Last month, a Wisconsin man became particularly enraged by a Bristol Palin performance on Dancing with the Stars and shot his television. The dancing stopped. The police showed up. And after a fifteen hour standoff, the man was taken into custody. The event brought back memories of Elvis who was famous for shooting TVs. But …
The friending, the liking, the status updating: Sooner or later we all grow to hate it, but we can’t stop. Facebook is made up of those dinner party guests who just won’t leave even though it’s late and everyone else left two hours ago. After a while, everything anyone does on Facebook becomes irritating. With …
It’s been sixteen years since Amazon launched and we’re well into an era when we can buy just about anything with a few clicks. And yet we find ourselves entering another holiday season of familiar Black Friday headlines about shoppers being trampled in a mad effort to get their mitts on the latest offline deal. …
On the day of the San Francisco Giants World Series parade, I made my way to the corner of California and Montgomery where I was sure I had a pretty good vantage to watch the players roll by in their rubber-wheeled cable cars. My wife was thinking the same thing about her view as she …
The Walkman is dead. Long live the Walkman. More than thirty years after triggering a music and lifestyle revolution, Sony has officially retired the Walkman in Japan (there is still a lone model for sale in the U.S.). A Sony engineer named Nobutoshi Kihara designed the original model for Sony co-chairman Akio Morita, who was …
It was the first time in his life Isaac didn’t want to go to Vegas. He is an avid Craps player. He goes to Vegas several times a year. And he was set to spend two days with a large group of his oldest friends. But he was looking for any excuse to get out …
For those who were sure that Twitter, Facebook and the realtime web could either manufacture or replace personal qualities such as being courageous, determined, selfless, disciplined, steadfast, and having a charismatic ability to inspire and lead others in moments of great historical importance, I’ve got some bad news. It turns out that’s not case. In …
I’ve never met Brian’s dad. And that’s not much of a surprise. Brian lives in another state and is a private person. At times in his life, I’ve described him as hermitic. Even today, in the era of realtime web, Brian only lurks on Facebook and has published a lifetime total of six tweets. So …
San Francisco’s Herbst Theater was nearly packed as the beginning of the evening’s event approached. I looked at the rows of heads bowed down towards their iPhones and Blackberries. Then, up near the stage, I saw one guy staring down at a hardcover book. I thought to myself, freak. Even at a book tour event, …
It was the week my friend Mordy became a hero. Back in the early days of cable TV, the guys in my neighborhood spent countless hours staring at the scrambled signal of what, for us at least, was the first adult channel on television. Every old friend I have can still hum the theme of …
