Wednesday, February 11, 2004

It’s For You

As Blogtown is well aware, I ruined my cellphone and had to get a new one.  Naturally, the model I had two weeks ago is now obsolete and unavailable, as it was carved out of pumice and operated with runes.  The currently-available equivalent model is reported to get returned a lot and the display sample at the store was broken into pieces, and not in a way that bolsters confidence.  (Aside: isn’t it strange that an overdecorated bedroom has both bolsters and shams?  Do you think someone is trying to hide something, and feel good about it anyway?) Anyway, I upgraded to the midrange cellphone and brought my new toy home not long ago. 

This phone has many laudable qualities, including being small (so as to fall into ever-tinier containers of soup), being capable of lighting up in different colors depending on who calls me, and, of course, actually working.  I was disappointed, though, with the ringtone selection.  My old phone had about 12 ringtones, of which three didn’t suck and one was actually okay.  It was crude, grating, and sythetic, but god help me it worked. 

So now I have a slick little new phone with clamshell design and updated technology - and it comes with just four ringtones and a crappy little song.  Of the four, none don’t suck.  I selected the one that sucks the least, but I swore a solemn oath that I’d find some better ringtones for my snazzy new phone.  Hell, I could set it up so a call in from any of my contacts groups would play a different ring - that would be so cool I’d be peeing slurpies.  So, a-ringtone shopping I did go.

This clearcut, straight-forward plan, like so many others before it, soon foundered on the cruel shoals of reality.  I went on-line to my service provider, who advertises like 40 billion available ringtones, and I started to scroll through them.  Every imaginable annoying, inappropriate tune for your phone to play was available, from “Duh-duh-duh Duh-da-duh CHARGE” to a medly of Celine Dion’s most moving execrations - but I didn’t see “ring” or “chirp” or “(sound of phone)”.  I must have scanned 500 choices under the categories of “misc”, “other”, and “themes.” (I also tried at one point to look for a ringtone featuring music by the Grateful Dead, but the site search feature came up saying “Sorry, haven’t heard of him.” My blood ran cold.) I could get more latino hits than I could shake a mojito at, along with folk favorites of the confederacy and Korean pop hits and creepy minor-keyed nursery rhymes - but I could not find a tone that would just alert me that I had a call without attracting the whole world’s attention to my grating, attention-sucking 21st-century hurdy-gurdy of a telephone. 

Particular favorite bad choices included themes from Shaft, Mission Impossible and Battlestar Galactica (all of which were rendered spineless and quivering by being transposed for my polyphonic telephone ringer), the Sanford and Son theme (a Quincy Jones classic, but flat and soulless as transposed), the Columbo/NBC Mystery Movie theme, the $6M Man theme (these ones made the transition from boob tube to squawk box quite well actually but that doesn’t mean I want to hear them every time my phone goes off), and - my personal least-hated - the theme from the Avengers.  It’s cool, classy, taut and sexy, even on my cellphone’s crippled harmonics.  It was a meaty piece of music. 

But in the end, that was its downfall.  Having succeeded in reproducing a tune so that it still retained some vestige of the composer’s creative mission, the result was a ringtone that was too exciting and interesting to be used.  Bystanders would want me not to answer so they could hear their favorite part.  And that low-key way the song starts, with a snare drum like a hearbeat, just reeks of espionage and would make me self-conscious as I thrashed around trying to find my little phone in my many prolific pockets, so I could respond to my “secret message” before the music hit a crescendo and my cover was blown.  Too much drama for my pedestrian phone calls.  I’ll stick with the irritating pre-loaded ring.  Anyway, it’s probably not a good idea to have a ringtone that makes me want to pull a sword out of my umbrella every time I get a call.  My fellow bus riders would surely object - or at least the ones I haven’t decapitated.