"gnu gnu-gness" Engadget Podcast 121

the crew manages to deliver me the goods again with Engadget Podcast #121.

as soon as Josh introduces the palm portion of the podcast and says, "new new-ness," I hear it as "gnu gnu-gness." I can't help myself. when I was a wee lass, I used to watch The New Zoo Revue, featuring Gary Gnu. sure, I was young, but even then, I would think (as I watched), "this show is insane, and not particularly entertaining on a level where I want to watch it, but it's so crazy that I can't stop looking at it." oh wait, no - was Gary Gnu part of the Great Space Coaster? both shows were nuts.

"Gno Gnus is Good Gnus on the Gary Gnu Show." Image via River Bottom Nightmare Blog.

so that you're encouraged to go do an image search for each show, I've placed a couple of visual teasers here. and even though having seen these shows as they aired makes me super old now (oh please, I didn't see the original ones, they were being re-broadcast for my early hours viewing pleasure), I'm still happy I got to see the insanity in real time, as part of my normal life. without having born witness to these things, set in a presumably "normal" context, during my formative years, I'm not sure I'd be the person I am today. 

The Great Space Coaster via Retro Junk

The New Zoo Revue via Retrospace

most weeks I listen to the current This Is My Next Podcast, as well as the Engadget Podcast that I'm commenting on. so I'm aware that there are instances where, on a topical basis, the past and the present intersect. not being a real historian and not knowing how I want to structure my narrative on a philosophical basis, I've been ignoring those occurrences.  I did want to get my non-decision on the record, however, because I think that I might need to force myself to figure this issue out at some point. on the one hand, there's a real opportunity for rich discussion if I allow my knowledge of the current state of technology to inform my commentary on past podcast points and points of view (the topic of Android, for example). on the other hand, I don't actually know all that much about technology, so anything I write about it will likely be obvious, tedious, wrong-headed, or just wrong.

speaking of GNUs: ladies and gentlemen, Richard Stallman (via Wikipedia)

and with that, I'm going to skip right to the reader meet-up.

if this blog had a readership of more than 1.5 individuals, I would ask them, "hey, did anyone happen to attend this event? what was it like? was it super fun? did you get lots of cool stuff?" and then I would say, "leave your remarks in the comment section of this post." but...I'm pretty cowardly, so I've told maybe 3 people about this blog. sometimes I think about notifying its subjects, but then I get too self-conscious to actually do so. anyways, if you happened to go to the 2008 Engadget reader meet-up/holiday event, did you see Nilay? did he look like this?

or maybe you saw the entire podcast crew, and they looked like this:

notable moments in the podcast include the passage where Josh promised to probe Paul's psyche after he made a statement about preferring to "drink the kool-aid," in order to have "a more enjoyable experience," and the part when the OHA (open handset alliance) discourse winds up at how Nilay manages his contacts. Josh gets so keyed up about the topic, I feel his pain over his iphone-gmail contacts sync incident all over again. oh, and Josh called nokia terrorists.