New technology products often take us by surprise. In 1992, for example, we couldn’t possibly have dreamed of how the Internet would transform the world by 1997, only 5 years later. The best innovations are things “you never knew you wanted but cannot live without” kind, inventions that come out of nowhere. YouTube, for example. Or TiVo.

But certain other technology products are so obvious that when they finally emerge many people shrug and wonder “what took it so long?” We knew they were coming, but year after year they never actually materialized.

When they do materialize, we are overjoyed. After years of waiting, for example, we are finally getting MP3 players into cel phones.We are using wireless networks and bluetooth more and more, but we knew we wanted this stuff years ago. The technology consumer will often heap glowing praise on these kinds of new technologies as they emerge, calling them innovative and groundbreaking, when in fact the functionality of the products is merely filling a hole that everyone knew was there.

The Apple iPhone is a perfect example: while the UI is indeed remarkable, almost nothing about it is technologically innovative or new. If you asked me (or just about any of my friends) to describe the perfect cel phone feature set, it would look a lot like an iPhone. In fact, as the owner of a Windows PocketPC phone for nearly 5 years, nothing about the iPhone’s tech specs surprised me. The UI, again, is great and very innovative, but the hardware itself and the basic concept of the device is wholly old news. MORE…

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I saw Dreamgirls this weekend — it was great!

I’ve been to my fair share of movies where the audience broke out into enthusiastic and spontaneous applause before, but they’ve almost always applauded some kind of triumphant action scene, never clapping and cheering for an individual performer. Which is to say that they are applauding the film itself, not the humans in it.

That is, until this weekend. Jennifer Hudson got at least three full rounds of applause from my Brooklyn audience, whose boisterous cheering for the performance (and singing along occasionally) almost seemed to suggest that Ms. Hudson was actually up there on stage in front of us to hear our appreciation.

For most of my “young adult” life (that is, my teens and twenties) I despised musicals. I thought they were phony and vapid — why in the world would a pair of New York street gangs suddenly form up into chorus lines and sing in the middle of the alley? Why would a group of sailors on shore leave suddenly burst into song and synchronized tapdancing on restaurant tables? It was silly to me, not worthy of the serious taste I liked to think I had.

And yet countless critical “top ten” lists include Singin’ in the Rain. This always baffled me. How can this be?

Well, over the years I’ve started to notice that I think I actually do like a lot of musicals. I may in fact, have liked a lot of musicals all along — but only certain kinds: I’ve realized that I pretty much only like musicals about musicals, or at least musicals about people who sing and dance and perform. MORE…

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Johannes Brahms, clearly pissed off at Avery Fisher Hall. How is it possible that New York’s most dedicated Brahms lovers can excuse Lincoln Center?

A couple of nights ago I went to see a concert of chamber music by Beethoven, Mozart, and Brahms at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, on one of the final nights of the Mostly Mozart festival. (Just for the record, I’m not a big classical music concertgoer and I generally don’t know what I’m talking about, but my wife and brother in law have for years been great about helping me learn and appreciate classical music more and more.)

All of the performances were excellent as far as I could tell, but the final peice, a Brahms sextet, was what all three of us were really looking forward to.

Sadly — and shockingly — the Brahms was utterly unlistenable due to a nearly-constant and totally mysterious high-pitched ringing sound that marred nearly every note from the beginning to the end of the peice. The sound seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, as if it were simply part of the space itself or coming from the rafters above. It would generally, but not always, coincide with an energetic violin phrase or a loud segment of music. And since the peice was dominated by the violins, the noise was present to some degree for (I would estimate) nearly a third of the peice’s entire duration.

When the noise first started, I glanced around to see what it was (assuming it was someone’s cell phone), and the first thing I noticed was the hearing aid in the ear of the gentleman sitting next to me. But the sound didn’t seem to come from the hearing aid — it was coming from everywhere at once. This wasn’t some subtle easily-ignored sound, either. It sounded like someone’s wristwatch alarm or cell phone was going off every five seconds. Or more like a hundred people’s wristwatches were going off, all very quietly but adding up to something quite substantial.

I wondered if it was just me, something screwed up with my ears. And yet I noticed a similar discomfort in the faces of my wife and brother-in-law sitting next to me. The three of us kept glancing at each other with pained looks every time the noises resumed, in perfect synch. It wasn’t just me. MORE…

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