The 7 Best Songs on my Ipod

We'll get to that later but first a question for those of you who own an Ipod:

Does your Ipod hate you as much as my Ipod hates me?

I have been nothing but a gentleman to my Ipod since I purchased it last week, using the proceeds from the sale of all 475 of my CD's to pay for it. I have not stuffed it, keeping it at a svelte 10% of capacity. I have promised to accessorize it with hot holders, cool carriers, and special sexy input and output jacks. I have demonstrated a compulsive attention to recharging.

Still it hates me. I know this because when I play it in "shuffle" mode, it will routinely play the music I either dislike completely or dislike a little. It will only rarely play the music I like and it has totally avoided the 7 best songs in its warped and cruel memory.

It has joined a long list of home products that have made it their mission in life to make me crazy. It's an axis of evil, a grotesque gang of gadgets. Included in this malicious mechanical mob are my vicious can opener, which can open my thumb in two seconds but is incapable of opening anything made of metal; my despicable toaster oven which refuses to toast any piece of bread evenly, but rather will burn one side the color and consistency of charcoal while defying the laws of physics and flash freezing the other; my simple-minded water heater which will cause the water to vary in temperature from "hot enough to cause instant blistering" to "Norwegian Fjord Cold" with just a millimeter's adjustment to the dial; and finally my absurd cell phone, which will blithely ignore the numbers I carefully input with my delicate, trained fingers and instead will randomly call people on our planet with whom I have no business and who are usually not in a mood to be disturbed. I won't even mention my openly antagonistic alarm(ing) clock which will not only tick at a decibel level close to that of a Springsteen concert on nights when I am having trouble sleeping, but will also go into "quiet mode" like Sean Connery's Red October submarine on mornings when I require assistance in waking.

I don't trust any of them and I haven't for a long time. But I really thought the Ipod would be different. After all, we both share a love of music. It's a member of the Apple family of products and they are supposed to be nicer and kinder than PC's. It was very easy to assemble. With 160 gigs, I thought it had a mind of its own, but it has obviously joined forces with its ill-tempered brethren.

There are 2,521 songs on my Ipod. If I play it continuously, from first song to last, I will hear the final song sometime in May of 2231. Of the 2,521 songs, (By the way, they're not all songs; some of them are symphonic movements and a few of them are spoken pieces. Just between us, this kind of shabby characterization shows you what I'm dealing with here.) I would estimate that I enjoy and look forward to hearing 2,000 of them. My Ipod insists on playing the woeful 521 losers over and over again, defying all the laws of probability. I tried to remedy this melodic mess by creating a few play lists which contained nothing but my faves. I even gave the play lists clever names like "Panhandle Potpourri" or "Navarre Knockouts". A perfect solution, I thought. Wrong. Inevitably there would be a hierarchy of songs on the play list. Certainly I liked all the tunes but, just as certainly, I liked some more than others. Using all of its 160 gigs to devise this clever scheme, my Ipod would only play the songs I liked the least and almost never shuffle in my absolute favorites. This made my listening experience worse than ever because I knew those great songs were right there, just waiting for the inevitable electronic impulse, but they rarely if ever made it to the top of the heap. The Ipod would callously reshuffle them to the bottom any time they were approaching the top.

Maddening. I think the only way to show it who's boss (and who owns the warranty) is to refuse to recharge it until it literally begs for its life. It's called tough cyber-love.

OK, the 7 best songs on my Ipod are:

7. Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suite #1 by Yo Yo Ma
6. Music from The Mission by Ennio Morricone and Yo Yo Ma
5. Birdland by Weather Report
4. Come Correct by Matt Getman and the Trespassers
3. Waters of March by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina
2. The Koln Concert Part One by Keith Jarrett
1. Giant Steps by John Coltrane

Even the great Sarah Vaughn, Tom Waits, Miles Davis, and Leonard Cohen couldn't climb this mountaintop. It's a shame I'll never get to hear any of them!

Be well and much love,
J