i find that when i’m travelling down to lax, i somehow tend to view everyone else with a sense of disdain, and even hatred especially reserved for those who through clumsiness or just ignorance, do things that slow down the process and in any way cause delays for everyone.
i know that it’s bad, and i keep try to have compassion for others, and that they should not be looked down upon for not knowing the best way to do things, in the same way that i would wish that others have compassion for me the first time i try to fumble my way through a foreign airport. but i find it really hard. i find myself just loathing people, and continually rolling my eyes.
maybe it’s because i’m flying southwest on such a commuter flight, that i feel that people should just have it down already. they should know. but cheap fares are egalitarian, and so even people who don’t fly down to see their wives twice a month get to take the plane too, and that’s not their fault.
as the plane was boarding, i was sitting in my normal aisle seat near the front (easy on, quick off), and some girl came up and wanted to sit in the empty middle seat next to me, carrying a rolling suitcase. she lifted it onto her seat, somehow thinking she could get it under the seat in front of her (hell no), and then awkwardly pushed it around, unsure of what to do. i ended up getting up, rearranging some of the bags in the overhead compartment, and putting it up for her. she thanked me profusely, admitting that she “really didn’t know what she was going to do with it.”
so maybe kindness is possible, right?
or maybe it was just the fact that she was really hot. really pretty, fantastic rack, great ass, sexy in that slutty new jersey sort of way.
dammit. some people get away with anything.
and we help them.
quick travel answers upon hindsight:
1. funny custom earplugs: kick ass. highly recommended. the grand prix was loud and the ultra high frequencies made your whole head hurt with normal earplugs. but with the custom ones, you could tell it was loud, but you didn’t mind at all.
2. overpriced portable ipod speakers: well, they’re pretty cool. very slim, nice design, easy to use, just open them up and put the ipod in the dock, and instant music. the power plug works with european voltage, and also the ipod can charge in the dock, so you don’t have to bring a separate charger! the sound is good, but lacks bass, despite what it says. the tivoli PAL does sound a lot better. i took it back, but mostly to get back at best buy.
2a. best buy’s in-store pickup: sucks to high hell. the idea is that you can buy on bestbuy.com, they’ll tell you what store they have whatever you want in stock, and you can just go and pick it up. in theory, this sounds great. in practice, this is a huge fucking waste of time. i went there and had to wait 10 minutes for all of them to stop chatting with each other or make personal phone calls, another 20 minutes for them to vanish with my credit card in back to try and find my order, and then another 15 minutes for them to go out on the floor to actually get the item. wasn’t the idea that they would have done all of this already? i could have just walked in, found the item, and bought it myself in 5 minutes on my own. a colossal waste of time that made me late to pick up hmc from the airport the weekend before we went on our trip. it makes me never want to shop best buy ever again. they’re as bad as fry’s, but a bigger chain. ugh.
3. silk moneybelt: don’t bring it again. didn’t use it. who wants to dig underneath their clothes to get money, anyway?
4. shoes: i brought two pairs plus leather sandals, and ended up wearing leather sandals almost the whole time anyway. on less pair of shoes would have been ok.
5. souvenirs: should have bought more french jams and preserves. always handy for oh-shit-i-need-a-gift gifts! and also should have smuggled in more absinthe. because you can never have too much.
back home again.
we got up a little before 4am, in order to check out and be ready for our ride to the airport at 5am for our 6:40am flight. why so early? those last-minute plans don’t really leave you with a lot of options to fly back the day after the grand prix. which is really a shame, as it would have been nice to have another day in nice. or even a half. day. un demi-jour, peut-être?.
this was especially useless as we had a four hour layover in paris at charles de gaulle.
and yes, flying in and then taxiing around the airport, i could clearly see the glass cigar of terminal 2E, which had a noticeable absence of airplanes, a large red crane in the middle, and a big hole where there shouldn’t be one, due to the collapsed 120 foot section of the terminal the day before, which killed four people. thankfully, we had flown out of and were flying back into terminal 2F, which has a distinctly different design. and no big holes. at least none where they weren’t designed to be.
i did manage to catch a sight of la tour d’eiffel in the distance as we took off.
films on the flight back: the station agent, which was really a lot of fun, and girl with a pearl earring, which was fine but didn’t really leave an impression.
i waited in the airport with hmc for an hour and a half until her flight was scheduled to leave for lost angels, and then went home. having to make sure to stay up late enough to get back on pdt, i went out to dinner with w/djbj/drmike at minako’s for yummy organic japanese food.
by the time i went to bed i had been up for 25 of the last 29 hours.
but all in all it was a fantastic trip. it’s a great place to visit, especially for (mostly) free. next time stay somewhere cheaper and for longer.
the only downside was that while i was gone, the cookies at home got stale.
so it turns out that the grand prix was really exciting! maybe it was the fact that it was for real and it really meant something, or maybe it was the fact that during the actual race, there are a lot of cars going around and they’re going around incredibly fast (the laps were around 1:15, by my watch).
or maybe it was all the crashes!
it was incredibly nutty. there was this great flameout by sato, where his engine billowed huge plumes of white smoke that covered the entire width of the course, so no one could see at all. and everyone slowed down, but one guy couldn’t see and ended up hitting some other guy from behind, running over him and flipping over!
later alonzo was trying to pass ralf schumacher, and ended up hitting the wall in the tunnel. bang, sparks, spinout! and then the craziest thing, the favorite, michael schumacher, who had won the previous five f1 races this year, was in the lead during the safety lap from the alonzo crash but had a bizarre crash with montoya, taking him out of the race.
all in all, very exciting after all, and jarno trulli for renaut ended up winning the race, as the pole position guy usually does in monaco, although apparently normally in a more straightforward and less hazardous fashion.
only nine of the twenty cars ended up finishing the race.
best of all, we got to use our new favorite phrase: “j’aime les voitures et les accidents magnifiques!”
(someone had told me that crashes was something like crochements, but i can’t seem to find it in the dictionary, unless it’s the same word for recess. someone who speaks french let me know!)
afterwards we were going to go to the famous monte carlo casino, but after getting to the lobby, hmc didn’t want to go in after all that.
we ended up eating at the adjoining cafe de paris, which while pricey, is a fantastic place to watch the ridiculously rich and outrageously fashionable.
skipped the races today and stayed in nice, in fact we stayed in and around the hotel for most of the day, just relaxing. a little petit dejuner, a little nap, a little sunbathing, a little swimming in the indoor/outdoor pool, a little more sunbathing, and then a little steam in the hammam.
yes, i know it’s a rough life.
we ate dinner at this cute little restaurant, le cigale orientale, despite not being able to find it before our very eyes (twice!). the lebanese food was great, but the best thing was that it was just a tiny tiny place where they had too many people in there, so all the tables were full and jammed up against each other, to the extent that whenever anyone wanted to get up and out, we had to move several other tables over to let people by.
it just got more and more hilarious as the night went on, and really reminded us of that great restaurant scene in jaque tati’s movie playtime, where the restaurant wasn’t really ready for their opening night, but they kept going on and trying not to let the customers know as the whole place eventually fell apart. it wasn’t a disaster in that sense (although our poor waitress did dump a whole tray full of drinks and then later a full tray full of plates), but it was funny in the same way.
and the belly dancer didn’t hurt, either.
we took the train down to cannes for the day, since the film festival was still going on. it’s an industry event, so i don’t think the general public is allowed in, and in any case, it would have been far too late to get tickets anyway. we just tooled around the city, watching the throngs and various people with their particular types of entourages. we did see the famous red carpeted steps, but there were no celebs waiting there, waving for paparazzi. maybe on the half hour?
this did mean that we didn’t get to catch any of the new films being shown, such as wong kar-wai’s belated 2046. however, we did see a poster for capoeira the movie, with the tagline: “fight. dance. love. the passion will seduce you.”
i did see some french starlet come off of the pier, stop and sign many autographs for her many besieging fans, and then get whisked off in a mercedes limo, but i couldn’t identify her. she looked vaguely familiar in that way that every young french actress looks vaguely familiar (this may have been emmanuelle béart, who was on the jury).
hmc wanted to go to the beach, although most of the beaches in cannes are all gated off and private and you have to pay to get in and use a beach chair so you can order a fruity drink and tip the waiter. or do they really tip the waiter here? this tva thing is a little vague on that. however, since we didn’t bring a beach towel (and i even remember looking at my packtowl and then thinking, “nah, they’ll have beach towels in the hotel!”), we set off searching for a cheap one. they did have a cannes film festival one for a whopping 55€, which turned out to not be that bad a deal, considering a lot of the other ones were 45€, 30€, and even 20€ for the tacky ones with the almost nekkid men/women on them. by the time we finally recalled where we saw those cheap 7€ towels, it was too late and hmc wanted to go back and swim at the pool in the hotel.
we were going to stop and check out antibes on the way back, but opted for pool swimming instead. and then hmc promptly fell asleep when we got back to the hotel.
on the way back we saw this gaggle of five people on segways, moving sloooowly down the sidewalk, all wearing helmets. it was quite a sight, and very comical. we couldn’t figure out what was going on, and then we finally deduced that they must all be learning, since they were going so slow and timidly bobbing along/ apparently, there’s a thing where you can take a city segway tour of nice, which may be the most ridiculous thing ever.
although there were also those paprika flavored pringles.
we went into monaco today, to see some of the qualifying runs for the grand prix. although the tour group we’re with has a whole bunch of people here, we’ve actually got our own private suite, which essentially is someone’s apartment overlooking the grand prix route, so it’s just twelve of us sharing a nice view from the terrace. it’s really quite fantastic, as you get a great view of the first turn, and then you see them as they come around the other way around the big grandstand, around the the harbor, and then you can even see down into the pit lane as well.
if only it wasn’t so boring. man, honestly, watching those cars drive around endlessly during those qualifying runs was putting me to sleep. all i could think was, “if they judged those cars on net miles driven, no one would win.”
someone from the other group in the tour compared it to people who go to the super bowl because they work for some company that has sponsored seats, but they aren’t really interested and don’t even understand the game, and i think that’s about right. i think of people who get to go to the nba finals, and don’t even know anything about basketball. it’s such a waste. and you can’t help feeling a bit guilty: there are people who would really appreciate this so much more than me, but they’re not here. it was funny that so many people on this tour won the trip from their company for performing well. in fact, four of the five couples at the lunch table had won the tour, leaving the remaining couple who had paid for theirs to feel like sort of suckers.
but man, i bet they loved it.
oh, and yeah. it’s fucking LOUD.
when we got back to the hotel, there was a small dark chocolate formula one car in our room.
we’re staying in nice, at le palais de la méditerranée. this may be the best swankiest hotel i’ve ever stayed in. it’s right on the coast, looking out over the sea. we’re in a beautiful room that faces directly out over the indoor/outdoor pool and lounge area, and then across the street out to the beaches and water. beautifully decorated with rich red and yellow stripes, the room is all w style, with crazy modern light switches and a bang and olufsen beovision6 22” lcd television. and of course there’s the free dsl and wireless, if i was foolish enough to take a laptop on vacation.
of course, the little candies and pastry treats and bottle of wine on our arrival didn’t hurt at all either.
one funny thing is that the minibar has little infrared sensors, such that you are charged instantly if you take anything out of its place for more than twenty seconds. so much for using the minibar as your own personal fridge. how gauche that would be, i guess.
that charles de gaulle airport in paris is beautiful. not the ugly old aerogare that united flies in and out of, but that new one that air france flies in and out of. the check in part of the terminal has this beautiful huge arching ceiling, totally devoid of any supporting columns. i wonder how they keep it up? must be the arch with some sort of steel structural support behind the concrete. and then the gate section is like a beautiful white tube, with this great latticework support down the middle, and lots of light streaming in from everywhere.
it’s just really beautiful.
smashed into the next-to-middle seat of a boeing 777, it is at least a small consolation that you have not one, but seven choices of films to watch during the 9+ hour flight from sfo to paris. granted, you don’t really want to try and watch any epic movies on a two inch lcd screen, but it’s nice to have the choice.
i opted for the house of sand and fog, which was a little heavy-handed, but still really great. fantastic acting, and a story that you kept thinking wouldn’t get any more depressing, but still does. and boy is that jennifer connelly nice to look at. although, does every movie she’s in nowadays has one or more scenes where she’s all nekkid? not that i’m complaining.
questionable fact from her imdb bio: The character “Veronica” in heathers (1989) was originally written with her in mind, but she turned the role down. does this mean that she would have later been picked up for celebrity shoplifting?
and then, just when you’ve think you’ve already seen the on a plane, you’re subjected to something like paycheck, starring j-lo-less ben affleck and a suddenly awkward uma thurman. in theory it sounds promising, given a philip k. dick novel and john woo direction, but in reality, i can’t recall a more inane and senseless movie, perhaps because after viewing the first quarter of it, i was trying to forget that movies even existed. i managed to go to sleep through half of it, and then woke up to find that the last quarter was not even just as bad, but actually worse. how can uma, who looked so good and stylish in kill bill, come off as ungainly and ridiculous as a unbelievable biologist (which means she grows plants and plays with a weather-controlling remote). and we already know that ben is a hopelessly bad actor.
the real question is, what the hell happened to john woo? when was the last time he put out a good movie? has he even done a good movie in the states? i guess we’re back to face/off? wow, it maybe even makes me rethink those hong kong classics: maybe the killer was only great because we couldn’t tell that the acting was bad, not understanding cantonese? can someone who speaks cantonese confirm or deny this?
so i’m off to monaco. in, oh, 11 hours or so.
not to sound ungrateful, but i’ll be glad when all this travelling is over. i feel like i haven’t really been home since late march. and i’m really tired. more than anything, i’m constantly confused as to where i am and what i’m supposed to be doing. and i really can never get in my head what day it is. like i keep asking ezra, “what time is it there?”
after monaco, the weekend after i’m down in lost angels for memorial day. and then i think the thurs/fri after that i’m in colorado for two days. i’m not really complaining about going on vacation. it’s all that other travelling that i’m done with.
i’ve developed this pathological thing where i can’t seem to pack for any lengthy trip earlier than the night before. and i mean the night before. the days, even the evening before i know i need to pack, and i can dutifully make lists and whatnot, but as to the actual packing, i put off for later. after the naps. after i watch this or that on tv. after i check on that thing on the web. after i blog. (happy now z?)
i guess i make it up anyway, sleeping on the plane. plus, i gots to stay awake to compensate for that lost day due to the date line, right? not that i’m flying over it, but i’m aware of it.
quick list: funny earplugs? check. plastic camera? check. overpriced ipod portable speakers? check. silk moneybelt? check. moleskine? check.
what i can never figure out is how many shoes to bring. oh, right. at least two. thanks.
the nytimes has a great article about using gambian giant pouched rats to detect land mines:
“Animal detection, with dogs in particular, has increased very much in the last three or four years,” Havard Bach, the top expert on demining for the Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining, said in a telephone interview. But in many cases, he said, “it would probably be better to use rats than dogs.”
Rats are abundant, cheap and easily transported. At three pounds, they are too light to detonate mines accidentally. They can sift the bouquet of land-mine aromas far better than any machine. Unlike even the best mine-detecting dog or human, they are relentlessly single-minded…
Then there are rats, which don’t give a fig about people but will do anything for bananas and peanuts. “All a rat wants to do is find the target and get his reward,” said Mr. Bach, of the Geneva demining center. “They’re almost mechanical in the way they work.”
heather says that it’s undignified for mika to get her food soley by fishing it out of the automatic feeder one kibble at a time. it’s like she’s a desperate junkie, searching for her next fix any way she can get it.
which she is.
so, fine, i say, i’ll go back to feeding her manually twice a day, in little 1/8 cup scoops at a time.
easy for heather to say. she doesn’t have to deal with some yappy hungry cat meowing and chewing on things at 6am because she wants to be fed. it’s not as loud when you’re 300 miles away.
the most incredible finish of the lakers game tonight— amazing game winning shot! shocking ending, heartbreaking exhilarating finish!
except for the fact that hmc had called me and left me a message on my voice mail, asking “we were watching the score of the game online! it looks like the xxxxx won, making a last-minute shot, but we can’t tell who? who was it?”
and i hadn’t watched the game yet. i had only gotten home from being at work all day long.
anyone who knows me knows this is perhaps the worst sin you could commit. almost unforgiveable. hmc can get away with practically anything. but this? bad heather! bad bad heather! no donut!
so there’s this guy at xxxxxx who i used to hate hearing from. i’ve only been dealing with him for a few months, and he’s just worked on this one project, but it’s something that has gone around at xxxxxx in various iterations for the past couple of years. and he’s just the latest face in the queue. but what was irritating was just his timing and persistance and repeated requests for unreasonable things. he just kept asking vague questions, and then i’d provide information to him and run tests to get him the information, and then he’d ask it again. so i’d reply that i already gave him the info and i’m not sure what else he’s really requesting, so he’d ask it again.
finally i went out and had a face to face meeting with him and some other people, and we ended up going out to lunch afterwards. and it turns out he’s really not a bad guy at all. and talking face to face cleared up a lot and now we’re set on the clear next steps, which are both reasonable and attainable.
sometimes you forget that there are people behind what you see as problems, and you get overly aggravated at whomever you perceive that person to be, while it might be the case that if you actually understood them better you wouldn’t have to get so upset.
on the other hand, there are people who are incredible assholes, and simple reasonable requests are outrageous just because of the way that person acts.
or is that the same thing?
there’s a nice article on sfgate about more stylishly designed prefab houses, particularly featuring the glide house, which is not only prefab and relatively cheap, but supposed to be relatively green as well. it’s designed to use solar panels and have a nice breeze provide for ventilation, and could even operate off the grid if necessary.
perfect for, say, venice beach! or maybe even the bay area, right?
given that caucasians have already succumbed to mcdonald’s, they’re now aggressively reaching out to those “living on the rim,” and specifically targeting asian-americans with their new campaign. but what’s more ridiculous is that they’re asserting a trademark on the phrase “i am asian.”
oh yeah?
i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian. i am asian.
fuck you mcdonald’s. prove that i’m not.
wanda is back. finally! she actually got back last monday, but i was away in vegas. and then she went back to south carolina, and then i was back. but now we’re both back. for now.
it’s really great to see her again. i mean how can you express the joy when one of your bestest friends in the whole world comes back from being far away from you in the whole world? smiles and hugs, i guess. food and jokes. just start up where you two left off, like it was yesterday. or six months ago.
listening to her tell stories about how strange it is to be back, how strange it is to be in the midst of gadgetry, productization, and artificiality is of course amusing, but also makes me wonder. i look around and think about how much stuff i have. and i love it and i hate it. i wonder if i could just let it all go and leave it and run off to live somewhere else for months or years. or if it’s just tethering me down, making sure i don’t run off and leave it somewhere else for months or years.
i keep thinking about the fact that i keep debating in my head “whether it’s worth it to try to switch my email program from outlook express to opera to try and take advantage of keeping all my mail in one central container and to apply views and searches to it for easier indexing, searching, and access, or whether that’s backwards and monolithic or perhaps more advanced like a database so it’s actually better,” and how incredibly meta that internal discussion is and how the hell did i get here anyway?
so after having played with that tivoli radio for a week in vegas, i’m pretty positive about it. it’s got a really nice warm sound, and a decent (but not overwhelming) amount of bass. while electronica and rock sound good on it, things like jazz and especially classical sound outstanding on it. it’s definitely a huge improvement over things like laptop speakers, or even the speakers built into our imac.
but the question is, do i need it? i don’t know. i sometimes feel silly and too gadgety, liking something that is in some ways useless. yes, it sounds better than the imac alone, but why don’t i pipe the imac into the stereo right next to it (instead of the television which is currently hooked up)? the radio’s a nice feature, but i never listen to the radio, only when i’m travelling and don’t have any other choice, and since i’m planning to use this with the ipod, it’s not really the case. and while that battery thing isn’t a big deal, now i’m thinking about going to monaco, and about powering it over there, and i realize that things like the ipod can run on 220V current, and so i just need an adapter plug, but the power adapter for the tivoli radio only runs on 110V, so i would need to lug a convertor just for this one thing, and is that really worth it? maybe i would be better off with that altec lansing thing and using AA batteries, which is more wasteful, but less cumbersome perhaps.
aigh, who needs such worries anyway? maybe we should just go back to the days of singing hymnals to entertain ourselves instead.
on tuesday went to see the new cirque du soleil show, zumanity, which was pretty cool. in some ways it’s the same as a regular cirque show, but half naked, but in other ways, much more different in tone and style. i’d describe it as a cirque du soleil cabaret show, as it’s quite flirtatious and bawdy, and all in all a lot of fun. there’s this great part with two female acrobats in this half globe full of water, and they dive in and around each other and then do handstands and backbends on the rim. pretty fantastic. and it was hilarous to see the two ultra-buff guys do this routine and then have a big long kiss at the end to freak out all the people from smallville usa.
on the other hand, seeing blue man group again (mandatory company function) wasn’t any better. even if the seats were really close, it doesn’t improve with repetition.
oh, and they announced that my sales rep and i won the trip to monaco to see the grand prix! they’re flying us and spouses to monaco in a couple of weeks, where we’ll get to stay expenses paid for a few days, and then watch the grand prix from a catered condo overlooking the route. should be a lot of fun, and we can pretend that we’re the beautiful people vacationing in the french riviera. or at least standing next to the beautiful people vacationing in the french riviera.
everyone’s coming up to me and saying one of two things: “congratulations! can i go with you?” and “bring earplugs.”
so the funniest thing was, at the end of the night at the strip club we went to, one of the strippers came up and was talking to me, and as she was leaving she told me to go to this website, but i couldn’t hear her over the music.
stripper: “you should check out spam.com!”
me: “spam.com?”
stripper: “no, wham.com!”
me: “what? wham.com? what’s that?”
stripper: “no, fwaam.com! f-w-a-a-m!”
me: “fwaam? what’s fwaam.com?”
stripper: “it stands for females who adore asian men!”
fucking hilarious.
i’m here in vegas, at the mgm grand all week for our annual sales kickoff. it’s fine, but i think vegas is really good for a few days, any more than that it just gets pretty tedious. i mean, how many strippers and showgirls can you see before they all start looking the same?
posting will be sporadic, as i usually don’t have the time or coherence to put in actual entries, nor is there usually convergence of blog entries + my laptop + internet access via the i.t. room downstairs. in any case, i’ve got a big fat room on the 21st floor with two queen beds. come on by!
a couple of things of gadgetry i’m pondering:
with all of the articles about the ipod earbuds being mediocre, i finally broke down and picked up a pair of sony MDREX71SL fontopia in-ear portable headphones. at first, i really had a problem with these, and thought these were oddly tinny and ironically enough, had much less bass than the standard earbuds. however, having read many a review of these types of headphones before, i knew that it was probably a matter of getting them to fit deep enough inside my ear to get a good seal. (this was the other factor that lead me to that whole ear-cleaning debacle). still, i’m still not quite sure about these. i don’t know if they really sound that much better to be worth it, and i don’t like the fact that there’s no really elegant way to store them without getting everything all tangled up, even with the carrying case. i think i really want them to do as well as my large noise-cancelling headphones, but without the bulk, but i don’t know if that’s really realistic. plus, there’s a specific noise-cancelling in-ear earbud version anyway.
i also picked up a tivoli portable audio laboratory, which i thought i’d use as a portable speaker when travelling, so i could listen to the ipod in the hotel room or whereever i’m staying. we used to have some flat speakers, but some cat chewed them up, and they were a little fussy to set up anyway. altec lansing makes the inmotion, which is an ipod specific little set of speakers that fold out from the size of a paperback. but i ended up trying the tivoli thing instead, probably the result of some clever marketing or ad somewhere. i think the thought was that it was pretty portable, would have better sound that other speakers, and even had a radio if i needed it. the downsides is that it was just one speaker and thus mono, but isn’t a single speaker sounds great better than two that sound so-so? how much stereophonics can you get out of a pair of speakers four inches apart, anyway? also, it has an internal rechargeable battery, but when that runs out, you need to plug it in, as you can’t use regular batteries. i was thinking that this might be an issue, but it lasts 4-6 hours, and by then, wouldn’t my ipod run out of juice as well? plus where am i going to be where i’d need to run out of batteries anyway? (i know, famous last words…)
in any case, i’ll road test them out this week in vegas.