I knew Apple was in trouble, but this is embarrassing. The introduction of the Apple Cafe indicates that Cupertino isn't so much out of touch as deeply panicked. "It's about brand loyalty. . ." their marketing folks say. Brand loyalties and lattes? I'm sorry but I'm confused. How about beefing up Customer Service instead of serving all beef patties? In a last ditch attempt to remain "cool" with an ever-shrinking market share, the Apple cybercafes will feature touch-screens at every table with access to the internet. While you download you can buy toys and book bags with the Apple logo on it. (Is any of this making sense yet?) But wait, there's more! The Apple Cafe's interior will be designed by the same folks who brought you Universal Studios' Jurassic Park and Terminator theme rides. If Apple has indeed become a dinosaur this idea should pretty much terminate them. I imagine the features of the cybercafe might include:

Endless videotape loop of the US Festival

Floor show of exploding laptops

They'll serve Coca-Cola just to spite John Scully

Insanely great items on the menu but they aren't available yet

Unlike Cupertino's conference rooms, the tables will not be named for Steve Jobs' conquests

The Be Lounge next door will be way cooler

I sleep better at nights knowing we have an emergency plan to deal with presidential insanity. Sometimes I would imagine it's a pretty tough call. While at college in the mid Seventies during the height of the Watergate crisis I lived in the girls' dorm (don't ask--fourteen floors of girls and me. . .it was very cool) and everyone would scramble to watch Nixon's speeches because we were convinced he was going to shoot himself on national teevee. Old Tricky Dick wasn't handling it all that well, with late night Valium and beer binges, long discussions with Lincoln's portrait, etc. Then there was former Secretary of State General Al Haig prematurely grabbing the reins of power in the hours after Reagan was shot, proclaiming himself in charge--right before he was given the bum's rush into history's footnotes. And who can forget Reagan's train of thought occasionally derailing toward the end. The Leader of the Free World going bonkers could be bad for our overseas weapons business for heaven's sake. So to avoid confusion and to deal with the possibility of a Commander In Chief's horse sense wandering off the reservation, we now have a secret plan that the White House can either adopt or ignore. I'm pretty certain Hillary won't be happy to learn that no, she's not next in line.


It's bad enough that single, childless folk such as myself have to help support working families' heath care, but the next step is more ominous. There is a growing trend toward at-work child-care which sounds fine until they choose the cubicle next to yours to house the little darlings. This actually happened to a childless IBM employee whose phone calls and concentration were constantly interrupted by the squeals and crying of other employees' children. If done right, at-work daycare could be a real benefit. If done wrong you have the potential to destroy the productivity of the work environment. Call me a mean old man, but I think people should work at work. I still remember when one income could support a family. Now you need one income simply to pay the household's taxes--who watches the kids? The employer? We aren't getting more compassionate about families people; we are creeping towards a scenario where one's work and one's personal life merge beyond recognizable separation. I think that's a dangerous trend. Watch as daycare centers start popping up in your local high schools and you'll know we're on the wrong track. Where are the grandparents anyway?


In the early 1940's Les Paul used to spend his weekends at the Kalamazoo Michigan Gibson guitar plant playing with his "log," a 4" X 4" piece of pine that was to become his first solid body electric guitar. Ten years or so later, in answer to the Bigsby whammy bar, Leo Fender's Fullerton workshop was experimenting with what would emerge as the legendary Stratocaster. Between a Strat and a Les Paul, you pretty much can find most of the rock and roll guitar legends strumming happily. Now the tool of troubadours hangs proudly in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. At last the lowly electric guitar gets the respect it deserves as an icon of American culture. And we've come a long way baby--take a look at Roland's VG-8 Guitar System for the latest in electric guitar effects. This unit ($3,170 list) can electronically alter tunings and offers the realistic sounds of dozens of amp / axe combinations at the stomp of a pedal. Reportedly, the unit is so cool that Joni Mitchell came out of self-imposed retirement when she played through one and her next album will feature the VG8 exclusively.





Eight people in the United States can smoke marijuana legally--unfortunately they have to be sick to do it. For the past 26 years the happy herbalists at the University of Mississippi have cultivated dope for study and medical uses. Perhaps we'll see more of this due to the recent passage of California's medical marijuana initiative. For me, the notion of making something which grows naturally by the side of the road illegal to possess is a bit strange to begin with. Some trace marijuana's evil image back to William Randolph Hurst who, it has been suggested, used his political clout to fend off a hemp-to-paper manufacturing process which would have cut into his timber-to-pulp profits. In any event, trying to legalize marijuana for its medicinal benefits will be difficult in today's hysterical D.A.R.E. climate. St. Matthews Kentucky, near where I was born, was literally put on the map because of marijuana. The little town became an economic force supplying hemp for rope to both sides of the Civil War. The medicinal benefits have been known for centuries, and the manufacturing flexibility is amazing for a humble weed (order a hemp wallet from The Beatles' Anthology discs, for example). So I'm all for medical marijuana and legal hemp production, (not that I have ever experimented with it myself, any more than The President of the United States has. . .)