Author: The Captive Lion

Editor’s Note: This post has nothing to do with babies.

Jack Black. He’s a good guy. I know. I saw him. In person. What a thrill! And I can tell that we share many things in common. As he was standing there behind the big glass window, it was clear that we both have a distaste for dealing with fans in their mid-twenties who stare at celebrities through big glass windows.

Colin Farrell. Also cool. Quieter than you would think. Likes to doodle in a notebook. Can just chill and have a coffee. He can just hang with one other dude too. He doesn’t need a whole entourage. I feel like in that way we are similar as often you’ll find me hanging with just one other person. We both think it’s easier to make decisions in smaller groups rather than larger ones I guess.

Quick fact: Since I’ve been living in Brooklyn, I’ve seen a bunch of famous people.

Regular fact: Most have not known who I am.

Drawn-out fact: The guy from the Office, John Krasinski, waits, sorta just like everyone else, sorta near the line to get in to the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre, but goes in just a hair before everyone else. But, me, going in 20 minutes later, gets to sit right behind him. We both like to swig on a beer while watching improv. We both have similar senses of humor, as judged by paying attention to which parts of the show made us laugh simutaneously. But the biggest thing I noticed is that I think we are both beginning to feel more comfortable in our own skin.

I will tell you this, however. Bobby DeNiro doesn’t just produce or direct the upcoming blockbuster The Good Shepard. He also waits in a trailer and then occasionally get outs, walks right by me, nods, and then proceeds to act in the mother.

But that’s not all. He also enlists an A-list club of actors to support him. I saw Matt Damon chatting with some friends as he made his way to act in the film opposite Robert DeNiro. Matt Damon wrote and starred in my old favorite movie Good Will Hunting so you can imagine the tickle I got when he ignored me and just kept walking by. If you can’t imagine it, it was a rather short but sweet tickle that felt like a dandelion brushing up against my cheek.

Moby wasn’t as cool. Apparently everybody and their grandma has seen Moby. I, in fact, thought I might just be seeing a lookalike so I made a mental note of a distinct tattoo he had on the back of his neck. It was a cross. And as you can see from this photo, Moby has a cross of a tattoo on the back of his neck. So it’s an official Moby sighting, Mom! Be proud… for once!

I am a celebrity magnet. I am also a magnet that celebrities seem to be able to pretend doesn’t exist. I am also unable to control said magnetism a la Magneto, so it’s not really anything special or evil.

Ending fact: Someday I hope to have pictures to document some of these things. For now, you will have to believe that I saw guy who is inside the Big Bird costume. And you will have to believe that he was very similar to me in that we both think children are important.

As you are reading this, there is a very good chance I’m also online, scouring the Net. Just like yours, my signal is dashing from machine to machine, hopping networks, and jumping firewalls. Our digital selves seem to have more freedoms than our physical selves. In the virtual world, we are free from many of the constraints of travel, time, and custom. It is my hope that by experiencing these freedoms even in their distorted digital manifestations we will yearn for them in our civil societies. The Internet will be a major catalyst to a more progressive and enriching world, not just as a tool to organize but as a testing ground for ideas and innovations that make our lives better. It all sounds so perfectly amazing, right?

The truth is the Net is only a fraction of how cool it can and will become. We will continually have to wade through crap in order to get there. First we had to put up with AOL disks. Then came email spam. Remember pop-up ads? Or spyware. Did you ever get a virus? We’ve overcome a lot already. But I’ve found the next myth, the next hoax, the next lie that we need to dispel: wireless.

First off, I don’t like the term. Wireless. It takes eight letters to say something doesn’t exist? And it’s always going to be second banana to “wired” because it has bought into the paradigm in which “wired” products are the norm. I think that “wireless” should be the standard and gadgets with wires should be called “teathered” or “immobile.” That’s what so-called “wired” products really are. We need to start using terminology that is based in the technologies of 2006 and not 1950.

To me, you call a human a human, not a tailless monkey.

And it’s not just our vocabulary that needs an update. Modern product designers should be ashamed. The amount of cords and wires it takes to run an average media setup is ridiculous. There is a whole intestine-looking tangle of cords behind my entertainment center. I’ve often said that I think the only people still making money hand over fist in the product hardware business are the cord and wire makers.

So needless to say, the concept of “wireless” sounds fantastic to me. I don’t even need to see the flop. I’m all in.

In fact, I’ve already purchased quite a few “wireless” products. Pretty quickly, however, I found out that wireless often means something very different than an average person’s definition of the term. For example, it would seem obvious that “wireless” means “without wires” as in this diagram:

But, sadly, that is often not the case. Usually “wireless” quite simply means “differently wired.” You need a dongle for that, a power cord for this, and an ethernet cable just for good measure… or spite. All to be “wireless.”

Here is my xbox wireless adapter, for example.

In this case, “wireless” means “two wires.” I am actually surprised they went so far as to put the word “wireless” in the product name. This thing can only go a matter of five feet from an outlet. Immobile, not wireless in my book.

And what do I tell my friends when I trip on one of these cords? “Sorry guys no basketball for me. I biffed my knee when I tripped on my wireless adapter’s cord. What’s that? Yeah, I’m ok. I’ll just chill around the house and listen to audio cassettes on my iPod. I never weened myself off tape hiss, man.”

Reluctantly, I take the cramped seat in between the old man and the rail. I wouldn’t normally do this as I actually prefer to stand.

You see, my newest fascination is the childish game of “look ma, no hands” while riding the subway. You let go of any handrails, get your balance under your feet, relax your knees and then you ride that train like it is a wild animal, relying completely on balance and strength to keep you from being thrown to the ground as it stops and starts along the route. When it lurches forward, I lean in to brace myself for the buck. When the train crashes and grinds to a halt, I lower my honches and pull back on the invisible reins. Whoa nelly.

Of course, in my head I envision myself as a cross between Teenwolf (Speaking of Teenwolf, rent it sometime with a friend who has a lot of body hair and you will be forced to see that movie in a totally new light!) and Kevin Bacon’s character from Tremors. I get my smooth, surf-inspired style from Teenwolf of course. The Kevin Bacon thing is thrown in there because he rode on the back of a giant worm in that movie if I remember it right.

But today I’m not standing. I’m sitting. And I’m sitting next to an old man.

Oh great. Now he’s asking me a question. I don’t know anything. I’m still new here.

“Does this train go to Canal?” he asks.

My first silent thoughts aren’t exactly polite. Aren’t you like 100 years old or something? Don’t you know your way around here yet?

“I don’t know,” I say to get out of the exchange and go back to minding my own beeswax. (My regular beeswax minder was off for the day.)

“Oh, I just wasn’t sure if this train went there or not, you know…”

Just then I remembered that I read the book Tuesdays With Morrie and I began to feel guilty because if there was a point to that book it was that all old people have an incredible amount of wisdom in them and it is up to each and every one of us to draw that out and honor it. And if we happen to later profit on that wisdom with a million dollar book deal than so be it.

Bingo, I think to myself. If I play this right, this old guy could be my million dollar book deal.

And with that completely self-serving thought, I finally convinced myself to take the five seconds to turn around and look at the large subway map to find out for this old man if our train went to Canal Street. Which it did.

Now just to flesh this story out to 200 pages…

It’s late. I’m in a damn good mood. Got me some new jeans that are a lot better fitting than my old ones. Hell yeah. It doesn’t even bother me that it takes ten full minutes to unravel my ipod headphones after I fish them out of my jacket pocket.

Alright, I’m lying. That always bothers me.

The fact that I never put my headphones away properly is beside the point. It’s one of the lessons of life that I have chosen to always break – just because I’m a moron. But tonight, in this fantastic universe called New York, the moron in me is feeling like he’s not such a moron after all.

Yup, I’m slightly drunk.

So I’m bobbing my head, listening to my ipod while I strut my way on to the L Train to Brooklyn. Like I said, it’s late. Too bad, I think, because now there aren’t many people to notice how cool I’ve gotten all of a sudden. In fact, there’s just two other dudes and they both are listening to their headphones too. Fuck them, I say to myself in my best pretend bad-ass internal voice.

My staged animosity quickly dissolves however. Dude on my left, an obvious hip hop cat with a big expensive jacket on, Yankees cap, relaxes back in his seat and starts getting into his music. I mean.. getting into it. He starts spitting silent lyrics like a cross between KRS-One and Helen Keller. It’s almost as if he thinks he is alone. Then I remember that in New York City only seeing two other human beings at the moment is basically the same as being alone.

The mood turns infectious. Dude sitting across from me, scrawny, 30ish, rock and roller drunk on his own kool-aid as well, feels the vibe. In a split second, he’s set up an imaginary set of drums in front of him and he’s using every bit of it. He’s on the cymbals, on the kick drum, the snare, and about five other things I don’t even know what they are. I’m more than halfway expecting him to fake spinning the drum sticks in his fingers. If you can’t tell, I’m ecstatic at this point, utterly entertained as this imaginary rock-rap concert unfolds before my eyes. It’s like I’m seeing Run-DMC and Aerosmith mime “Walk This Way” live. Unreal!

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, dude across the way effortlessly moves from a hard rocking session of knee drums to finger plucking what looks to be a heavy, low slung 8 string guitar… with, what’s that called… a whammy bar? I kid you not. I didn’t even know they made those.

If you could see the smile on my face right now, you would know why they call it a shit-eating grin. Note to my dentist: Don’t sweat it, I’ll floss extra tonight.

What has got me more excited than a chimpanzee in make-up, you ask? It’s only the newest innovation in weblogs… the theme song! Internet Zillionaire is now the first website to have it’s own official theme music. After all, it is the next logical step in the evolution of theme songs.

So if you thought we were just a bunch of talentless hacks before, prepare to be proven right. I give you the Internet Zillionaire theme music:

Did I just hear someone say they wish they could have those 14 seconds back?