I define myself by my cell phone ring.

A couple of weeks ago I was up in Baltimore, minding my own business, drinking coffee and reading outside a coffee shop. Someone called me...So my phone starts to ring. Except nobody has a phone that rings anymore! That is so 1997! (Unless you are trying to be retro. Please, I'm hearing Hanson and The Verve all the sudden--bring me back to 2005. In any case, back to my story: my phone, well, it doesn't ring, but it does what it does. My friend who was meeting me was trying to locate me, sort call, you know the sort. When I got off the phone I noticed two teenage girls laughing at me. Mean schoolgirls. Alpha girls, you know what I'm saying? They were commenting on my ringtone! Apparently they believed that my ringtone had been some sort of Mariah Carey song! Poor, culturally backward kids. Fortunately, their mother was with them (at least I guess it was their mother)--she corrected them, telling them that she knew the song. It was a great song and a big hit--Genius of Love, by the Tom Tom Club (turns out that it has been sampled since). I'm still not sure if I'm more comfortable with being laughed at by kids or having their mother come to my defense.

In any case, even I think things are getting little out of control. The New York Times had an article today about ringtones. DJing with a cell phone? Oh lord. I'm all for good ringtones...But very few are worth $2. I'm also not sure that I'd be interested in an entire 'album' of this stuff. My last phone had a composer program, but being unable to cope with musical notes that aren't already associated and sequenced in some meaningful manner.

The most disturbing part was the 'senior analyst' at billboard magazine saying "That's part of how they brand themselves." Yikes. I thought that was what shoes are for.