I'm being social, by ignoring the people around me... so out of my way! (courtesy of The New York Times)

Walking consists of two major components: moving your feet and looking ahead. If you don’t move your feet, you stay in one place. This is called standing, or, in New York, tourism. If you don’t look ahead, you run into things, or things with the right of way run into you. This is called stupidity, or, in New York, stupidity. Over the last year and a half, many pedestrians on busy city sidewalks have decided that one major component of walking doesn’t matter anymore. Anybody care to guess which one?

When I unceremoniously left the job market in late 2008, most people still used regular cell phones. We made phone calls and sent text messages. We played that game in which a bouncing ball makes blocks disappear. Then we put the phones in our pockets and walked. We did one thing at a time, as our parents taught us, and we did it well. The trendsetters who walked among us while talking and texting were seen as oddities, and belittled mercilessly. Life was simpler then. Men held doors and tipped their hats. Women curtsied. People had, you know, jobs. Maybe I’m just remembering a New York that never was, like in a Meg Ryan movie on WE TV that you can’t turn off even though you’ve seen it 100 times, memorized all the funny parts, including the fake orgasm in Katz’s Deli, and find Billy Crystal’s hair really, really disturbing.

When I last left the employed ranks, smartphones had been around awhile. The first iPhone launched in early 2007; the first BlackBerry came along well before that. But they hadn’t gained critical mass. The fall of the economy somehow ushered in the age of the smartphone. It seems a little counter-intuitive on the face of it. Then again, what’s more American than spending money you don’t have? The smartphone also birthed a whole new breed of city pedestrian… the smartphone zombie. New York sidewalks are now overrun with reading, texting, emailing, surfing, tweeting, status-updating, app-using, video-watching, music-downloading, game-playing zombies who don’t look where they’re going.

Today’s white collar worker is used to multitasking. We juggle email and IM and Word docs and Excel spreadsheets and countless other desktop applications designed to make us more efficient. It’s necessary and expected, even though constantly switching tasks has been shown to reduce productivity. The smartphone extends the workspace to a hand-held device and anywhere someone can take it. So multitasking logically carries over too. Arriving in one piece is no longer accomplishment enough. We must get things done en route. The world won’t wait, but it is expected to stop when a smartphone zombie weaves down the sidewalk and wanders out into traffic.

I’ve seen many smartphone zombies almost die and not even realize it. They step out in front of buses and cabs. They wait to cross the street, in the middle of the street. They ride bicycles against one-way traffic without looking. I’m perfectly okay with people self-selecting themselves out of the human race. Humanity is better off if the stupid gene doesn’t reproduce. I just don’t want to be involved. More to the point, I don’t want to be inconvenienced. Too bad it’s unavoidable.

Smartphone zombies get in the way. They’re attracted to high-traffic areas, such as doorways, sidewalks, subway platforms and the tops and bottoms of escalators. Eyes glazed over, they seem to lack any awareness of the world around them, or any interest in it. And they don’t seem to understand that someone else might need to pass through the space they occupy. Or they just don’t care. I routinely have to push smartphone zombies out of the way… zombies leaning on the front door of my apartment building, zombies blocking the exit of a retail establishment, zombies lounging by the subway escalator. And when I do, it’s somehow my fault.

Change being the only constant, I expected the world to be a different place when I returned to work. How could it not be? But I thought some basic things—like walking—would remain essentially the same. The New York sidewalk slalom was treacherous enough without the smartphone zombie swarms wandering about. Now, not only do I have to look out for myself, I have to look out for the other guy too…  the guy who’s too busy harnessing technology to see the world around him.

Happy anniversary to me!

Here I am riding another bus, trying do some work and trying not to get motion sickness. Working on the computer while traveling is a much better idea in theory than in practice. The bus ride gives me a solid block of time to concentrate and tick things off my list, or dive into a bigger project. But the bus is filled with other people, some eating, some sleeping, some playing games on iPhones. Headphones and a nose plug block out most of it. Still the space is tight for laptop use and worse, I’m prone to motion sickness.

I started barfing in and out of cars at about six years old. Bumps, quick stops, turns… they all made me sick. Things improved once my parents learned not to put me in the far back seat of the station wagon facing backwards. But trips on hilly roads often still included me losing the contents of my stomach in someone’s bushes – flash fertilizing for random vegetation. I’ve grown out of it a little, but I still avoid reading and sitting backwards in cars, particularly blue 1980 Caprice Classics with AM radios and vinyl seats. Oddly enough, I can read on the subway. Maybe the actual cause of my motion sickness is the bumpiness combined with what my peripheral vision picks up out the window. Remove the random visual stimulus, and the sickness goes away. That’s my theory anyway. I’ll get NIH to look into it.

The bus is a half hour out of New York and all’s well… for the most part. My stomach is mostly calm. The New Jersey Turnpike is flat, straight and moving swiftly. The sky is gray; a little rain is falling. New Jersey is filled with construction and power lines, though greener than expected. The older lady sleeping next to me hasn’t yet co-opted my shoulder. The older guy in front of me stopped trying to cough up the residue of a hundred thousand cigarettes. The Bolt Bus, which I’m riding for the first time, is comfortable enough. The wireless internet doesn’t really work, but the electrical outlet does. So I’m blogging via Microsoft Word. Next week maybe I’ll blog using a 1970s Selectric typewriter or possibly a chisel and stone tablet. And I’ll use smoke signals for tweets. Look east at first light every third day for 140-character updates on my cats and the weather.

It’s a good time to reflect, as soon as I put on some music. Okay, now it’s a good time to reflect. (And sorry for lying; 20 seconds ago in fact was not a good time to reflect.) I just passed the one-year mark of unemployment recently. And this is my 202nd post, the second bicentennial plus two or 1978 – the year I began barfing in earnest. My unemployment insurance will run out by the end of the year. The work landscape is still bleak, as the country is enjoying a jobless recovery. I’m planning a huge party without food, drink, entertainment or people to celebrate it. I’d invite you, but you can’t come, and it won’t be any fun anyway.

I continue to network and send out resumes. Most of my job inquiries are ignored, though people are still receptive to networking requests. They want to help, and are willing to offer their time, expertise and contacts. They just don’t know of any openings. Networking may be the best way to find a job. But it hasn’t worked for me yet.

I haven’t had any in-person interviews in awhile either, which is disconcerting. Screening, pre-interview phone calls come in with some frequency. I research the companies, prepare things to say and present my case with intelligence and grace. All this rarely gets me even a “no thanks” email. Last week I received an email for a screening interview. It stated I would be called between 2:00 and 3:00 the following day. I wasn’t asked about the time, I was told. Not having a choice, I made myself available for that hour, except for a 30-second bathroom break. That’s when the call came in. I returned it and left a message, but haven’t heard anything since.

Maybe my resume is to blame for the overall lack of employer interest, because I’m a real charmer in person. Where I worked and went to school is already determined, though my skill set grows every day. Maybe I could present all my experience more convincingly, in a way that better quantifies my successes. And maybe more concrete measurable numbers would give my descriptions that needed boost. I struggle with this issue during every layoff. The opportunity to have my resume redone professionally for free recently presented itself. And the third draft is looking promising. We’ll see what happens when it’s finished and out in the world.

I started applying for temporary seasonal positions to stave off the end of my unemployment insurance. These jobs pay about the same amount for 40 hours of work as my weekly checks. And working for a couple months now, while seasonal work is available, would push the end of my unemployment to the end of February. So I applied for a couple of positions at a department store you’ve definitely heard of. The whole experience deserves its own post. And now I can write it, because they rejected me. They actually sent me an email saying as much. I was overqualified for the position. I was probably overqualified to run the department. Being overqualified is a legitimate reason for rejection. Companies know that employee is looking to leave, and they’ll be faced with hiring someone else sooner than later. But this was a temporary position, with an end date. And I still didn’t get it. Few things are as depressing as not getting a job you don’t want and are overqualified for.

Nor did I get the pundit position, which was my ticket to fame and stardom. The Washington Post did send me a very nice rejection letter, complete with a link to pursue further opportunities. The link, like me, didn’t work. Pundit is probably not the right position for me. In retrospect, my submission was probably a tad tame and inoffensive. I didn’t call anybody a whore or a communist or a Nazi. And my opinions were reasonable and clearheaded. I guess I really do have a lot to learn about the punditry business. If only I’d barfed up something more bilious, maybe I’d be typing this article from my newspaper desk and not a seat on a bus. Alas, it was not to be.

On the bright side, the job search and the blog go on.

[Note: I wrote this post a couple weeks ago. Technical issues and general busyness have kept me from posting it until today. Sorry for being a terrible person.]

Did I forget my deodorant this morning?

Tourists and Manhattanites don’t come to Queens. They’re still scared of Brooklyn‘s tonier neighborhoods, where killer mothers, nanny henchmen and four-headed demon newborns of death rule the parks, boutiques and cafes. So this side of the East River, a little north of Brooklyn, where all the foreign people live, might as well be Sadr City for all the visitors trekking out here. Some crazy unemployed guy has an apartment here too, where he composes mad rants about the state of his life for the enjoyment of millions (by which I mean his wife, his mom, twelve unemployed people, six spam-bots and three of the Google hamsters running on a giant wheel out in Mountain View, CA. That is how they keep the Internet going, right?) Outsiders just avoid the whole borough of Queens. Someday, when average property values cross the half million-dollar mark, that may change.

But something happens here every summer about this time. Tennis fans return to roost, like swallows to San Juan Capistrano. The 7 train – called the International Express because of the many ethnic neighborhoods it passes through – becomes decidedly less international. Ultra-proper English can be heard. Country club attire can be felt brushing by. Hands can be seen protecting wallets and iPhones from would-be pickpockets reading or sleeping on their way home from work. The annual visitors follow the DIRECTV blimp floating high above Flushing Meadows. It’s US Open time again, and locals are warned to hide their Heineken. Here come the tennis fans.

I’m a card-carrying white person, but I’m not so big on the tennis. Sure, all the back and forth, combined with the grunting and sweating, can be exciting. But I still prefer to watch eleven large men in pads running into eleven other large men in pads, all of whom are grunting and sweating. (Maybe those last two sentences don’t belong together.) I played a lot of tennis as a kid, in summer camp and with my grandfather. We would hit tennis balls on his neighbor’s court many afternoons and then ruin our dinners with watermelon and root beer floats. But even fond childhood memories couldn’t make me a fan of the sport. Tennis can be kind of boring.

I went to the US Open qualifiers last Thursday. The week before the tournament, the wannabes and also-rans compete for the chance to lose to the players you’ve heard of. The timing once again lined up with my unemployment – another seemingly annual event. Entry was free, but the crowds were sparse – mostly teenagers and old people. It was a great way to spend a breezy summer afternoon, without shelling out your hard-earned tax dollars.

I watched Sam Warburg take on Michael Berrer on the largest of the courts outside the stadium. (Stadium courts are reserved for the real tournament.) The crowd routed for Warburg – the American – though he didn’t show much personality. He did let out a convincing grunt with each racket swing. Sometimes there would be a delay between swing and grunt, as if he’d momentarily forgotten and then remembered he was contractually obligated to make the noise. Berrer – the German – was much more fun to watch. He yelled at himself after bad shots and pumped his fist after good shots. He repeatedly excoriated the official for obviously bad calls. (The officiating was horrible all around.) His accent made the complaints sound more menacing than he probably intended. The players were evenly matched, and points sometimes stretched beyond my interest. Each player just toed the baseline and ripped shots at his opponent, only to have them returned. My neck tired from the constant head turning. Warburg twisted his ankle late in the match, giving Berrer enough advantage to pull it out.

I found myself easily distracted throughout the match, first by the corporate sponsor banners lining the court’s perimeter. Chase, American Express, J.P. Morgan, Citizen, and, of course, Heineken… are these companies targeting me and my vast spending power ($430 a week, baby)? Am I supposed to leave here and go buy a beer or a watch or an investment that gets repackaged and sold to another giant financial institution, over and over, until the economy crashes, I lose my job (were I to have a job, which I don’t) and they get government money to market to me at professional sporting events? I guess actively not caring about these companies and their products further proves I’m not a tennis fan. Maybe I’ve lived in Queens too long.

More interesting than the match and the advertising was the ball boy etiquette. Each match had a six-person ball boy crew. (Half the crew were, in fact, girls, but I’m not going to derail my informative yet whimsical prose with a pointless gender dispute.) Two were stationed behind each player and two manned (see, womanned just sounds weird) the net. Before a point, a ball boy offered the server a ball, and then another, and then another, from which the player chose two. The player served, the other returned it, blah, blah, blah. Afterward, a net ball boy fetched the shot that ended the point. Another offered each player a towel to wipe his brow and racket handle. The others threw balls to each other, ensuring that ball boys behind the server had an ample supply. The process repeated for a couple games. The players then got a rest, but a ball boy’s work is never done. One held an umbrella above each player’s head to block the hot New York sun. Others provided towels and water. The remaining stood at attention until the match started back up.

Being a ball boy is a science and an art. I found myself waiting for points to end so they could execute their duties. I even wondered what it would take to be a ball boy, aside from a time machine and parents who pay my bills. Could I dart across the court at any moment, scoop up a tennis ball and duck into my corner before a 120 mph serve took my head off? Could I remember how many tennis balls to offer up the serving player, and how and when he wants his sweaty towel? I don’t mean to sound flip. I actually thought about this stuff. Alas, it’s not the job for me. I need work that allows me to buy beer, watches and financial products. Maybe then I won’t find tennis so boring.

Because punching that annoying iPhone user in the throat might get you arrested. (image courtesy of http://iwood3b.com)

Apple makes some great products. I have a Mac, and hope to buy another one when it explodes, spreading blog and job search shrapnel throughout the greater Jackson Heights area. The iPhones I see and hear on the subway, in the grocery store, at the gym and everywhere else that isn’t my apartment look just awesome. And everyone tells me – over and over all the time everywhere – that it does fabulous things too. I’d consider getting one if I had any money and AT&T actually worked in NYC. But I’m unemployed, and AT&T apparently sucks around here. Call me crazy, but I like to receive phone calls and have conversations without being dropped. It could be another important resume rejection, the one that puts me in the running for that no-expenses-paid trip to bankruptcy court.

Apple and its beautiful and coveted products aren’t the problem. It’s the insufferable iPhone users… the iPhoneys. I’m a little fed up with (and jealous of) all the cool Richie McTalk-a-lots and their fancy gadgets. What is it about these things – and PDAs in general – that makes them more interesting than the world around us?

Looking ahead or around while walking isn’t good enough anymore. Eyes must be glued to an iPhone at all times. Our cities are overrun with cellular zombies. They wonder the sidewalks, eyes down and brains off, surfing and being social. They crowd our entrances and stairwells, freely forwarding funny links while blocking pedestrian traffic. No, that’s alright. I’ll keep backpedaling on the escalator until you finish checking your messages. It’s good practice for when you cut me off again 20 steps from now.

These days, the in-person conversation has become a colossal inconvenience. Nary is the iPhoney who doesn’t start playing with their gadget halfway through my thought. Maybe I’ve just grown stale and boring in my old age; I can’t even remember my last original idea. We live in fast times. Who has time to listen and wait for a point when all knowledge can be had with a deft finger stroke across a shiny screen? I mean really, anything that can be said can be found on Wikipedia while looking cool.

Are you tired of it all? Are you ready to beat the next iPhone user who cuts you off with the device that’s taken them over? Your salvation is here. I present to you the i-wood…

http://iwood3b.com/

The i-wood 3B is “for all the times you wood rather stab someone in the eye than talk about 3-G anything.” As the site so eloquently explains, “it will help you redefine your relationships with people by showing them how truly irritating they, and their portable devices, have become.” Here is a sampling of its more ingenious functions…

• Know-It-All – reminds “…your friends how fun it used to be to actually know things instead of constantly referring to an electronic device.”
• Meeting Ignore – gives you the right to not pay attention in meetings, just like your tech-savvy coworkers.
  
• Status Symbol – shows all those insufferable tech geeks that you too can buy coolness.
  

It’s time all of us non-iPhone types took back our world. The next time an iPhoney  gets on your nerves, pull out your i-wood and return the favor. Get in their way. Ignore them. Act cool and self-important for no good reason. Be an i-woody (name still in development).