Welcome, Friend, Iss. 1, Vol. 2

My friend Bil has a new iPhone, his first.  Bil is very technically sophisticated, one time he broke the screen on his iPod Touch, and replaced it himself, and it worked!  He never needed to prove his electronic prowess to any of us ever again.  Why it took him this long to get an iPhone lies somewhere beyond the scope of reason.  He had an iPod, and an iPod Touch before any of us, and he had the first iPad in the warehouse.  Further, to make maximum use of his time, he had the device constantly at the ready.  If he was waiting for the elevator he would have iPod in hand performing some small screen gaming miracle, saving or obliterating entire communities, playing chess with people from across the world, making words where there were only tiles, or moving cargo from point A to point B in a speedy, efficient, point producing manner, all with a casual gesture of his thumb, while firmly holding a coffee cup in his other hand.  Honestly it is poetry in motion.

Bil is the person who really impressed upon me the power of the iPod.  He showed me a slide show he had assembled using pictures of his son on a carousel, deftly adding speech bubbles and musical accompaniment, taking simple pictures and turning them into a powerful, moving presentation where fantasy and reality combine to make magic.  It changed my iPod touch from a simple game playing, music listening wonder into a trans-formative electronic machine with supernatural powers of transmogrification   An act for which my wife has never forgiven him.  Since they don't often see each other it is not a big deal for either.

As is plain to see Bil and the iPhone are made to be together, it was inevitable.  In many ways it was like a heavyweight boxing match, (incidentally, Bil is the only person I know who has ever participated in chess boxing, not that it has anything to do with this, but it is another interesting fact about Bil), where Bil and the iPhone were circling, waiting, feinting, jabbing, counter jabbing, (not unlike a date, really) until they could no longer stay apart.  And in a mad rush to the center of the ring they opened on each other with a flurry of lefts, rights, hay-makers, and round houses, punch after brutal punch, locked in a death match, pounding away at each other until they were both lying, flat on their backs, unable to move in the center of the ring, as the referee counted them both out. Well, maybe not quite like that.

Let's just say it was long overdue.  So, wherever you may be reading this, whatever else you may be doing, please put that aside and join me in giving Bil a round of applause.  He may only have one L but he has an iPhone, plus, he is a pretty cool guy.