The Naked Mole Rat Report: New York telephone conversation
While The Gay Blade has always considered himself a pillar of society – albeit a pillar wrought in lavender-veined alabaster; wrapped in Rococo filigree; and wreathed with thousands of pink-cheeked cherubs, each clad in a tiny leather jacket – he must admit that circumstances frequently conspire to thrust him front row center in the Theater of the Absurd.
Case in point: the Blade’s recent hegira to July’s Macworld Expo/New York, which proved to be weird even by this once and future utensil’s impossibly high standards.
The psychic and physical torments of his cross-country Greyhound voyage notwithstanding, the junket really went south when the Blade attempted to check into the room reserved by MacEdition’s embryonic, cash-strapped travel department. (Note to the home office: Nice try, but the Banana Bungalow youth hostel on West 77th was demolished last November! )
Only this implement’s intimate knowledge of the Port Authority Bus Terminal and an unlikely friendship with a disgraced Hasidic rabbi-turned-producer of training videos for the marital-aid industry allowed him to pass his week in Gotham in the latex-clad lap of luxury.
Sweet Jeff Stryker on a mechanical bull! Now that’s a wild ride!
The “i” is for insufferable
And although his norepinephrine-fueled social calendar prevented him from actually attending the Expo festivities, the Blade’s newfound show-biz cronies have passed along yet another heartwarming anecdote about Apple’s squeezably soft chief executive.
According to sources hunkered down in the loge before Steve Jobs’ keynote presentation, the press photographers covering the morning’s Cube-and-pony show had one simple request: that Apple’s flaks, flunkies and fluffers move His Nibs’ de rigeur bottle of water just a skosh to the right, the better to capture the boyish good looks and storied charisma of Apple’s very own Sun King. The message was passed up the chain of command, and after some back and forth between the press corps and the Jobsian entourage, the bottle was moved from hither to yon – a journey of perhaps three feet.
Five minutes later, the vessel was returned to its original spot; according to a lackey, The Boss had learned of the change, expressed his deep displeasure with the assault on his feng shui, and hotly insisted that yin and yang be restored to their rightful spots on the dais. “What can you do?” shrugged the Apple operative. “He’s a rock star.”
Don’t blame the Blade; he voted for Billy Zoom!
White light/white heat
Speaking of real pieces of work: According to the Blade’s personal retinue of Times Square street performers, the PowerPC-under-the-shell game continues among the balkanized territories of the erstwhile AIM alliance.
While speed freaks the world over were crestfallen that Apple’s (fully hydrated) CEO failed to announce PowerPC G4 clock speeds faster than 500MHz – a mark announced a full year ago, although gremlins brought them up short until January – the Blade’s friendly under-the-counter pharmacist assures him that G4 daddy Motorola finally has its speed problems “licked”.
Indeed, he continues, Moto’s basement chemists are hard at work synthesizing a next-generation G4 that’s “really high frequency” and should reach jonesing Mac users everywhere within the next six to 12 months.
In addition, while fellow AIMster IBM Corp. still has the inside track on silicon-on-insulator technology for its PowerPCs, Moto is planning to fold the nutty goodness of SOI into these hopped-up G4s.
Ready to deal? The NMR Report wants to fix you up with a swank signature-edition mole rat; a Mac industry tip is all it takes!