It doesn't take that much to amaze me it seems, none of these are on par with the wheel, manned spacecraft or the forward pass, but all made my life easier and/or more enjoyable...
#15. ONLINE MINISTRIES. Yup. I'm a minister. But instead of toiling away at a bible school or spooning with a mentor at a seminary, I ran a google search, signed up and bam! I'm ordained. Freedom of Religion's a wonderful thing, the gub'ment has no right to say my spiritual credentials are any less meaningful than Pope Benedict's.
#14. TWITTER. Initially I thought Twitter was a stupid concept, I mean, I don't give a shit that Stephon Marbury ordered a Grand-Slam Breakfast at the Waffle House. But after getting in with it, holy cow, why did it take so long? If you're into sports, I don't know how you live without this. Cut through the BS, get the jist of everything instantly, no more searching through unreliable updates from yahoo news, or waiting for a report to be edited and verified on espn or si.com. Fascinating stuff, and it provided us with "Shit My Dad Says" to top it all off.
#13. WIKIPEDIA. God, I'd hate to be in charge of grading papers in college these days. Wikipedia didn't exist when I was in school and if it did, boy life woulda been easier. Obviously you can't just copy and paste from it, but as a condensed launching point? With sources? Regardless of the academic benefits, the idea of having everything you need to know about anything neatly organized in one place is almost impossible to comprehend. I remember doing elementary school projects using my father's 1963 World Encyclopedia, which I'm pretty sure only had one country on the African Continent: "Africa". (Sarah Palin must still be using these). Not anymore. A list of Friday Night Lights episodes? Done. Glen Danzig's bio? Check. As The Office's Michael Scott said, "It can be edited by anyone in the world so you know you're getting the best information".
#12. AUTOMATIC SANDWICH ORDERING BOARDS. So far I've seen them at Quick Check and WaWa and my only question is: What's taking the rest of the food service world so long to catch up? No more special requests verbalized to someone who doesn't use the same verbs as you. No more answering questions about what you want or dont want, and relying on the stoner making your grub to remember it, cause now it's all there on a screen for them. And I've recently discovered a nifty trick: Quick Check has their Buffalo Chicken Sandwich on sale for $4.99 (footlong). But if you want a chicken parm, just switch "No Cheese" to "Fresh Mozzarella" and "Buffalo Sauce" to "Marinara". And instead of the $7 Chicken Parm, you're paying $5. Little victories baby, they make getting out of bed that much easier.
#11. THE MUSIC GENOME PRODUCT. I don't know much about the specifics and technology behind it, but I do know it's the technological backbone behind "Pandora" and iTunes "Genius" - both of which have made amazing contributions to how we listen to music. The basic point is the songs are mapped out to direct them to similar artists and songs, so instead of using a Neanderthal method like "Shuffle" that will quickly send you from "The Way You Look Tonight" to "Welcome to the Jungle", Genius/Pandora will transition Sinatra to Dean Martin or some other standard. Furthermore, it's the best possible way to expose yourself to new music in genres you're interested in.
#10. THE NEW YANKEE STADIUM. Would rank higher if not for the $10 beer. I don't care about the class-based "Legends Seats". I couldn't afford them at $350 in the old stadium, why should I give a fuck if they're $2500 now, I still can't afford them. The bottom line is, the new Grandstand is 100 times more fan friendly than the old Tier Reserved - where I pretty much sat in every post A-Rod trade game anyway. However, the entire lower bowl is open-aired and friendly to fans of all seating areas, the bleachers now serve alcohol again, there's actually a visible area listing all 26, er, TWENTY FUCKING SEVEN World Series Titles, the food and drink selection is much better (and really not much more expensive than the old digs) and most importantly, it kept the classic look of it's two predecessors. The House that George Built, Steinbrenner's personal pyramid, is an outstanding tribute to the greatest owner in sports history.
#9. MLB REVENUE SHARING. Speaking of baseball. I'm not one to give credit to Bud Selig or Don Fehr, but the 2002 agreement has turned every team into a potential contender. With the greatest diversity of all four sports in terms of placing teams in their respective finals and more different champions than any sport this decade (8 teams, compared to the NHL's 7, NFL's 6 and NBA's 5) the plan has taken economics out of the way as a hurdle to being competitive. With the smallest playoff field of any sport (6 teams) all but 7 teams qualified for the playoffs, and of those 7, mismanagement can be credited in each case. Sorry Baltimore and Toronto, but Tampa proved you can win the AL East and not be named Boston or New York. So those of you in Pittsburgh, stop complaining about NY/BOS spending cause you're starting the year off with house money thanks to revenue sharing. It aint our fault your management sucks.
#8. THE DO NOT CALL LIST. George W. Bush's greatest (and only) accomplishment. When my wife and I first moved in together we got nothing but soliciting phone calls it was miserable. Buy a car and every bank in the country's offering you a credit card. Buy sheets at Target and someone wants to sell you a bed. Pay off a loan and someone wants to offer you a new one. But Bush stepped up and banned this practice. For that, while he's still the worst president ever, it moves him above Stalin in terms of "Historically Disastrous Leaders"
#7. YOUTUBE. Star Wars Kid. Fat People Falling. Virginia Republican Senators making racist comments. Bon Jovi's "Living in Sin" video. Joe Namath's "I Wanna Kiss You" moment. And my personal favorite, this hysterical interpretation of Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter", You name, Youtube's got it. I remember as the last decade came to a close, ESPN ran a chilling "Images of the Century" package set to Aerosmith's "Dream On". I was emailing everyone who had a @espn.com email address looking to a actually purchase it, it was that incredible. But thanks to this fantastic development, it's now at my fingertips whenever I want it.
#6. FANTASTY SPORTS LIVE SCORING. Gone are the days of waiting for the Monday "USA Today". Fantasy Baseball and Basketball are now eminently possible. And you can be stuck at a funeral and still see the up to the minute live score of your fantasy football game. An industry is born, and life hasn't been the same since.
#5. HDTV. Technically the technology's been around forever, but this is the decade where demand met supply and we're all better off for it. I can't remember what football used to look like in SD. And I never knew how unattractive some people really were.
#4. NETFLIX. Racket: Broken. No more late fees. No more drives to the rental place only to find there's nothing there. Instead, you select your movie at your convenience with full previews and reviews at your disposal and it shows up in your mailbox. If you watch 3 movies per month, it pays for itself and thats assuming you never paid late charges. Basically free and with an extremely impressive list of titles to chose from, Netflix's contribution to The History of Man can not be understated.
#3. FACEBOOK. Remember that strange kid in high school that smelled like boiled turnips, sat to your right in biology and you never said a word to him? Well it's 15 years later, you've still never said a word to him, yet you know that his two year old has an ear infection and he just got an oil change. Wanna "become a fan of doing a chick in a football jersey"? Want to buy imaginary pigs? Want to make a quiz about yourself? Wanna spend the month of December offering your opinion on everything you remember from the previous decade? Are you extremely interested in the life of toddlers? Are you a stalker? Facebook's your place.
#2. THE DVR. Think back 10 years. If you watched TV you were a slave. A slave to commercials. A slave to time slots. A slave to the network's decision to use instant replay. Not anymore. The DVR/TiVo has revolutionized the way we watch television. For next to nothing per month, you get to decide when you want to watch something. You get to skip through commercials. You can rewind live television when you miss something because the phone rang, the dog barked, the girl scouts knocked on your door, you got a sudden case of dysentery or any reason whatsoever. Best of all, you can rock two shows at the same time. No longer must you chose when you're favorite show gets lined up against something else. And when you catch Dudley getting molested at the Bicycle Shop on the TV Land "Diff'rent Strokes" marathon, you can keep it forever. I don't really remember television without the DVR. And I don't want to.
#1. THE IPOD. I'll admit it. I was a flat-earther when I first learned of the iPod. "That sounds like an awful lot of work", or "Why do I need that when I have a CD player in my car?" I couldn't have been more wrong. I spent my entire music-listening life making mixed tapes, and then briefly, mixed CDs. Restricted by what I physically had in my collection, and limited to 45 minutes per side/80 MB per tape. The iPod freed me from that. When I wanted to hear a specific song, I had to dig through everything, find it, stop the current tape/disc, put in a new one, cue it up. That now takes less than 5 seconds. From anywhere in my house. Before I got in the car, I would have to chose what music I wanted for the journey. Not anymore. When I went for a walk, or took a plane, I had to make sure I had enough batteries and decide before packing what I wanted to hear. Those days are over.
If I ever wanted to watch the Greatest Super Bowl in the History of Super Bowls, I had to buy a DVD and be on my couch. Now, I have Bob Papa calling "Manning to Tyree" in my pocket. Every picture I own is with me 24 hours a day. I can play games on the toilet. I don't have to go looking for the Christmas music ever November or the St Patrick's Day music ever January. I'm reminded of the biblical verse where, upon Christ's death following the Crucifixion, one of the Roman Centurions standing guard said to his fellow guard: Clearly This Was The Son Of Man.
Sums up my reaction about 10 minutes after finally giving in and purchasing one.
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