So what’s my problem? Am I just old before my time and wishing for the days of snail mail and the rotary telephone? Not at all. My issue is the feeling that facebook isn’t actually connecting us as much as it’s feeding our vanity and laziness.

The facebook “news” feed provides a platform for all kinds of inane blather. We see photos of people’s dinner, hear their plans for the next few hours, scroll past their political views, and anything else a person deems so riveting that the internet needs a record of its happening. I imagine some sociologist of the distant future uncovering the code from a day of facebook postings and concluding “no wonder their civilization collapsed, no one actually did anything but yet they considered everything important. “. If you have a facebook account, and you’ve ever posted a status, you are saying “this is important enough that everyone should know.” Sheer vanity, fed by the relentless content black hole that is the internet… a beast in need of constant feeding. So we update again. And God help us if someone actually likes what you post.

Which brings us to the lazy part of the equation, spearheaded by the “like” button. Someone else posts something for all the world to see, you read it and conclude that you are so impressed you must: call them, write something back, smile and pass it on to others… no, none of those. Instead you show your appreciation for their “news” by a single mouse click, less energy than it actually takes to scratch your own nose. Now the world knows we are a supportive audience of someone else’s vain chatter but we literally barely lifted a finger. We’re a part of the conversation! Yeah, us! Vanity and inaction in one little click.

Birthdays encourage similar lazy interaction in the supposed name of connection. As we scroll through Facebook everyday it automatically provides us with mass lists of birthdays without a need to actually keep track of important dates in the lives of others. And so our birthday passes and dozens, hundreds, thousands of people comment on our wall with some generic “have a great day” which they’ve probably copy/pasted on every birthday wall of every friend for the past year. I find it an interesting litmus test for my own quality of friendship. When a birthday reminder strikes me, I write my friends a private email. Or call them. Something where they can hear from me directly and the rest of the world has no idea. Sure, I appreciate the reminder from the facebook overlords… but if I can’t take the time to step out to personally and privately connect with that friend, then how important do I really count their friendship? And similarly, I seem to receive more facebook birthday wishes from acquaintances than folks I call real friends.

So here we are, not closer at all but on our own stage with our own megaphone screaming “look at me, I’m the greatest thing ever”. Meanwhile, all around us everyone else is doing the same thing and raising the inconsequential moments of our lives into an overwhelming din of point and click vanity.

I long for those moments of one on one time with the handful of people who know me, sharing things they wouldn’t dare put on facebook. Struggles, private victories, or even a shared experience, allowed to land with the private resonance of real connection.

But the facebook experience has grown to a strange blending of Cyberdine and big brother. We can’t unplug the beast, it knows all our secrets and has begun to shape the very culture which gave it life. We even continue to feed it with special shout outs to other members @WhoeverTheyAre. The same members who probably don’t have a picture from the last decade, or show anything but their children, or give us any real pertinent information about their lives, their truth, and their day to day. We know what TV shows they like. Where they grew up. And what day to post an ingenuine birthday wish on the home of their digital avatar. Yet we call them friends.

We’ve all been assimilated. The Matrix is real, and I’d like to unplug.

But for now you’ll have to excuse me, I need to go update my status with something car related… and I should probably tweet some inane moment of driving I just saw.

And one of you people will probably click “Like”.

However, I’m talking about lessons – observations, really – I would not have come to without our little guy around. So, here are my top five for year one:

1 – Cattle Roping was invented by parents

I grew up in Texas, so by default I’m supposed to know how to rope, ride, and chase critters. Or so they tell me. But I have to admit I’ve always wondered why there’s so many theatrics when it comes to roping a calf. It’s a small, dumb animal. The roping horse is like Steven Hawking by comparison. So, for the even more intelligent human to come sailing off the already superior horse, tackle a calf, and tie its legs together kinda feels like you’re picking on the little guy.

Bear roping. Now that’s a fair sport.

But now I’ve realized that some cowboy with a little one at home got an unruly calf one day and figured… “Wait, I know how to handle this”. Thus, calf roping was born.

Don’t believe me? Try putting a diaper on an infant who can crawl. They no longer want to lay on their back. To them, everything is more interesting than lying there while you, quite literally, deal with their shit. So I’ve held both wrists and ankles in one hand while I perform the world’s fastest and least graceful diaper change with the other.

I’ve also said, screw it, and diapered the little minion while he’s crawling away. Which was about the time I realized the purpose of cattle roping. In fact, I’d probably be damn good at it.

2 – Hardcovers are awesome

Somewhere in this world of valuable space, scarce finances, and ebooks I decided that hard covers are a complete waste. I realize that is supposed to be sacrilege for a writer, but I see no purpose in a brick of reading material when it’s easier in softback, ebook, or audio file.

But Hardcovers are the greatest thing to happen to infants. You become thankful that your DVD collection is in those bulky, unnecessarily-large cases. “Sure, son, beat yourself in the head with Citizen Kane. Hurts, don’t it!”.

And the books children read are as thick as Science textbooks. But, they’re only six pages long. Each page is made of an individual two-by-four with rounded edges. Why? So that papercuts are impossible, and the pages won’t fall prey to the fate of normal paper which is…

Ripping. This is the natural pastime of unreading toddlers everywhere. My son loves flip books – they have handy flaps on each page which make tearing especially easy. And Dad’s car magazines exist for the sole purpose of creating confetti balls.

Which leads me to a new measure of childhood maturity, it’s not handing them the car keys, but actually reading a magazine.

3 – You will make noises

Ever looked at a parent and wondered how they became insane enough to repeat an annoying noise over and over while they sit at a restaurant? All it takes is one child discovering their voice or timing out and you’ll turn into a master of stupid sounds from an annoying made up language.

These little ones discover noises they can make and use it like a new toy until something else gets their attention. That leaves only a frazzled parent between you and a restaurant filled with an infant’s screaming. Suddenly, the parent turns into a makeup-less clown on a no-sleep bender. Faces. Chirps. Tongue out shenanigans. Partial words said over and over associated with jerky rocking motions into the child’s face. The only other place this happens is in the nice quiet hospitals with the white coats and straight jackets.

“Honey, is that man insane?… Oh, no wait… he has an infant.”

And this ewok noise I’m making is keeping him quiet. So go back to your dinner.

4 – Born to Dance

What makes us human and above lower forms of life? Complex thought? Tool building? Or maybe our construction of huge systems and cities?

I’ve come up with one. Rhythm. Not just the sense and awareness of the beat, but the uncontrollable urge to shake your ass. A part of me always thought you learned to really hear and appreciate music. But my son has been bobbing in time with sound since he could sit up. Give him a tune and he’ll shake and flail with abandon, a trait we all lose at some point when we get self-conscious. But for now, he’s a sucker for a good beat, and he was born that way. I lost it. I hope he never does.

5 – The Matrix exists.

No, I don’t mean we’re all living in a huge constructed program being used for batteries. I’m talking specifically about the “download” in the Matrix where a person doesn’t know how to fight one minute and then a moment later has all the knowledge to take down an army of Bruce Lees.

I’ve watched my son learn in this way. I don’t know where the huge brain needle is when this happens, but one minute he can’t do something and the next it just… clicks.

Clapping was this way. No idea. Can’t get it. No awareness. Then, literally, he woke up one morning going “Hey guys, look what I can do… applause.” I didn’t upload the program. And my wife wants to kill every nurse that approaches him with a needle, so I don’t think she did it either.

The most impressive one has been climbing the stairs, cause unlike clapping you can get injured if you do it wrong. The first few attempts were more like lucky falling and fumbling, finding himself atop a stair, maybe two, before getting bored of the whole enterprise. Then a few months ago, my wife looked around to discover our little guy had vanished. Where was he? Completely upstairs and still on the move.**

But going down the stairs eluded our little guy for quite some time. We tried to help. We moved him through the motion. We sat by him and let him try different things. However, as you may have noticed, there are a lot of limbs and coordination involved when you’re crawling down something. Then, a few days ago as I watched… he simply did it… no explanation or trial runs, he just coordinated all his limbs and climbed down the stairs.

So I began to wonder where this chair is he gets strapped into for a download. There’s a few things I would like to learn this way and save all the pesky practice and failure. After much thought, I think the key is naps.

**(As a side note, she told me this story with fear for his safety and concern that her moment of looking away was proof of terrible mothering – and my gut reaction was… “Awesome… good for him”. – which encapsulated the difference between men and women. I suppose it also labels me as one of those “hard knock” parents – “Yeah, let him stick his finger in the socket, he’ll only do that once!”. Thankfully he does have his mother.)

I have no doubt there will be many more revelations of the world through my son’s discoveries. But for now the little guy needs to be roped, and then he’s going to chew on a hardcover book. Eventually, he’ll go down for a nap while we make a series of strange noises, at which point I intend to sleep as well because I’m hoping to wake up speaking French.

I had an amazing week last week, shooting 6 Days on an independent feature production. The days were long and tiring, but really wonderful. And it was amazing to see how many ways a smartphone can be utilized in the constant melee that is production. Little did I know what lurked in the brain of this device.

We were scheduled to shoot an office Christmas party one day and I had an idea for props a few hours before call-time. So, I pulled out my trusty iPhone and sent the Craft service person the following request:

“Could you pick up some clear plastic glasses and milk on your way to set? I want to use the visual of milk to look like egg-nogg.”

All phones recommend words as you type, in an effort to save time. And I’ve often been impressed at the intelligence of the process, while wondering how all the cross-referencing works with our friend the dictionary.

As I typed the word “nogg”, my phone must have wondered what on earth I was meaning. And I admit the chances of anyone typing egg-nogg into their iPhone are about as likely as snow in Los Angeles, but it does happen.

However, my phone assumed the word I really wanted was: Niggardly.

Some of you are now grabbing your iPhone to see if this will happen. And I’m sure it won’t. You see my fingers, which I always thought were fairly normal in size, are apparently as big as elbows when I try to type an iPhone text. I’m sure I hit something odd to create the perfect storm of strange recommendations.

But whatever the combination, there it was: Niggardly.

Now I grew up in the generation where “the N-word” transitioned to that special place where it is so inappropriate that is should never be spoken, typed, read, or even thought about. It has been all but programmed out of the English language and relegated to history.

Unless, of course, you happen to be a hip-hop star or a gang member… then you have special permission to use it like you’re saying “Hi”. This ridiculousness could be an entire other entry, but it’s the world we live in.

And in this world I am quite certain that no one… and I mean absolutely no one… uses the world Niggardly. If we don’t use it as a noun, I’m sure we aren’t going to use it as an adverb. There’s no chance that some hip-hop gang member is going to look at his buddy and say “Homie, chill, you’re being quite niggardly.”

Thus… My iPhone is apparently racist. And I’m left to wonder what dictionary it uses?

Then upon reflection I realize something else: iPhones come in two colors, black & white.

And I happen to have a black one.

So. Maybe it’s okay after all. And I should just chill.

But I digress.

From the rubble of one of the world’s poorest countries came a story which seemed to perfectly highlight the haves and have-nots of the tragedy. And both the absurdity, and wonder, of our national obsession with technology.

An iPhone saved a man’s life in Haiti.

No, this is not an Apple commercial. At least, not yet. THIS STORY is true.

A documentary filmmaker got trapped in the rubble of his hotel. The destruction caused a head injury and a compound fracture. He was going into shock.

But he had a First-Aid app on his iPhone, and was able to both diagnose and treat himself. Without this app, it is unlikely he would have survived the days until he was pulled from the rubble.

I’m awed by the power we now hold in our hands. The access to information once buried in libraries or found in the highest realms of expertise is now quite literally at the tip of our fingers.

And then I’m embarrassed. Because my first thought was “what app was that?”. Yet I know I’m not alone because the article spelled out the title and publisher of the exact program he used. I resist the urge to download it immediately… and then wonder how much of a purchasing spike this app received because of this news coverage.

How long before the company advertises this product as “proven to save lives”. Or will they embrace that shadiest of practices… linking a purchase to a tragedy under the guise of donation. “Send a dollar to Haiti with every purchase”.

Never mind where the rest of the purchase price goes…

So I’m stuck in a quandary. I love my iPhone. But, with all its cool apple-ness and my instant weather and tweet-ability… it is, at it’s core, a platform to help me consume. I can have just a little bit more. Know just a little bit more. Find just a little bit more.

With more than 1 Billion Apps downloaded to date, iTunes starts to seem like the smartest drug dealer in the world. We keep coming back for more because it’s helping us live better, and it might even save our lives!

But that 1 Billion represents a lot more money than has gone to Haiti, or any tragedy. Which makes me wonder… Since the iPhone is now saving lives, lets just send a big box to the next tragedy-thrashed area and wish them the best of luck!

Just picture it = iREDCROSS. iFEMA.

Never mind the people who survived 2 weeks in the rubble drinking leaking bath water and proving real miracles do happen. Thanks to our smart phones and on-line app stores, every tragedy can be repackaged as a reason to purchase something new.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go download that First-Aid app. I live in earthquake country, remember. And come to think of it, my iPhone needs to be charged.

But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… we don’t live “in theory”, and in reality it strikes me quite differently.

These sites tap into the exhibitionist in all of us. We can share up to the minute updates of our most inane activities… and unbelievably, we think others will care.

Informative gems like:

“Watching a movie.” – No you aren’t apparently, you’re typing away on your iPhone.

“Going to bed.” – Did you need to tell me that? Just go already.

“Thinks he ate too much at dinner.” – By all means, share your indigestion with the rest of us!

“Needs a shower” – Great, now we can all visualize you stinking up your keyboard.

“Loves his wife.” – Sweet, but does she know?

And I’ve had many requests to join twitter, as many friends are already on it and want us to follow each other. The truth is I imagine I will create an account for Everyday Driver before too long, but personally I don’t have any random updates worth sharing.

“Todd is sitting on his couch updating his status.” “Todd is going for a hike with the dog.” “Todd thought about doing something just now… and then decided against it.” See? Riveting.

I figure if you’ve got free time and any interest in what I’m doing or what’s on my mind you’ll read my blog. (Hello by the way… to all three of you…) That’s what this is here for… because when I have a thought I really want to share I need more than 150 characters.

Most recently I’ve been wondering how far this status updating can go. Or better yet, how and why are we reconnecting with people who left our life at some point for some natural life cycle reason?

I suspect that kids born this century may never really lose track of their junior high classmates. Now, they won’t talk to them any more than I do… but there they’ll be as one of their 1,249 friends when they are 30. How wonderful, this must be forever, we’re facebook friends! I follow you on Twitter!

“Todd is currently retching.” And then they’ll be 6 people commenting on my status update.

Then there’s the dark and funny side of it… my wife getting an update that someone from her high school class just died. Sad, yes. But Catherine had to look up this girl in her yearbook cause she had no idea who the person was. This hasn’t made us closer, it’s just made us connected by this thin veneer of “I’m interested in you and you’re important to me.” When the truth is we’re all just trying to come up with our next clever status update.

And a girl I barely know has started posting strange call-for-help updates. To the point that after a series of dark postings one just said “help me”. Reading that from thousands of miles away really made me realize how superficial this connection is and how much “look at me” goes into one sentence updates.

Where’s it stop?  Am I going to wake up one day and read:

“_______ just jumped from a building but didn’t realize it would take this long to hit the gro…” 5 seconds ago.

And it will pop up on Twitter and Facebook. Social networking last words.

We’re not closer, we’re blasting a running commentary to hundreds and calling it closeness without sitting down with 1 or 2 and talking things out.

This makes me want to hug my friends. The real ones I talk to regularly and have been through shit with…

And not with some (o) icon either… not via twitter or my iphone. My arms, their necks…

That’s friendship.