It's 9:20 p.m. on a recent Wednesday. P.Vo, known by day as Paul Vodra, is the first of 21 DJs -- ahead of Seeking Irony and Weird Curves -- who will play at this city's version of an iPod DJ party. On this night, the most popular MP3 player, the iPod, serves as the lounge's source of music, roughly three songs at a time. No turntables. No vinyl. Bring an iPod. Be the DJ. Please sign your DJ name on the white board in the front.
The iPod Jukebox night, held at Cafe Saint-Ex every second Wednesday of the month, attracts mostly white-collar types in their twenties and thirties who heard about it from a friend of a friend, or read about it in a link to a blog...Cafe Saint-Ex doesn't host the only iPod DJ night -- add the Hi Hat Lounge & Garage on the East Side of Milwaukee, APT in New York City's meatpacking district and Tonic Room in Chicago's Lincoln Park area, among others, to the growing list.
- From Downloaded and Ready to Rock: iPod Nights Turn Amateurs Into Digital DJs at D.C. Club, in yesterday's Washington Post.
This worries me a little. A few days ago, I read an article somewhere about people plugging in their earpods and tuning out of the world on buses, in the subway, in waiting rooms, or wherever they are. Apple is The Matrix. Imagine if an advertiser could infect your computer or iPod with a virus that inserts subliminal messages into all of your mp3s, which are shared with other iPodders, and so on. Or maybe "they're" already doing it, and "they" are Apple, and the message is "you need an iPod...you need an iPod..." If the X-Files were still around, Chris Carter would have created a stellar episode on the iPodnomenon. I ramble. It's okay, it's the digital age.
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You might not remember this -- what are you, like 14? 29? something like that -- but headphone-sucking zoning out has been going on since the first Sony Walkman. I don't know if the iPod is all that revolutionary or just a bit of "intelligent design" along the evolutionary path of personal audio entertainment.
Sony will make the iPod look as banal as vitiman C when it unleashes its PSP on the slouch-walking, baggy-pants wearing American public. But then again I might be wrong since I'm pretty much makin' this sh** up as I go along... which reminds me, I've got to get these forecasts here off to the SecDef....
Ahhh, I remember, I remember. The first time I listened to a walkman, it was 2-channel stereo heaven. And before that, it was the boombox on the shoulder. You couldn't hear anything else when it was on, and in two years you lost your hearing in one ear. Hence the need to fork out something like 300 bucks for a Walkman with balance control.
Yup. Clearly, that was all an insidious conspiracy, too.
*And* it discourages creeps from approaching innocent maidens on the bus.
The innocent maiden on the bus is as rare as the unicorn. I believe in neither.
Although the latter part of my statement was written rather tongue in cheek, it really does discourage them!
I've also found that a really nasty cold sore on the upper lip will discourage the crap out of creeps riding public transport... But you're right: the iPod is probably the better way to go.
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