pt at large

My iPhone: A Lesson In Humility

My iPhone5 is smarter than I am. Exponentially. The first time it rang, I didn’t know how to answer the call. The salesman in the Verizon store smiled, flicked his finger over an icon and said, “Put it up to your ear and talk.”

It knows how to get directions from where I am to where I want to go. It knows where to find the nearest pizza shop, Thai restaurant, gas station and where the nearest theater playing “The Sessions” is located. There’s a ton more it can do. All I have to do is figure it out.  Considering the fact that iPhone-istas say that there’s enough horsepower in an iPhone to have sent the first rocket to the moon, that seems to be a steep learning curve.

Until last week I was the master of my own universe. I could program my DVR, navigate the clicker to play video, DVD, or even old VHS tapes. I could program my microwave to cook whatever I deposited onto the carousel. I could whip out my little two-year-old clamshell LG flip phone, send texts, take a photo now and then, set alarms, and effortlessly make and receive phone calls, which was what I thought was the primary purpose of a cell phone.

Driving along in my car last week, my little phone rang – I pressed the button on the steering wheel to answer. Nothing. Frantic digging around in pockets ensued. I headed to my dealership.  Surely they could make my phone work again.


“The Bluetooth function in your phone has died,” the service tech explained after punching in some numbers on the console and trying to revive my poor little artifact. In the next few seconds, he whipped out his iPhone, fiddled with the console and BAM, his iPhone showed up on my digital console.

“You need one of these,” he grinned.

My friend Christopher, one of many who’ve been lobbying for me to get an iPhone, was thrilled to take me to the Verizon store. An hour after perusing the merchandise, my snappy new iPhone was in my pocket. It chirps, bongs and plays a cool little piano riff, depending on whether I’m receiving a text message, email, or phone call.

Responding to a text is comical. A caveman using a chisel on a smooth piece of bedrock could hammer out a short message faster and more accurately than I. My forefinger is useless at homing in on the letter I want to use. For every correct letter I manage there are two or three I delete. I regularly throw my hands up in utter frustration. This is progress?

Then Christopher tells me about Siri.

When I miraculously learn how to find her, she coos in a soft voice, “How can I help you?” 

He points out the microphone icon, and says,  “Tell her whether you want to send an email or text message to someone in your address book, and tell her whatever punctuation you want and where you want it.”

Siri and I have a moment.

Dear Siri comma I feel like a dope using this phone period It takes me more time to use the keyboard to write a text message than it took Gutenberg to invent the printing press period The only App I can use with utter confidence is the Clock period. Forget the camera period. The shutter button is so sensitive it takes me several tries to make a decent photo that includes a person’s head period And what about the keyboard question mark Can’t you make a larger one so I can hit the right letter every single time question mark I could mail a letter and get a response faster than how it’s going now period. I am aware that the so-called interfaces on the phone are said to be intuitive period Hah explanation mark All men may have been created equal but that does not include equal distribution of intuition period Trust me on this period I couldn’t find my way out of a digital paper bag exclamation point And another thing period Can’t you give a guy more time to compose a message before you say quote ready to send your message  unquote question mark Other than that comma this device comma notice I said device comma nobody calls them phones any more comma might over time comma and we are talking geological time frames here comma still prove to be the cool device that people rave about in commercials during the Super Bowl period By the way comma you have any idea where I could score a good seat for next year’s game question mark smiley face

Photo taken, after several miserable attempts to get the whole phone in the frame, by me with my trigger finger happy iPhone.

Lungs: A Relationship, A Baby, and Global Warming

Lungs, a play by Duncan Macmillan, directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary
The Black Box Theater
The New Repertory Theatre in residence at the Arsenal Center for the Arts
Watertown, MA
February 17-March 10, 2013
March 5, 2013

No matter what the New Rep Theatre attempts in their Black Box Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, it’s likely to be entertaining, challenging, off -the-wall, unfocused, non main-stream, creative, meandering – often all within the same play. Lungs, a play by British playwright Duncan Macmillan is a case in point.

Within a long stretch of 90 minutes, Macmillan takes on global warming, overpopulation fueled by both irresponsible and planned parenthood, the burden of bringing a child into a world teeming with social and ecological ills, the toll on a relationship of raising a child, and the entire cycle of one specific relationship.

Advertised as a comedy, it feels more like a psychodrama with some really funny lines. The play blasts out of the gate with M (Nael Nacer) floating the idea of making a baby with W his live in girlfriend (Liz Hayes).

W, who happens to be writing a PhD about global warming, is wired like a human pinball machine. Wildly conflicted about the prospect, she goes into hyperdrive, rattling off non-sequiturs, one-liners citing alarming ecological statistics and mugs ferociously.

Nacer as M, offers gravity, calm reassurance, reasoned arguments while managing to check his own ambiguity about becoming a father. (Note: if couples went through this kind of dialogue before deciding to have a child, there would be about one billion fewer people on the planet.)

Hayes is really good as a stream of consciousness woman who scatters facts and figures like a blunderbuss about the fragile state of the planet  and piles her ambivalent feelings about motherhood on top like so many jimmies.

Nacer, as M, can’t say much without setting W off on a tear about small scale personal responsibility of bringing a child into the world and the larger picture of a planet teetering on the brink with diminishing resources and an uncertain future for the generation about to be born.

The scenario is not far-fetched but the random way Macmillan throws in statistics about carbon footprints, a world awash in waste, in the midst of whether the couple should bring a baby into the world feels like driving a square peg into a round hole, more of an erudite filler than an axis upon which to build a hefty element of the play’s theme, which resonates with the angst and conflicting beliefs a man and woman bring to a modern relationship.

Their riffs about the kinds of people popping out platoons of children before they’re of voting age are delightfully non-PC thoughts that liberals might harbor but these two say then feel guilty about. Interspersed with these riffs are their ideas on whether smart people procreate or whether good people create babies knowing they’re adding stress to the planet’s fragile reserves.

The tiny Black Box Theater’s 12’x12’ square stage, surrounded with audience on both sides and center, with its honey oak finish becomes their world. Subtle changes in lighting and illumination of a design suggesting tree roots behind translucent drapery behind the set is all the actors need to portray work, home, a park, a nightclub, even a taxi on the way to the hospital when W’s contractions increase.

Through dialogue and subtle gestures, Nacer and Hayes follow playwright Macmillan’s story line to perfection as the playwright cleverly charts this couple’s relationship from its inception to its demise and beyond.

We hear about the divide between M and W’s parents, the ups and downs of M’s career, W’s commitment to the planet, the breathing exercises used in childbirth, the fading romance, M's infidelity, their separate paths, children (“They grow up, start buying their own clothes, leave home and hate you,” W says.) and a touching scene from their final years. Nacer and Hayes are at their best as they portray, in a matter of seconds, the changing intersections of their lives.

Nacer’s M is steady, gutty and layered. Hayes is great at acting as a very smart neurotic time bomb in nearly every scene but during ninety minutes the role gets stuck in the same mold. A judicious trimming of dialogue would help. Perhaps director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary could have suggested some throttling back or signs of growth that would have given W more dimension.

"Lungs" breathes life into two very complicated, very modern characters.

Photos by Andrew Brilliant/ Brilliant Pictures