Apple's iPad

With the advent or invent or the inventation of Apple’s iPad, much has changed in the world of movies, music, books, newspapers, and porn. My editor asked me to cover a local publishing event and rather than grab the clichéd reporter’s notebook, I traded it for the Apple iPad.

The Apple iPad seemed like the perfect companion as it can record video, it can take pictures, and with all of the writing programs, I could write about the event live and send the column directly to my editor.

On the way over, my editor emailed me the details, which of course I received on my new iPad, and the publishing event was actually a book burning. There hasn’t been a book burning worth covering in quite a few decades and a rumored 3000 books were to be torched; I’ve never really stood for anything so this might be a good time to step up and observe the people who do.

I thought the burning could be political with temperatures flaring on the campaign trail. With elections in the air and politicians deeply divided between those of privilege who never had to work, and those who used to work and decided to retire from the workforce and be politicians. There are the Sarah Palins who seem to know little or nothing about anything except Paul Revere’s midnight ride when he drove his car off the bridge to Chappaquiddick and that poor girl died. And the Bill Clintons who never inhaled or had sexual relations with that woman and who is now in the sexual penalty box with Hillary; if I were him, I'd consider it a good thing. 

It could have been a burning to combat porn, even though most of that is online, or anti-Semitism or racism or vulgarity…. It’s not much of a week when we don’t find something worthy of getting totally annoyed by or that we stage a protest or a sit in or a walk out or a stand-up or a sit down.

When I arrived at the burning, I saw a large group gathered around a huge bonfire and I thought I missed it. I learned later that the bonfire was the pregame show, with the book burning being the main event. A tall and slender gentleman grabbed the mic. He had the charisma of a Martin Luther King or Jesus or even a glasses wearing David Koresh; Koresh had the kvorka but I don’t believe he was the messiah because the chosen one would have been able to fix and astigmatism.

So the guy up front really got the crowd going. “DO WE WANT A GOOD OLD FASHIONED BOOK BURNING” he’d asked. And the crowd screamed “YES, BURN EM.”  And he asked again, “DO YOU REALLY WANT TO SEE A BURNING?” And I recorded the whole thing on the iPad because I figured I could capture and write about the event, then imbed video in the online version so the burning itself could be seen.

The man said “OKAY. HERE WE GO.” And he had an assistant bring him a paper bag from which he pulled out, wait for it, wait for it, an iPad which I found out, had 3000 books loaded on it. He held the Apple iPad and the crowd screamed, then he threw it one the fire. There was a loud POP, followed by a sizzle. The crowd cheered as it burned, and within five minutes, they dispersed and the burning was over. I sat there for a few minutes like after the last episode of the Sopranos waiting for something else to happen but of course nothing did happen and I wished we could have thrown David Chase on the fire.

I tweeted about the event and broadcast live via Skye. The reruns can be picked up on You Tube or you catch the RSS feed from my website.  Although they did destroy the iPad permanently erasing all of the fine works loaded on it, I don’t think they realized that all of the books were backed up in iTunes.