Below I just had to let go of some annoying feelings. Here, I’ll explain my complete and other dorkiness and revel in my computer geekhood.

Like many an asshole who’s living debt-free and holding some spending money, I decided to by the much published, hyped, discussed, critiqued and overblownedly dissected Apple iPhone. I’d link, but fucking seriously, all but those without TVs, newspapers and computers have heard of it. The Amish have probably heard of it.

My smartphone universe was collapsing into itself from a variety of broken reasons, and I live an easy bike ride from the ihome of the iconic himself head of the iconic Apple and two different retail stores. I work at a job completely and wholly made possible by tech dollars in the middle of Silicon Valley.

I also have wanted for years a smartphone that would sync well to my Mac computers without workarounds, software add-ons and various partially working hacks.

What the hell, I thought, I wanna see the “historic” event for myself. (I wish there were smaller letters for that reference to historic, because product release isn’t quite historic. Least not compared to something fun like Ronald Reagan getting shot in the 80s.) I had the time and the means and the ease of access. I also don’t mind waiting, and I fucking love people watching at any and every kind of event. That’s what I like most about parades.

It started at around 10:30 a.m. on Friday, here in this hallway, where the mall security (who ride Segways), cordoned off the riffraff away from the front doors of the largely upscale establishments of the Stanford Mall.

It ended just about 8 hours later, like this:

That picture may look like what my friend Hbee emailed me as my “geekgasm.” Truly, I was telling M. to cut it the fuck out with the camera and completely laughing at the applause that met my purchase.

When the first bout of applause greeted the first folks in line to come out of the store, I tried to get the crowd around me to join in a chant of “Yay, SHOPPING.” I just got laughs. Everyone near me knew it was absurd to wait so long for an expensive toy. But, it was a pleasant wait. Friendly geek conversations, sharing of power sources for our laptops and tons of free samples from local businesses recognizing a pre-made marketing opportunity.

Here’s a couple of my favorite shots. In the first one, you gotta love the row of boys with their ‘puters. Two seconds later the security guard, whose sleeve was caught on film, wheeled his Segway (yes really) over to tell us no pictures were allowed at the mall. The flowers of the gardens in and around the mall were OK, but no stores were to be photographed. Um, what the fuck?

In the second, my new line friends. My line-buddy Rick is a Bay Area native who was a wealth of info for the Canadian couple who had literally moved to town the week before.

For me there was nothing in the cliche of the soulless, mindless followers of fashion that weblogs and some media have portrayed. Just regular folks of all kinds with the kind of flexible time that let them shop on an unusual day.

I get a sense, we’re supposed to think that everyone who bought one the first day was style conscious and looking for “hip” and “cool” the worst way possible, through acquisition.

Why then was I sandwiched among some non-dickish people? There were a couple of friendly Mexican guys who traded off the waiting during the day and came prepared with a camp chair and a bit of tequila to take for the afternoon siesta. They wee joined later by their super friendly seeming, senior citizen Caucasian boss, who paid for the day of waiting, as well as both phones. The Canadians were in town getting ready for his new residency at the Medical Center doing open heart procedures. The native Silicon Valley jockey was working a duct-taped phone and a laptop all day, logging time coding and whatnot as a telecommuter. The young guy was a student just finishing his semester and contemplating grad school after his last year in either law school or film, just a crazy kid. My favorite was the guy who brought his Newton with him. This day was a special day for the true fanboy.

Myself, I sleep at night. I only buy what I can afford. I owe no one. I work hard. I work in non-profit and have for a million years (it feels like it). Both M. and I do what we can to throw in for charitable and political causes. I know us, and we are not assholes.

I know me, and I have always made a point of getting gadgets and using the hell out of them. No different here.

Between setting up the new phone and living some of my regular existence (sadly, once again missing the Sunday Farmers’ Market down the street), I’ve been thinking about the hype machine that is Apple marketing and leaving Boston.

I’ve been carrying a couple of cell phone numbers, but only using one phone, my Sidekick. My original Sidekick 2 was suffering button sticks and weird flakiness, so I had upgraded to a Sidekick 3. The Sidekick 3 had an unfortunate bump when it slid out of my messenger bag onto the floor of the work garage and got nudged by a rolling car tire. I had been using it until the cracking of the LCD display spread into a web of splintering glass kaleidoscope.

The second number was my original Boston cell phone number. I was loathe to give it up, but I couldn’t transfer it to a California number what with all of my living being done here and all. The time had come. I’ve let 617.

Completely unrelatedly, but kind of reassuringly, I read a couple of weblogs from some Boston-based “comedians.” The quotes are really only for one of them. One is, indeed, a certifiable comic, the other is a weird, angry man who blusters on stage in a manner that’s meant to seem dangerous. I was first introduced to him as some kind of comic rebel, truthteller who drank and smoke without remorse.

He always struck me as the know-it-all geek who realized, when his acne cleared up and he let his hair grow a bit more stylish, he could upon occasion get laid. I found him more sad and desperate than honest, not funny, and the rebel boozer persona past, say, the age of 25 is fucking boring. (As a complete tangent, he has one of the least funny, least attractive (inside and out) comedy girl girlfriends I have ever met.)

Anywho, both comics (and I’m sure more), weighed in on the web with the name-calling of anyone sorry enough to lay money down on Steve Jobs’ latest toy. Apparently, I am a spineless, drooling, mouth-breather unable to discern mass manipulation.

Thank fucking god there are geniuses out there setting us mindless masses straight.

Thing is, reading this shit reminded me of a peculiar type of behavior that I will always and forever associate with my home-town state of Massachusetts. My uncle Jerry told me once it was among the reasons he left Boston himself, and tied it to a not-so-fine Irish tradition of begrudgery.

I think begrudgery is more or less defined as the compulsion to prick negatively at the successful, bringing up their less glamorous past or suggesting their path to a better life was not as it seems. My uncle’s experience was people undercutting his legal career, culminating in being a judge, as a product of luck and gladhanding, rather than maybe understanding the law.

I think there’s a Boston flavor of not just bringing down the successful, but generally shitting on anyone else’s sense of fun. Apparently there’s joy in deflating that which yanks someone else’s crank.

It’s not a California thing. Leaving it makes it kind of conspicuous by its absence in my life.

I know for sure, sometimes folks here are just blowing smoke up my ass or wind in my skirts or some other kind of fake breeze effect, but phony nice is more pleasant than the grind of griping. A Boston comedy club became a special depressing hell for me by the time I left, with a few bright spots that were my exceptions that proved the rule. Too much emphasis on others’ success and the snarky stabbing takes a toll.

I’m not perfect, mind you. I enjoy bitching about folks as much as the next miserable human. I gererally, though, don’t believe myself so lofty an authority on all things and all people. I’m fucking humble that way.

A lengthy, long-winded preamble to my opinion on the hype. Yup, no bones about it, Steve Jobs is a marketeer. From day one Apple was about packaging and style and form following function and changing function to follow how people work. It’s not a magic scheme, it’s design and capitalism. I totally grok that. ‘Splaining it to me, as the detractors have spent some time doing all over the fucking web, is just condescending.

It pretty much works just like on the TV, though.

A computer is a tool. And fuck me, but I like using tools that feel good in my hand. I own a fairly pricey power sander, which I was I used when I stripped some turn of the century wainscotting down to it’s original, varnished gum wood. Am I victim of the fancy display at the hardware store and the slippery admen of Porter-Cable?