To a great man.

So, this isn't what I am very good at.  I think, if you'll permit me, I am good at a few things.  I think I can lighten the mood at a gathering with a relatively well time jab at someone (oftentimes myself).  I think I can offer advice in the standard situations, the absent boyfriend, the judgmental girlfriend, the overbearing parents, and maybe even as we get older, the rambunctious children.  I think I, as a reasonable man (get off my case), am a decent dispenser of half decent advice.  But in situations like this, I find myself out of sorts.  How does an otherwise healthy, lively, and genuinely nice guy, of 40 years, find himself dead?  The short answer is: I don't know.  Well, I suppose I know what happened...after spending the evening with one of my best friends, Ryan, I have been filled in on the details.  But HOW does is happen?  Let's start off by saying: It shouldn't, and I need to change the subject.

Roy was a real nice guy, and that's not a title I just throw around.  There are a lot of friends I have that are decent human beings, but not too many of them are real nice guys (sorry dudes, but yo now it's true).  I got to know Roy while I was working at a place uptown.  He was like a surrogate family member to a family I happened to hold in (the highest) high regard, and I got to know him through them.  Over the years this fine gentleman charmed me, not only through treating me to drinks, but also through treating me to his outlooks on life.  As an avid reader I connected with him right away; there are very few bartenders in town who can debate the finer points of Kilgour Trout's philosophy, while also discussing Ignatius J. Reilly's popcorn consumption - Roy was one of those few and he took the time, regardless of how packed his bar was, or how packed my section was, to discuss it in detail, always with a luminescent smile.

We spent times in various bars in north york with friends discussing literature and travel, and while admittedly, I wasn't his best friend - there were many who spent more time with him than me, or had known him longer - I aways felt a warm spot for this guy.  He was 40, very well read and very well travelled and 100% enjoyed the life he had carved out for himself (how many among us can say the same?).

Ryan and I talked about Roy tonight, for most of the night.  We talked about what it was that people took pride in, where their life was concerned.  What was it that really drove us?  For some it's an afterlife, for some it is living life to fullest, and for some it's about leaving behind children who carry on one's legacy.  But as we talked, it felt like to me, that in the last seconds of my life, I would like to look back on it, and say "Yup, that'll do!".  Not that I hope to have the greatest life ever lived, but that I hope to have a a life that I was proud to have lived.  In my world view you only get a second to reflect before it is all in the past (becoming a was instead of an is), but if I was him, in that last second, as it slipped away, I would have looked back and said: "Yup, that'll do!".

I hope Roy found peace in the end.  And I hope that my good friends who are going to miss him take a bit of solace in that peace.  And at the end of the day they remember a gentleman who took life seriously enough to make the most of it, but never too seriously that he got bogged down in it.  I look forward to raising a glass with you all this week to a good, scratch that, a great man.  See you soon.

Steve Jobs RIP

So, Steve jobs died today.  I was at a concert and the opening act mentioned it - something about Steve Jobs being the only reason he had been able to do the things he did.  At first I thought it was a poorly thought out joke, I turned to my buddy that I was with, and he said: "Is that true?  Cause if so I would expect that my phone (iPhone) would be blowing up..."

I googled it.

It was true.

Let me say here that when a guy dies in the prime of his life (professional life in this case) it's unnerving.  Jobs was a guy who changed the tech industry.  He fostered the release of products that literally changed the way we communicate.  A friend, and coworker, of mine has on her email signature from her phone "iphoned".  Super cute and gets down to the fact that the iPhone (among Apple's many other innovations) was a game changer, and in this case a verb unto itself.  So I think anyone would be remiss in not recognizing that Steve Jobs was a cultural icon that will be sorely missed by investment bankers and hipsters alike.  Kudos to him.

What I take issue with in the story - and you know I need to take issue with something - is that throughout my twitter feed I saw comparisons of Jobs and Edison....ya, the Edison who invented the lightbulb.  Now, as I have said above, Jobs was a giant of a CEO in the tech industry and was likely a driving force behind the smartphone revolution.  But, what we miss from this, and are misled into thinking by comments comparing him to Edison is that he didn't INVENT these innovations, just helped them through the corporate red tape to bring them to the market.

Are we so blinded by business success that we confuse CEOs with inventors?  There are very few CEOs who have invented something of use in modern society.  The people who invent new products and create groundbreaking innovations are frequently engineers and scientists who are grossly underpaid and under appreciated.  Businesses help to provide the funding and bring visionaries together to create new products, subsequently they own the rights to the patents for those products, but PLEASE, let's not forget, the Steve's Jobs of the world (or Eric Schmit's) don't create innovative products, they work with people who do.

Something to keep in mind while setting up your shrine to Jobs this week.