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June102005

William Henry Harrison would not have been safe on the G train

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To go with your Gopnik on William Dean Howells, here's another fabulous Dead Celebrity iTunes Playlist from Minor Tweaks, whose blog is the object of my shy and profound affection. This dead celebrity, who also has three names and the initials "W.H.," is William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of these United States. Here's one of Harrison's Shuffle musts:


"All Shook Down" (The Replacements): A song about failure. As someone who was President of the United States for only a month and accomplished exactly nothing during that short time, I can relate. "They shook my hand as I drowned" is a terrific line. Here are the rest.

For further illumination, a pleasing fact from the White House's Harrison bio:

When he arrived in Washington in February 1841, Harrison let Daniel Webster edit his Inaugural Address, ornate with classical allusions. Webster obtained some deletions, boasting in a jolly fashion that he had killed "seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them."

Harrison later caught an awful cold. They didn't have echinacea then, kids.

A much more prevalent problem in modern life is iPod theft, which the New York City Police Department would like you to know about. They had an officer handing out pamphlets at the Greenpoint Avenue G stop today, and until I get a scanner I have to just, you know, describe things. It's called "TRANSIT SAFETY: DON'T BECOME A VICTIM! Keeping yourself and your belongings save within the New York Transit System," and it goes like this:

NYPD SAFETY TIPS AND SUGGESTIONS

WATCH YOUR iPOD [note tender attention to trademark]

LET'S STOP iPOD THEFT [yes, let's!]

* STAY ALERT
* KEEP YOUR iPOD...
OUT OF SIGHT
* DON'T STAY BY TRAIN DOORS WHEN USING ELECTRONIC DEVICES
* BE ALERT FOR PICKPOCKETS WHEN LISTENING TO MUSIC [that's the new Jonathan Safran Foer title]
* CHANGE THE EARPIECE COLOR WHEN RIDING IN PUBLIC

Then there's some stuff about not getting your cell phone nicked ("Don't let it drop"), and other useful ("Avoid being 'bumped'"), romantic ("Stay with others...during off-peak hours"), and wishful-thinking ("Protect your personal space") tips. But iPod is, as Today's Papers would say, fronted. What a fabulous advertisement! There's even a huge photo of one to illustrate the iPods whose theft we would like to stop. You know what they say about those most-stolen-car lists—they make everyone want to go out and buy one. As soon as I have an iPod, I'll try to be alert for pickpockets. Before that, I may become one. I can't promise anything.

As for Harrison, a safer piece of equipment for his underground adventure might be the iTurntable I've written about before. He'd have to travel to 1959 to get it, though.


iTurntable, circa 1959


Afterward, he could keep going and join New Yorker iPod Guy on his lonely bench.

Update: Here it is in glorious, wrinkly 2-D for all you lovely iPoddies and presidential historians. Click to enlarge, and watch your pockets!


Steal different.

The NYPD cares.

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