LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Technology is not always our friend, and all too often the march of progress resembles the drunkard’s stumble that Tom Waits famously described in “Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)” as “using parking meters as walking sticks.”
For example, we now enjoy “Italian” bikes wearing Asian components, “high-speed Internet” that is anything but, and “smart” phones that no longer need humans to place calls, choose music or launch apps.
The Italian-Asian hybrid you already know about. The Internet of the Living Dead was at the Fairfield, where I spent much of last night pushing one pixel at a time through a virtual soda straw.
And the “smart” phone? It was in one of the cargo pockets in my shorts when it decided Interbike was boring and needed a fresh soundtrack. Thus throughout the day my iPhone 3GS would randomly set Tom Waits, Gladys Knight and the Pips or Elvis Costello to singing, Ace Ventura-like, out of my butt, generally while I was trying to conduct a little business.
When that proved so 15 minutes ago it started ringing up people in my contacts list and launching apps at random. What’s next — texting my editors to ask them whether they’re wearing crotchless panties? Some of them probably are, and then where the hell will I be?
Oh, yeah — I’ll be on the road, that’s where. Show’s over, and I’m Colorado bound.
Mad Blog Media 
Phone trouble? Maybe that’s why someone other than you answered the number I dialed on Day 1 of the show? I was at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott myself (as were the boys from Vittoria Shoes, though I didn’t find out until my final morning there) but must have missed you in the midst of the Baylor women’s volleyball team taking over the joint. Oh well, maybe next year if they let you out of the DogHaus again to invade Lost Wages. Meanwhile, barely 10 days until I leave for Italy…they can’t go by fast enough!
Larry, I was wondering why I never got hold of you. Maybe I gave you a bum number; maybe it was the phone; maybe it was Vegas.
But hey — you’re off to Italy again. Phone, schmone. We’ll catch up some other time. Preferably in a place where the piazza is real.
Umm shadow of a flatbar. So you took a bike to Interbike or just bringing one back?
So how are the folks from Adventure Cycling? As clean cut and upbeat as their image? Gads I hope so.
Ben, I took one bike to Interbike and brought a second home. It got crowded real fast in the old Forester.
The Adventure Cycling folks were great. Wise-asses, cyclo-crossers, heavy-duty tourists, people who ride the bike.
One night we had tech editors John Schubert (AC) and Matt Wiebe (BRAIN) at the same table, and it was like eavesdropping on the Manhattan Project, if it had been about bicycles and how to engineer, build, market and ride them.
I can’t resist! Get your ass off the iPhone and on the bike seat; and all will be better!
Charley, I was within moments of applying a classically Gaelic solution (drink, hammer, etc.). Now I’m home and couldn’t care less, as I use the iPhone primarily to keep in touch with Herself in case she (or I) are in difficulty. If the iPhone suddenly starts singing out of my ass it’s no big deal, since I have spent many a day talking out of it.
When I’ve encountered your problem, it’s been because my bluetooth headset was accidentally turned on and my phone did strange things as it tried to interpret the intermittent sounds.
I’ve Googled around a bit and think you’re on the money here, m’man. I was prowling the show floor with the iPhone in one cargo pocket and the Bluetooth headset in another, with either an iPad or a MacBook in my backpack — it’s a wonder I didn’t explode.
But when Gladys Knight starts singing “You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me” our of your butt while you’re standing at a Vegas urinal, well. …