Leave Startac Alone!

Finally, I just had to leave Sprint PCS in the dust.

We have had a long, fruitful relationship together over the years. I pay the bill, Sprint drops 25% of my calls in a five-bar signal zone. I maintain my minutes balance, and Sprint gets me for a roaming charge without telling me through my phone. I keep my battery charged, and Sprint reminds me that I have voice mail...sometimes four hours after a message has been left on my phone.

Really, it has been quite fruitful.

But, I had to do it, didn't I? Even though Sprint always claims that they have the nation's most reliable all-digital PCS network, it seems like I drop calls all the time on it, and I just couldn't take it any more. On the last day of my billing cycle, I ported my number over to Verizon Wireless, and now, it's fun to know that I can quietly tell those bastards at Sprint to go to hell.

I always thought it was fine to bad-mouth my service provider, but in the last three months, at almost any opportunity, my friends have been bad-mouthing my cell phone, and I just about had enough of it before making the switch to a new phone.

"Jeez, man, you still have that thing?"

It was Charles "Chuck" Longer. Man. Provider. Father-to-be.

Bad-mouther.

"Is that screen even in color? Look at the size of that thing. Man, you need to get a new phone."

I was stunned. Chuck, along with former roommate Keith "Dogshit" Karem, had bought me the fucking phone for my birthday three years ago, and now, there was Chuck, verbally pimp-slapping my Startac phone for looking old and not having a color screen. I took this as a personal affront.

"Hey man, you know what? The thing does the one thing I need it to do--uhh, when I'm not dropping calls--and that is talk, from one person to another. You're right: the screen's not in color. I don't have a camera. I don't have voice-activated dialing. I can't download ringtones. There's no GPS, there's no text-message function, I can't send e-mail. I can't make out my weekly schedule, play solitaire or compute higher math. But I can talk to you, and that's all I need that mutha to do."

I went to my car, and opened up my Startac...I thought for sure I saw a tear on my Startac's screen, and for just that one moment, I felt for it. No phone deserves a bad-mouthing like "man, you need to get a new phone."

I watched "Wall Street" again recently; remember that scene where Michael Douglas is walking on the beach, and he's talking on that phone? Now, THAT'S a big fucking phone. The kind of phone where you are pushing the buttons, and the sounds are amplified so loud that you could wake up your family from like three blocks away? Or, how about that scene in "Scarface", where that guy is talking to Pacino, and he's on that veritable sat phone, talking about

"Listen to me, you little fucking monkey..."

Now, THAT'S a fucking big phone. The Motorola Startac, by contrast, isn't even a big phone compared to the normal phones of the here and now, but it hasn't stopped almost everyone I know looking at my Startac like it's some kind of freaking dinosaur.

"Whoa, you still have that thing?" Now it's my brother, Dave Bell. "Bro, you need to get yo'self some new gear, man!" He flips out his new Sprint phone; he opens it, and you hear this little sprinkle sound, like a fuckin' leprechaun just leaped out of a pot of gold and granted him cell phone service. He looks at my Startac's monochrome green-and-black screen and just starts laughing before going off to make some calls.

Again, Startac looks back at me and nods knowingly.

"I know," Startac begins, "that I'm at the end of my run. Don't desert me, Justin, please? I'm still capable of doing a great job at the basics, and just like you, I'm old school, remember?"

I DO remember, so I put it back in my pocket, feeling the heat of not being cool as I slip it back into my holster. People are really taking this phone thing too seriously, aren't they? It's not like having a camera phone is like driving a Porsche, but you wouldn't know it from the way people look down their noses at a black telecommunications device that does, for all intents and purposes, the exact same thing as their current shiny, silver telecommunications device with a sub-1 megapixel camera.

But, like spring showers, the flow of derogatory comments comes in a flood during the April to June period. Rob Grant, taking time out of his busy knobin' schedule:

"Man, I know you're old school, but that phone has to go!"

Gordon Stokes, never shy: "Hey, tough guy, you got a backpack attached to that phone? If so, can you order me a napalm strike?"

Ross Stephenson, busy sending picture mail to former potential mates: "Hey, I should send you this picture...oh wait, your phone can't do that."

Kid sister Cate Bell, lamenting: "You can't take text messages? Man, your phone sucks!"

Peer pressures are normally nothing but amusing to me, but this was becoming tiresome very fast. Noting that I had to make a switch soon due to the service I was receiving anyway, I finally sold out and bought an LG VX6000 last week, and now, I'm back in the world of the cool again. Of course, I still have a Palm m100; it was like the first version of that device from years ago that had a color screen, but now, with Blackberry devices everywhere you look, I once again have fallen to the bottom of the totem pole.

I kind of like it down here. Hey look, an Atari 2600!

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

77° and no humidity: Opening Weekend
Getting "nice": $9.50 Show
"Hey, is that a picture of somebody's dong?": Matinee
Apartment hunting: Rental
Being white, and being told off by an ex who’s white: "You know, you’re just too white for me": Hard Vice

bellview--muchos besos

Leave Startac Alone!