Dear Zingermans;

I’m surprised you allowed Judd Apatow to use your good name (and facilities) in his very unfunny movie which depicts Michigan in an extremely unflattering light. The actors playing Zingerman’s employees in the movie were disgusting both in their appearance and their handling of food. The movie was so negative about Michigan in every way I’m not even going to bother to repeat why.

People really dislike Apatow’s privileged completely inaccurate portrayals of modern day life. As if an $18 an hour sous chef in San Francisco would live in a 5 million dollar house there. One review of Apatow’s previous movie said: “This is Funny for Judd Apatow, and nobody else.”  I agree!

Everyday people in San Francisco are attacking the luxury buses that take Google employees back and forth to Silicon Valley. And they are overturning their smart cars. There’s nothing worse than some out of touch Hollywood director making light of a serious issue like Garry Marshall did in ‘Pretty Woman’. Apatow follows in his footsteps.

I like your food and your new facilities and like that you’re taking a leadership role in the ‘living wage’ issue.  Humanity is suffering terribly at present from the distortion of reality coming out of Hollywood and in the mass media. A whole new generation has been raised in a period of extreme cognitive dissonance for the past thirteen years.

I always hold Zingerman’s to the highest standard possible. I wish you would lead on the issue of truth too. I don’t see what you have to gain from aiding some jerk’s two hour put down of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Apatow’s point of view is elitist. It is inaccurate. And it’s not funny.

Blue Jasmine tells the story of a Tall White’s time travelling migraine trips through her sulphur-hued Hell on Earth. Set in San Francisco and New York in the 77th year of Director Woody Allen’s life, the golden gate’s soul journey looms large in the film. Will Allen pass through? Will we?

“You’re making a case.” Jasmine’s husband Hal Francis tells her. “I don’t like that.” And for good reason. The truth will set him free? Au contraire, au pair! Jasmine’s got the goods and she’s not afraid to use them. Her decision in a fit of rage to turn him in changes their lives forever.

Late in the film Jasmine learns her estranged stepson works across the bay at a music store marked simply 15. When she asks Danny 

Boy “how could he abandon her when she needed him the most?” he tells her he never wants to see her again. The pipes are calling, 

much? Allen’s estranged son graduated at 15 his bio states.

Allen casts Sally Hawkins as the first of two Gingers to describe his life among the Tall Whites. Jasmine buys her the Fendi yellow bag Ginger holds aloft palms up lion king-like and tells her to get rid of the bag she is carrying. A stammering, befreckled Louis C.K., who Ginger describes as smooth, is the second ginger of the story. Perhaps Jasmine has a point that Ginger settles too low.

 

Damascus is the city of Jasmine. The flag of the United Nations is blue although the exact shade has never been officially specified.Decisions made in haste have consequences Jasmine’s story tells us. Some are intended. Some are not. 

 

  

 

I am a technocrat now, but grew up in the area of pre-Apple, pre internet, pre-electronic age.  The Apple Mac was the second computer I owned.  The first was a now defunct ‘Kaypro’ running on the CPM OS.  CPM was very DOS-like, but was a predecessor to DOS.  I was amused by the Kaypro 4 with high hopes of working its use into my daily life to help with business-related functions.  I had owned it little more than a year when a soon-to-be life-changing event was about to happen. 

My buddy Cliff came to me one day bursting with excitement over his purchase of an  Apple Macintosh 128. He had just bought and took delivery of one of the first Mac 128s in the world! He showed me MacPaint and MacDraw and MacWrite, and I was intrigued, but generally ho-hum about the tour de force of this new way of computing, and missed the point of where computer graphics were headed.

When I heard a movie about this iconic innovator was opening ‘at a theater near me’, I had to see it.

My general impression was, the film showed Steve in a negative light. It was a story about a man abandon by his parents, willing to step on any one to bring his vision to fruition. The film offers vignettes of Jobs cheating on his girlfriend, getting his GF pregnant then abandoning her, lying to WOZ about the money they made on the first Atari programming project, booting his early adopters out of the company and leaving them with no ‘piece of the pie’ for their troubles.

Later in the film we see Steve refusing to acknowledge his first-born child, Lisa (while he is working on the ‘Lisa’ project, no less) and standing by while his buddy and co-owner ‘WOZ’ fades into the shadows of Apple Computer, and later leaves the company he helped form.

The first part of the movie was slow.  Seeing Ashton Kutcher as Jobs walking around barefoot on campus or in a field did nothing for me.  It didn’t move the story along to any great degree either. Things began getting interesting in the film as the Lisa (predecessor to the Macintosh) was in development.  I remember seeing the Lisa in a local computer store. I was intrigued listening to the salesperson explaining what it could do, but realized I would never spend $10,000 on a personal computer.

Ashton was a good fit for the role of Steve.  There were times when he had an uncanny resemblance to the real Mac man.  Something in the eyes I think.  I don’t know where Ashton got that ‘Jobs walk’ from, but in a few scenes – in a profile view – it had me thinkin’ SJ had a load on, and needed to visit the men’s room…

The chronicle opens with the introduction of the iPod, and leaves us there.  We never see the introduction of the iPhone, iPad or the company-changing birth of iTunes.  All three of these Apple events help crush the PC/Windose grip on the computer world and catapult Apple into the forefront of technology world wide.  Will there be a sequel? My guess is ‘yes’. Maybe they could call it ‘Jobs 2.0.16 build 58′.

If you are any way interested in Apple or Steve Jobs, or the Mac, or how a mega-glogal multi-national business got started in a so-cal garage; this movie is a must see.  If you want to preserve your memory of Steve Jobs as a kind, warm and fuzzy technocrat giving birth to the tech toys of our age; you may want to give it a pass.