Garcia Media Life

Exhausted by political rhetoric and posturing, saddened by the violent nature of our world, and stressed over the course of day-to-day living, I am seeking the soothing, calm anticipation of the coming baseball season.

This time of year, one used to look out a window at the snowy landscape and know that with pitchers and catchers reporting to training camps in Florida and Arizona, Spring would soon be rounding the corner.

Of course, now that we no longer have the season known as Winter and with February temperatures not dissimilar to what they are in Florida- it’s even easier to imagine how soon we will be hearing the crack of the bat, the sound of the ball pounding the catcher’s mitt, the splendor of the manicured, green grass fields, the echoes of the hot dog vendors and the feel of an ice cold beer going down smooth as the first pitch flies toward the plate.  Yes, I do take perverse pride in knowing I have just set the modern standard for baseball clichés in one paragraph.

Baseball Distraction #1- the Real Thing

My own, personal baseball anticipation process has manifested in two ways.  I read everything there is to read about the Washington Nationals.  Here in the nation’s capital where a baseball team has not won a World Series since 1924, it so happens that some savvy trades and signings along with great misfortune and many pathetic losing seasons- have bestowed upon our little team, a wealth of young draft choices and talent that have made for possibly the best pitching staff in the whole sport.

Oh, there’s optimism in every town in the Spring, but deep down, fans of, say, the Baltimore Orioles, for example, know that while there will be games played soon in their beautiful ballpark, it will just be a matter of a few weeks before the inevitable reality sets in that winning is not much part of the equation, even if Boog Powell’s barbeque ribs will be.  It’s a bitch to have to go up against the New York Yankees.

Baseball Distraction #2- the Fantasy Thing

The second way my baseball anticipation has been fed, is through a mere $12 investment in an imaginary baseball team as part of a sports fantasy website called What If Sports.  I was given $80 million of fake money to invest in any 25 players from the entire history of the sport, from last year all the way back to just a couple of decades after the American Civil War.

The prices of the players matched against the budget you are given, are cleverly constructed so that you can’t load a team with only superstars.  There is value and an art in choosing the right kind of mediocrity and averageness with which to meld with some of the great players you can actually afford.

What draws me to the game- is what draws many people to the real sport of baseball itself- its timelessness.  My team reflects just about all the phases of my life.  From my childhood, a small contingent of my team that used to play for the Washington Senators of old; pitchers like Joe Coleman and Dick Bosman.  I have added a few new Washington players like Ryan and Jordan Zimmerman, Drew Storen and Tyler Clippard.

But the real fun is watching the epic old-timers perform.  I have an outfield of a young Detroit Tiger, Kirk Gibson, the 1961 Mickey Mantle and an aging but still productive, Fred Lynn.   I have a few Orioles sprinkling the infield diamond in Eddie Murray at 1^st, Davey Johnson (the 43-homer Davey Johnson) at 2nd and Rick Dempsey behind the plate; the Bird’s catcher who used to entertain the crowds during rain delays at old Memorial Stadium by splashing belly-first over home plate in a pretend mad scramble from 3^rd base.

The games are simulated and you get box scores and play-by-play of the results and they’re as fresh and interesting as it used to be picking up the morning newspaper to comb through the box scores (newspapers: a form of communication from the past in which words were printed on parchment and delivered to your front door).

I am Earl Weaver- Who Knew?

As a manager and team-designer, it turns out that I am Earl Weaver, the plucky, cigarette-smoking, former skipper of the Baltimore Orioles who led the Birds to several American League pennants and World Series titles with a philosophy of decent pitching and the three-run homer.

My team strikes out a lot.  They hardly ever steal bases. But they do pound the crap out of the ball and currently lead our little pretend league in homeruns and slugging percentage.  Algorithms and speedy calculations contribute to the computer-generated results so there are no umpires to argue with, sadly.  That was the other claim to fame of the great Earl Weaver.  Always led the league in getting kicked out of games.

But there are no arguments in this league, just the temporary satisfaction of being tied for the lead in my division in a season that is young and as full of promise as the real one the big leaguers are preparing for in Florida and Arizona right now.

Thank you, baseball, for taking my mind off other, less pleasant things.

Look, the kid is amazing.  He’s not perfect; he commits a lot of turnovers.  But he did step up when given the opportunity and he is a tremendous inspiration to many, many people of all backgrounds, but especially to Asian-Americans, for whom he has become a real hero.

It’s the media and its excesses that go way beyond the pale.

This corny obsession with the “Lin” and other puns turned offensive this week.  ESPN had to apologize for a headline on their web site for mobile devices overnight when they actually used the phrase “A Chink in the Armor,” describing his propensity for turnovers.  It got taken down after about 45 minutes but the damage was done.  The very same phrase was used in a televised discussion earlier this week on ESPN and used yet again by the same network in a non-Lin context during the recent summer Olympics in Beijing.

Fox Sports columnist, Jason Whitlock, has apologized for an offensive tweet he sent out last week.  The New York Post got into hot water for an “Amasian” headline they ran the day after he beat Toronto with a last-second three-pointer.

Note to Jeremy Lin- keep doing what you’re doing.  Two good weeks of play does not make you a hall-of-famer but your story does mean a lot to many people who’ve spent their lives getting overlooked and dismissed, sometimes for no other reason than their cultural background or the way they look.

Note to the media- your Lin puns and your occasionally racist undertones are not funny.  They don’t make you hip or amusing.  It’s this lock-step hype that somehow manages to make even an inspirational story like Jeremy Lin, tiresome and annoying.

What’s missing- as usual in this 24/7 media culture of ours- is a sense of good taste, perspective and proportion.

“Wait,” you argue, “Jeremy Lin is a CURRENT fad.” Nope, sorry, this is a week old now. Like those 4-G phone commercials- it’s so “4.7 seconds ago.”

“B-but,” asks the casual sports fan, “I missed this whole Jeremy Lin thing- who is he?”

He was an undiscovered bench warmer born of Taiwanese parents, who kept getting cut by one basketball team after another, played starting point guard for Harvard just two years ago and then, depleted by injuries, the New York Knicks turned to him in desperation and all of a sudden in the past week he’s turned into one of the top scoring players in the NBA and has led a previously hapless basketball squad to 7 straight victories.

And he’s done all this in New York City, which I understand, is a town that contains a number of news organizations and media outlets.

The other thing you need to know about Jeremy Lin is that his name is fodder for pun-filled headlines by New York tabloids which are then picked up by other media organizations. Linsanity! Linsane! 7 Lins, No Losses! Linderella Story! Time magazine has actually already compiled a comprehensive list of bad Jeremy Lin puns entitled: “A Lesson in Lin-guistics.”

Do you see how one could tire so quickly of this phenomenon?

And we had just gotten over Tim Tebow, the last incarnation of an improbable sports hero. You remember how fast “Tebowing” caught on?

OMG—that was so six weeks ago. Tebowing, as we all know, was quickly replaced by Tom Brady-ing. The sad pose struck by a suddenly humiliated sports superstar.

But Good Lord, people, the Superbowl was, what, two weeks ago? We needed a new fad and quickly and- voila! Lin-sational! I know that doesn’t make sense…it doesn’t need to. Go with me here.

What we have accomplished today, ladies and gentlemen, is being one of the first web sites to officially declare itself tired of the Jeremy Lin miracle. That makes us as cutting edge as, say Gawker, or other similarly snarky web sites.

And we’re going to go further than that. The next fad coming down the pike? We’re tired of it already! It doesn’t matter that we don’t know what it is. It’s going to get overplayed and we’re all going to be sick of it, so I’m declaring that Garcia Media Life is tired of it before it even has a chance to rear its ugly head.

I have just awakened from my shrimp, buffalo-wing, pizza and guacamole food-coma and it all seems like a blur. Is it true we just fed twenty people? No. We fed six and now have enough leftovers to last until next Super Bowl.

Madonna

She’s 52, o.k.? She needs a little help with her cart-wheels and doesn’t move around like she used to. She doesn’t even pretend she’s not lip-syncing but overall, I liked the halftime show. “Honey, honey,” I said to my girlfriend, “remember thigh-high stiletto boots and pom-poms.” Breaking News: Some singing sensation named MIA flipped off the camera. That building with the lights on past midnight here in the nation’s capital is the headquarters of the Federal Communications Commission.

Bull Dogs in Sneakers, Fiat, Big Daddy, Clint Eastwood and Mike Bloomberg

I liked the bull dog in sneakers beating out the greyhounds. I also have a new appreciation for Fiat automobiles and the Italian language, in particular. I am officially ashamed that I got my domain name from Big Daddy.com. And as for Clint Eastwood and “halftime in America,” I will never say anything the least bit negative about Chrysler or Detroit ever again. I also have no issues with the Mayors of Boston and New York making an appeal for gun control- but what am I going to use from now on to shoot my TV with?

Wait- I’ve Seen These All Somewhere Before

It’s actually passé now to write about Super Bowl commercials because they’ve all been shown over the past week on You Tube. But there’s solace in the fact it’s once again o.k. to get up and go to the bathroom during the commercials.

The Game

Still, every year, the ads get continuously interrupted by men in colorful uniforms chasing an oblong leather ball. I understand a baby-faced gentleman named Eli Manning became one of the greatest comeback quarterbacks in NFL history and more accomplished than his brother Peyton. Giants coach, Tom Coughlan, is now just as good as Bill Parcells. And at 9-7 this season, the New York Giants have somehow managed to become a dynasty winning two of the last four of these things.

All good. Can we all agree to stop using Roman numerals to identify these Super Bowls, though? I get the analogy already. But the Roman empire is gone now, dead and buried under the weight of its own excesses with coliseums, armored gladiators, sex and decadence. We’re better than that.

Wishing all humans a happy and cautious New Year

This is a re-post from exactly a year ago today and not much has changed about how we “celebrate” at this time of the Earth calendar.

There are a lot of traditions associated with the advent of a New Year. A curious alien from another planet would likely pose questions like these about the things we do this time of year.

Alien: Why do you Earthlings “celebrate” a New Year? The odds are that any coming period of time will offer as many bad things as good things. Why is there so much laughter and gaiety when common sense tells you any given coming year may be just as filled with disaster as with happiness?

Human: Well, we choose to look at things optimistically. A new year is a new page, a new start and so we celebrate a new age of possibilities. And we also wish that people will have a good year which is why we say “Happy New Year” to one another.

Alien: Would it not be more appropriate to wish people a “Happy and Cautious New Year?”

Human: Well, I suppose so, but that’s kind of negative and rather wordy.

Alien: It is only two more words. Why do you humans make promises you can’t keep?

Human: You mean New Year’s Resolutions?

Alien: Yes. Why does your species always resolve to make dramatic new changes in your existence at this time in the Earth calendar?

Human: It’s part of that whole “new page” thing- a clean slate; a chance to start over.

Alien: But it is extremely futile. Everyone knows that by the start of the second Earth calendar month, these promises are forgotten. Why would humans think they can change years and years of patterns of behaviors just because there is a new ending number on one of your Earth years?

Human: It’s a retrospective thing. We pause for a moment to assess the things we do in life and think of ways to improve ourselves. That’s not so bad, is it?

Alien: It is not that it is bad. It is silly. Why do you not make new resolutions every three months instead of every twelve months? Why do you not make resolutions in July and September?

Human: You know what? Your questions are getting a little annoying.

Alien: I am sorry. I have more. Why do you humans ingest large amounts of fermented beverages at this time of year? Beverages that will make you act in ways you will later regret?

Human: You mean champagne? Well, that’s just tradition. People like to get a little trashed this time of year- it’s an innocent thing.

Alien: It is rather illogical. Fermented beverages make humans feel sick. Why would a human who is about to resolve to change their lives for the better in the year ahead, start out that same year by poisoning themselves?

Human: Hey, I was kidding about getting “trashed.” Not everyone drinks to excess.

Alien: I am not sure that is accurate. I saw many human beings vomiting last night. I see many more today on the first day of the New Year; taking pills to make the ill effects of the fermented beverages go away.

Human: It’s what we do, ok?

Alien: And why do mostly the males of your species spend the entire first day of the New Year watching gladiator games?

Human: You mean college football bowl games?

Alien: Yes. And why do they call them “bowl” games? Is it because of all the times humans spend on that first day running from their TV screens to the toilet bowl?

Human: You know… hangovers get better as the day progresses. It’s really only in the mornings that you feel like crap. Besides, the games are played in “bowls,” or “stadiums,” hence, the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl.

Alien: Why is there a Tostitos Bowl? Why is there an Outback Bowl? These are names for products not games.

Human: You know what? You think too much and ask too many questions. This little interview is about over, buddy.

Alien: Very well. I wish that you take advantage of the good things that will happen in the coming year, and that you will survive all the bad things.

Human: How sweet of you.

Alien: Why do you say that? There is no sugar or glucose in my DNA.

Human: I was being sarcastic.

Alien: Perhaps that is one of the things you should resolve to change in the year ahead.

I don’t know why people venture forth with predictions for the future. Maybe it’s that one in a thousand wild-ass guess that comes true that allows predictors to feel good about themselves. For some, like psychics, it’s a business.

Political Predictions

On the other hand, for some, like Karl Rove and William Kristol, who are paid to analyze politics, it’s dangerous territory. Rove, of course, predicted Sarah Palin would get into the Presidential race. He was apparently thrown off by that huge tour bus wrapped in the constitution with the big Sarah Palin signature on it, so he can be forgiven.

Kristol, who was once Vice President, Dan Quayle’s chief of staff- is just perpetually wrong about almost all things political. Wasn’t just his bold prediction (backed up by two sources!) that Rudy Giuliani would run for the White House this year. We all fondly remember his prediction three years ago that Barack Obama would not win a single primary against Hillary Clinton.

Sports Predictions

In the world of sports, we had two dream teams in 2011- the Miami Heat and the Philadelphia Eagles. Sports is one profession, where grandiose predictions about your own team tend to backfire because, see, word gets out among your competitors that you’re implying they’re all chumps which only feeds their desire to crush you. So when LeBron James predicted a half-dozen NBA titles, this was not well received by, among others, the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks.

It was Eagle’s back up quarterback, Vince Young, who remarking on the large number of expensive free agents Philadelphia signed up in the off-season, saw a dream team there in the city of brotherly love. The season ended ignominiously for the Eagles a couple of weeks ago with no playoffs but lots of talk about the potential firing of long time head coach, Andy Reid.

Psychic Predictions

My favorite erroneous or just plain hilarious predictions come from psychics. It’s a veritable treasure trove of goodies. We will leave out delusional pastors who twice called for the end of the world in 2011.

In the “Psychic to the Stars” category, a mantle claimed by some guy named Sydney Friedman and a woman named Nikki, we had the following from early 2011 looking at the year ahead.

From Sidney Friedman: “Lady GaGa becomes a teacher at a university. Maybe it’s just for a day or two, but she lectures at a school of higher learning.” I scoured the World Wide Web and this did not happen, though the University of South Carolina threatened to offer a course called Lady GaGa and the Sociology of Fame. Curiously enough, about a month before Friedman’s prediction,there were reports that she had applied to teach fashion and art appreciation at NYU.

Mr. Friedman also offered this gem: “This I truly hope does not occur: A major league baseball player inexplicably dies on the field.” Morbid and interesting- but wrong. Granted, entire teams died on the field in 2011, notably the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves who each blew historic divisional leads, but no one actually passed on to the hereafter on a baseball diamond.

From Nikki: 1) The Playboy Mansion will burn down; 2) Hillary Clinton will win the Nobel Peace Prize; 3) A gold rush will occur in Hawaii. No, no and no. Turns out there was an interview in which Rolling Stone band member, Keith Richards, said he once almost burned down the Playboy mansion. Hillary did not get the Nobel nod. And the only rush rumored to have hit Hawaii this year was the invasion of private investigators sent to the island by Donald Trump to look into Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Alas, that didn’t happen either.

Then there’s Craig and Jane Hamilton-Parker, who call themselves ‘Britain’s Best Psychic Couple’. They came out with the predictable prediction of the great California earthquake and that the Hollywood sign would be damaged. But my favorite: Tropical Island to be evacuated because of volcanic eruption. I’m no expert in plate tectonics, but cursory knowledge of these matters would tell you that, by nature, any island is a product of volcanic or seismic activity. That’s how they’re born. It would, therefore, not be unusual that some island, somewhere in the world might experience a volcanic eruption and that some people may have to be evacuated.

Finally, there are the Psychic Twins, Terry and Linda Jamison. They claim to have predicted the 9/11 calamity and have even appeared on The View. The twins boldly predicted that President Obama would not be re-elected in 2011. This, of course, actually did come to pass, because the election is not scheduled until November 6th, 2012. And even if you give them credit for having given us a bonus prediction for 2012, the odds on this, of course, are about 50/50.

Tucked away in the 1,200-page bill that keeps the government funded through the rest of the fiscal year is a teeny, tiny, little provision that denies the Obama administration any of the money that would be necessary for it to enforce new energy efficiency standards that would pretty much eradicate the incandescent light bulb.

Yes, that’s right…for the time being anyway…the old light bulb continues to live on!

For some reason, this has been a huge priority for congressional Republicans- presumably because of the symbolism of it all; playing on the resentment of Americans being forced to use those weird, foreign-looking, squiggly light bulbs by squinty-eyed, bespectacled, nerdy, little, carbon foot-print-measuring, bureaucratic, government weasel-heads.

I’m going with the GOP on this one. You can only judge these things, I think, based on your own experiences. And my one experience with the new fangled light bulbs was not a pretty one. Saw it in the drug store one day and thought, “Oh what the hell, let’s see if these things do as advertised.” So I brought it home, took out my incandescent bulb in my bedroom lamp and screwed in the new one.

The packaging says, “lasts five years!” What a deal, I thought. Yeah, they’re a little expensive but totally worth it for five years, right? Ten minutes after I put that new bulb into the lamp, it popped and died. I was totally outraged. There is a huge difference in my book between five years and ten minutes. Huge. I fished the old incandescent bulb out of the trash can and happily screwed it back in again.

With visible disdain (visible at the time only by my cats), I tossed the failed new fangled bulb into the trash. I felt duped. Violated, even.

Look, I’m as environmentally conscious as the next guy—no—more so. I don’t even own a car. I have the tiniest little carbon footprint of anyone I know. I love the earth and the trees and the grasses and all of God’s creatures. I would even be in favor of the eradication of the incandescent light bulb if it would buy our lovely planet just one more day. But the thing you’re replacing it with- HAS TO WORK.

Otherwise- back off, Mr. Government Bureaucrat Guy. Don’t make me buy a 1960 diesel pick-up truck without a catalytic converter- ‘cause I will mess the earth up. Big time.

On one hand, I want people to shop. Consumer spending boosts the economy and helps create jobs. On the other hand, the materialism is just so disturbing on so many levels. On the third hand- who’s to begrudge folks down on their luck looking to find stuff they can actually afford? I am obviously conflicted.

I have a view of a Pentagon City Mall from my apartment balcony. On Thanksgiving morning I noticed tents had been pitched outside the closed doors to said mall. Could these be Black Friday maniacs? So I took a walk and confirmed my suspicions. Some folks had, indeed, chosen to spend their entire Thanksgiving Day waiting for Best Buy to open at midnight. The line kept growing throughout the day. People were festive. I realized this had become some sort of deranged sport.

Because my son visited me for Thanksgiving and as a starving college student, needed a couple pairs of shoes, we braved the throngs and actually went into the even larger Pentagon City Fashion Mall- a gigantic five-story complex about three city blocks wide. I hate shopping so much- on a normal day, much less BLACK FRIDAY. It was every bit the crowded, aggressive experience I imagined. Except I forgot about the tedium and boredom of the long lines, the unpleasantness of surly customers like me. My son, I must admit, is much more mature and patient than I. Then again, he was the one getting the free shoes.

————————————————————————————————————

So now it’s the Cyber Monday after Black Friday and I have just scoured the World Wide Web for interesting, violent shopping stories to validate my intense dislike of crass commercialism.

Found some!

From Yelp.com, two interesting accounts of a Black Friday shopping experience from, apparently, the same Best Buy mob scene at the same California mall. The first one from Chris “Chrispy” B:

About thirty minutes before opening time everyone became one huge mob around the front door. They tried to limit the number of people allowed in at once but the mob just pushed through. My chair got bent in half somehow, still not really sure how. Probably has something to do with my swollen knee.

Apparently, he’d run into Joe the Wizard “K” :

Someone hit me so hard with a chair that he nearly bent it in half. Enjoy your television.

Then there’s the story of 61 year-old, Walter Vance, a pharmacist with a heart condition who collapsed in a West Virginia Target store. Shoppers reportedly stepped over him to get to their sale items.

And my personal favorite: Turns out the woman who pepper-sprayed fellow shoppers at a California Wall Mart in order to clear a path to a crate of X-Box video game players- has turned herself in. But according to police, the moment she walked into the precinct she invoked her 5th amendment right against self-incrimination.

I’m not sure exactly how this conversation went but it could have been something like this:

Pepper-Spraying Shopper: I’m turning myself in.
Cops: What for, lady?
Pepper-Spraying Shopper: I can’t say.

?????????

Lin Wood will be watching very carefully. Every word they say, every charge they make, every news conference they hold. Not to intimidate but to “monitor the accusations…and respond accordingly,” according to the Reuters news service.

As if it were not already a gut-wrenching decision that opens you up to scrutiny, notoriety and the surrender of all personal privacy, if you are one of the women who swear Herman Cain once acted inappropriately and crossed the line in regard to workplace behavior, you can now add the risk of financial ruin by lawsuit to your list of concerns for going public.

Coincidently, the news conference that had been planned by Cain’s accusers is now off.

I don’t doubt that Atlanta attorney Lin Wood feels very strongly about false accusations against anybody. I do too. He’s worked for a number of folks who were absolutely falsely accused, like Richard Jewel, the poor fellow who was connected by many media organizations to the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996 that he had nothing to do with.

And though he has represented many other clients, the Jewel case is instructive. The guy was no public figure. He was a security guard living a normal, anonymous life. Herman Cain, however, is quite the public figure.

Surely, Mr. Wood is well aware of the incredibly high bar American law has set for successfully pressing a defamation suit against someone who exercises their 1st Amendment rights to write or make a claim about a public figure. There must be “actual malice” to the accusation. It has to be knowingly false and show a reckless disregard for the truth.

Lin Wood knows all this. Perhaps, more importantly, anyone contemplating going public in regard to Mr. Cain, should also know this. If your accusations are true, you are safe. If they’re not and you’re lying to bring someone down, then you deserve whatever you get.

I am not advocating anybody hold a news conference. It’s none of my business. But just as I abhorred the actions of Redskins owner, Daniel Snyder, when he demanded a retraction of a critical article from a small, local newspaper threatening litigation that could bankrupt them, Lin Wood seems to be walking a very fine line between sage counselor and 1st Amendment bully.

The threat of litigation to silence free expression against public figures seems antithetical both to American values and to existing law. Wood says his hiring by Herman Cain is not meant to “scare, intimidate or threaten anyone from making statements.”

But he also says this in regard to making public accusations:

Anyone should think twice before you take that type of action. And I think it’s particularly true when you are making serious accusations against someone running for president of the United States, but I think it’s equally true if you are making those accusations against your next door neighbor.

You be the judge whether his “think twice” statement is meant to scare, intimidate or threaten.

From a purely legal standpoint he has a strong case to make against those who would publicly accuse their “next door neighbor.” He has an exceptionally weak case for taking legal action against those who speak or write about someone, especially someone who is running for president of the United States.

That’s what someone wrote on a post-it note and put on the glass wall of an Apple store last night. A lot of people are doing that today. Paying heartfelt tribute in one form or another to Steve Jobs.

I thought about him this morning as I slipped my I-phone into my jacket pocket after checking my e-mail and my messages. I thought about him last night as my girlfriend tapped away on her I-Pad. And then again as I used my mouse and clicked and dragged an item on my non-Apple PC. I thanked him silently on the subway as I put in my ear-buds and listened to a beautiful song composed and performed by my own son- a tune I had transferred from my I-Pod to my I-Phone. And I think about him as I write this- knowing he was the guy who produced the first personal computer designed to interact with the internet.

Many have compared Steve Jobs to Thomas Alva Edison (very interesting piece on that here). In terms of impact on the everyday lives of billions of people throughout the world, the analogy is spot-on. And like Edison, he didn’t exactly invent any of this stuff. He figured out how to put it all together. He’s the guy who understood the creativity that could be realized if only computer technology were made simple enough to use by anyone, not just techie geeks who knew how to maneuver through MS-DOS.

And when he got fired at Apple, his way of dealing with unemployment was to revive a then dormant animation studio called Pixar.

Of all the lovely tributes being penned about the genius of Steve Jobs, one of the most eloquent came from the White House in a statement released by the press office at 9:15pm last night:

By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike.

Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

I’ve always been taken by the sleek, modern simplicity of Apple products. Their lap tops were the lightest and thinnest. The I-pod was the size of a pack of gum, but thinner. The I-Phone is a simple rectangle activated by one button. Besides a virtual one, the I-Pad doesn’t even have a keyboard. And here is the essence of what I think was one of Steve Jobs’ guiding philosophies; that there is great virtue and elegance in simplicity.

Thank you, Steve Jobs, for your spark and your vision and your good sense and good taste; for the lessons you leave behind about how to live life and for your undying belief in the enormous creativity and possibility that can be unleashed by the digital age you helped create and that you made accessible to us all.