iPod God

originally written April 2006

The iPod is a mighty device. Touted as both the scourge & savior of our fair industry,….well, OK, I don’t have an ending thought here; I just like to use haughty words like “scourge” and “savior”.

I am new to the iPod. I recently got one for my most recent birthday. Since none of you chipped in, you’ll have to hear my thoughts. I love it. I immediately became addicted, much more so than I could imagine. Let me put it in some perspective to you. Having the high stress –uh-stressure filled job like myself leaves me with minimal free time. The music never stops, you know. I wanted to get an iPod so I could use it in the gym. The music that my gym plays is OK. One night its’ friggin’ dance crap, next night a bit more modern rock. On the whole it’s not bad. It could be that thumpa-thumpa-thumpa that poser gyms like Bally play. A lot of the time, it doesn’t get into my head too much. Except that fucking Daft Punk “One More Time” song that I swear they played every frigging damn day. But if I had my tunes, I could do much better. I need stuff that if I was a boxer or wrestler, I would play as I ‘made my way to the ring’. Also, I had knee surgery last year, and part of the rehab is me running, cardio, etc.

And I suck at that. I can’t run just to run to safe my life. I need to be chasing something, or getting chased by something. I can’t run 3 miles. But put me in street hockey, and I will run those 3 miles without even knowing it. So running just to run kills me. There is no worse sound to hear when you’re running than your own huffing & puffing. Well, I guess someone yelling “Look out!”, “Runaway Truck” or “Avalanche!” would be a bad sign as well. Anyway, I find no inspiration in trying to run and not look like a tool, than to be out of breath. Breathing so hard that spit & drool is coming out of my mouth. Not hot. I thought using an iPod would encourage me to run longer, faster, harder. Let everyone else hear me gasping. I’ll be rocking out to Evanescence, baby.

Back to my free time point. One of the things I (used to) enjoy is PS2. I don’t have a ton of games or anything, but I enjoy playing hockey, wrestling, etc. I’m in the middle of 24 right now. It gets to the point when ever my lovely bride is around, she will see me playing PS2, and give me shit for it. We call it the other girlfriend. But the reality of it is I usually don’t get more than 3 games a year. In fact, I still have games I bought that I haven’t even opened up yet. The reality is, I hardly ever play it more than 4-5 hours a month these days. Its just that she always freaking catches me playing it. So, in her mind, that is all I do. I don’t get any credit for cutting down all the playing time I used to have with it. It got to be like porn; I would have to sneak a hockey game in when she wasn’t around. It’s retarded. Excuse me, motarded.

I had been focusing on giving the PS a break, and reading more. Nothing heavy, just trying to be a bit more cerebral. Along comes the iPod. And as all the iPod owners know, it becomes the sonic equivalent of crack. You start going through old albums you haven’t listened to in years. Songs that very vividly hold specific memories of a specific points of your life. Those songs that weren’t even huge hits were still great to discover. First you did it for 1 cd. You enjoyed it so much, that you went through another one. And another 1. Next thing you know hours had gone by as you were loading your iPod with songs that mean something to you.

Maybe this is where I differ from others. Even though I got the 30 gig, I very rarely add an entire album. I would pick & choose. Every album has clunkers, and they certainly aren’t going to clog up any of my gigs. So every album became an exercise in hand picking out the best songs on there. I would know which songs to immediately add based on memory. Then I would go through the rest of the songs to make that dreaded decision.

Is this song good enough to be on my iPod?

I had now gained God like powers over my many thousands of CDs. I became very aware as I plucked off 2 songs from an album that I might never hear those “lost songs” ever again. What used to be fun became a heavy burden. Even though at some other point I had to have gone through the CD to decide which songs I like & which blow chunks, but now that decision became more real. All those CDs that I just burned 2-3 songs from, I was effectively saying sayonora to. What if I was wrong? What is 5 years down the line, I have that D’oh! Moment, and realized there was one more gem I should have imported?

Mind you, I have 1,399 songs loaded so far. And yes, I just checked that. Now, seriously, when dafuck am I going to have time to listen to 1400 frickin’ songs? What I don’t understand is why this editing process bothers me so. I think it’s because it would burn me to no end to know that I loaded one, just one, song that sucks. I think that’s it. I might have to sacrifice those “lost songs”, just so my lazy ass can’t be bothered with pushing a single button to skip the damn song. I get pissed when I come across a song that doesn’t quite work in my Workout mix.

Maybe my life in music has conditioned me to be so. We all know nothing sours you like a bunch of killer songs, followed by a crappy song. Somehow, it just taints all the songs that came before it. I don’t know why.

So all the above processes are taking place as I pour over my CD collection, playing iPod God to see which songs get the honor of being in my iPod. You can imagine that this process takes up a bunch of time. So much so, that I now catch crap for how much time I spend on the laptop, burning songs to my iPod. I can’t freaking win! Mind you, she actually helped me get the iPod. I think it’s a sign how much I like the gift that I use it. But it’s like, fuck, I catch shit for playing PS2, so now I don’t play it as much as I’d like. Instead I –every once in a while- spend an hour or 2 putting songs in my iPod, and catch shit for that now. WTF?

But this iPod thing does rock. The sheer volume of songs it can hold is awesome. The way you can create playlists, and play iPod God is a blast. I recently went on vacation for a week, and lemme tell you of an experience with the Pod.

I created a play list for what I call Summer Songs. I think there’s an earlier post on the board about that. Anyway, one morning, I decided to go for a run. I take my iPod. I interval run up 40 blocks or so. I’m wiped, so I will walk the rest of the way back. I was running with my Workout list, but I decide I will walk back with my Summer songs. And let me tell you, it was awesome. See, my summer songs are composed of songs that remind me of the summers of my youth. So there’s a bunch of pop 80s stuff. But I also got a bunch of surfing instrumentals. I broke down and put some Buffett on there. Just about every song holds some summer memory for me, or evokes summer images. And that walk back, even though it was on the main street of OCMD, was one of the highlights for me. So much so, I did another run up to the Boardwalk, just to walk back with the summer songs playing. It was so calming to have those songs playing as I looked out at the ocean. I sat down, just to look at the beach, and hear what new song would become a memory the next time I heard it. Now all those songs I listened to, they will have new imagery permanently attached to them every time I hear them. And that, my dear reader, is money.