Hoax

Do not . . .

I repeat . . . 

Do not microwave your iPhone.

I know that kinda sorta sounds terribly obvious, but there was a hoax that made the rounds claiming the new iWave feature that allowed users with low batteries to charge their phones in seconds by microwaving them.

"Only stupid people would believe that." you say?

Really?

Cause you've like never been conned? Or flashbanged into believing something too good to be true? You've never eaten a fad diet, or bought an expensive piece of equipment that was obsolete before christmas? You've never taken a multi-vitamin or shopped at Whole Foods?

Really?

"Okay." You say. "Maybe I do own shoes that are going to correct my posture and maybe, just maybe, I've prayed to a God for personal favors . . . but there's no way I would be duped into microwaving my iPhone."

You say.

Let me tell you a little story.

It's the winter of 1989.

The Oakland Athletics have just beaten the San Francisco Giants in the World Series. Nothern California is still cleaning up ofter the Loma Prieta earthquake. I am thirteen years old, picking up the guitar for the first time, and ten months away from starting highschool.

The movie I couldn't wait to see?

Back to the Future 2.

And I've got two words for you:

Hover Board.

And I was super excited.

See, back in those days, there were like thirty channels on the TV.

A lot of those channels were scrambled. See, the cable came in through the wall and had to pass through a cable box that would scramble or unscramble certain specific channels. It wasn't like today where you just get a blank screen-shot from Comcast telling you that you need to subscribe, no, no, no. 

Audio would come through, but the video would be all phazed and blurry.

We had various packages throughout the years, but I remember not having HBO, SHO, MAX, or any of the other biggies cause 1989 wasn't a big cable priority.

However,

Every blue moon or so, the biggies would give you a free preview weekend, so you could see what you're missing. There was no way to tell, so you have to check the channel once every two or three hours.

The Playboy channel never unscrambled. Which I think is why there is an entire generation that thinks the sound of Rianna's voice is sexy and who also find Picasso paintings so aluring.

They're just imitating the porn of our youths.

So it's winter 1989.

And not only does HBO unscramble for this one magical weekend, but I also get to see a documentary on the filiming of the new Back to the Future movie.

And still two words.

Hover Boards.

During an interview with the director, Robert Zumekis, was asked where they got the hover boards.

He said that the technology has been around for a while, and they are available in Japan, but in America, partental rights groups have kept them off the shelves thinking they were too dangerous. There's a good chance that we might be seeing them in time for christmas this year.

I

wet

my

effing

pants.

Hover Boards by Christmas.

Now I was not a stupid teenager. No one has ever acused me of being gullable. And I was right then learning about electro-magnetism and as anyone who has tried pushing two positively charged magnets together, you know that they repell one another, so it stands to reason that we should have devoloped hover technology based on repelling gravitational force by now.

I still think that.

Yet at thirteen, I thought that there could be no greater application of an anti-gravity technology than a hover board.

It was so obviously simple.

So obviously needed.

Christmas was only a month or two away.

So I raced in to tell my dad.

He listened very politely to my breathless excitment and then told me, very affectionately, that someone was yanking my chain.

I had the utmost respect for my dad.

But I didn't belive him.

The director of Back to the Future just said that Hover Boards might be available this Christmas.

I'll just have to keep it to myself then.

I mean, c'mon. If we can use lasers to play music, surely we can harness enough electromagnetism to glide a skateboard over the surface of the sidewalk.

I waited silently for weeks. But no word of Hover Boards.

I saw the movie and was kinda disappointed. I was at that point where gimmicky film making (using Michael J. Fox to play his children) just looked stupid to me.

But here's the thing.

I didn't give up hope on the Hover Board.

Even when Christmas came and went, I still had this secret dream that it would become a reality soon enough.

I don't remember when, or if, there was ever a point at which I sorta let it go. It was probably gradual. It was probably highschool or girls or facial hair.

Though I gotta admit. Twenty five years and I'm still just a little disappointed.

But flash forward those twenty years.

And teenagers are putting their iPhones in microwaves.

Cause y'know why?

Cause we now live in Science Fiction.

My super-flat-super-wide-HiDef-plasma TV is insanely better than the wobbily projector TV used in Back to the Future 2. Okay, maybe cars don't fly, but billboards are digital, items from the 80's can be found in antique stores, almost all of human knowledge is available on your cell phone via space, and do you really want shoes that tighten themselves? Really?

I can tell you what would be rad though.

If I could charge my cell phone in a few seconds by putting it in the microwave.

I mean, microwave energy can excite the DihydrogenOxide molecules in order to heat my cheese and bean burrito, how much is it to ask for them to also send a little love to my lithium ion battery?

We've perversly trained this genteration into believing that any major problem they have with anything will be solved as soon as the next generation model is out of beta-testing.

And what bigger problem do they face than a dying cell phone?

When they read the ad about the new iWave function, they don't think that that might be a joke.

They think "FINALLY"

And whammo. Now the internets get flooded with pictures of burned out iPhones.

Except, most likley, those pictures are just as chain yanking.

This is the internet after all.

Those news articles you read about kids actually putting their phones in the microwave, are just as staged as the iWave ads. Those kids probably bought new phones and put their old ones in the microwave, waited 'till it popped enough to look all burnt out, took a picture of their old phones with their new phone and uploaded the photo to instagram which was immediately picked up by file sharing sites and once, given a few days to go viral, becomes the human interest story on your lazy local news network.

Which . . . if true . . . makes me very angry that I don't have my hover board yet.