk into your iPhone, and then you post what I say? That is rad. Okay. Right, gadgets. Here we go. Shut up, Donnie! The other morning I was hanging around in the lobby, just passing the time, watching tenants come and go as they do, like that hot chick on 14 with the dog who is now single who always gets delivery for dinner now, you know her? And I am all like, 'Hey buddy, lemme bring that up to her and see if she gives me a tip, know what I mean?' Ha ha. Anyway! I get bored and so I was watching some sports YouTube clips on my iPhone, cuz fuck yeah, I just got one too dude! How badass is that shit?
Man, did you ever think of a time when you could carry around a thingie that is so awesome that you literally could stare at it for hours during work and basically pretend you don't even have a job at all? That is some serious fucking modern age stuff, and it is awesome. Yeah, hold on Mrs. Miller. Oh, you got it? Great, good for you, babe.
Okay but there is some other serious next level shit going on. So last week I went and got one of those new flat screen TVs that everybody says is the shit, with the sorta 3D football effect during games where you're like DUDE LOOK AT THE LACES ON THAT FOOTBALL. So I go up to the Sony building, because, where the fuck else are you gonna buy a TV now that there's no stores, like that Circuit City shit is done and over right? Fucking pansies.
So I go in there and, I don't fucking know, they have a whole fuckload of TVs. It turns out shopping for a TV is like, there's this one over here that might as well be a fucking car, and there's that one over there that's like basically a piece of crap from some abandoned hospital room, and then there's like four or five in the middle that cost less than 2 G's but more than two weeks pay, am I right? And these dudes who work there, they'll be fucked if they can explain what the shitting Christ is different between any of these things. So you know. You just sorta play spin the bottle and pick a fucking TV. Hey, Jimmy. Nah, I'm busy doing an interview. The laundry machines are fine! Nah, all the water in New York City is brown this year. Seriously. They changed some fucking pipes or something upstate somewhere. It'll wash out, don't worry about it!
Where was I? The TV. So. Except then you know you gotta buy a bunch of space age NASA fucking cables, called like "Hidme" or something. Basically they are just some bigass cables that cost two weeks pay, I don't know, Google it.
So you drag this shit home and you hook it up and then guess what? This modern age ain't all fucking great, you know what I mean? It's not like we live in space bubbles with free hookers everywhere on Planet Titties yet. When you use these weird Hid-me cables, suddenly everything is like you are watching fucking Mothra Hates On Godzilla. It's like you hear the sound and see the picture but it's all messed up, like watching Robin Byrd when you're really high. It's like you can hear her motorboating someone's tits and then like five seconds later you hear her going "Bllllbbbth." So what the fuck is that? These cables cost like fifty bucks, and they can't even get the sound into your TV without it being like a fucked-up foreign film? What the fuck is with this world, am I right?
Choire: This is like stream of consciousness. But without a consciousness.
Joey is more than just a gadget guru:
"They changed some fucking pipes or something upstate somewhere."
I want to hear more of his environmental reporting and analysis.
"You just sorta play spin the bottle and pick a fucking TV. "
And shopping tips for consumers.
We should land two men on the moons of Planet Titties by 2020.
first we must evacuate Uranus.
Easy, I know.
Some called him a snaggle-toothed meat head with badly gelled hair, but I knew that he had a heart of gold... and a cock that just wouldn't quit.
That Donnie really does need to learn to shut his trap, though.
Dude, watching Robyn Bird sober is WAY worse.
Robin Byrd, even.
And all this time I thought the only way to watch Robin Byrd was when you were 15 and your parents were out of town. And high.
This is just Pete Campbell's conversation with Hollis in the elevator (from Sunday's episode) transposed from 1963 to 2009, right? We still don't know why we buy the TVs we buy.
(But you're saying class is the new race, maybe. And that we all talk a lot more.)
(with apologies to the writers of 30 Rock) Graduate students are the worst.
Which is to say, I'm jealous that you figured it out first.
I'd like to hear about how may or may not have been an exotic dancer plays into all this. Because it will play into all this.
I FUCKING HATE THOSE STUPID HDMI CABLES!
Someone should tell him, those cables are a helluva lot easier to deal with, if you just let your friggin' chest hair grow out.
Breaking: I hate normal, everyday people.
With many of the best pizza joints, if you call in an order and give the name "Joey" (or "Tony," incidentally), your pizza will be ready faster, and it will taste better. I think this conversation may go toward explaining why that is, although I cannot say how exactly: it is doubtless some cosmic intersection of service-industry culture, televised sports, Italian-American patrimony, and titties.