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It was great catching up with our resident comic Dave, now that I am back on the East Coast. We chatted over lunch and no other place than Whole Food’s and then meandered over to the 5th Ave Apple Store. This was my first time seeing it, and it was nice but nothing so special on the inside. Funny enough I was in a suite and Dave was in a shirt and jean, much like the commercials. We were going to act out the skit but opted not to. Here’s what Dave had to say after the visit:

Went to the new Apple Store on 5th Avenue today. It’s quite an impressive display of nerds and cool people all in on place as a functioning unit. As usual, I was right smack dab in between the nerds and the cool people in that little space where I flourish. That place, of course, was the bathroom. Which, by the way, was very nice.

Read [The Daily Dave]

‘CMG’ is a column about a comics quest to conquer the tech world. Dave Rubin contributes ‘CMG’ to Gadgetell weekly. Read more of Dave’s musing at The Daily Dave.

Nintendo, which seems to have one mission these days, to end my gaming career, has just put another nail in my coffin. It’s new game, “Trauma Center: Under the Knife”, for the portable DS system, allows you to perform various medical procedures on patients. It’s actually a first in video games, a game where you are trying to save people, not kill them. Despite that lofty goal, I can assure you that my patience for saving the patient’s would be rather low. And my rate of yelling at the screen would be rather high.

Anyway, video games seem to always want to be more and more real, but a game where you play a doctor? What’s part two of this game going to be about? You get sued for malpractice because you rushed the operation so you could make your tee time? Then you have to become a virtual lawyer and defend yourself? Someone really needs to tell Nintendo to get back to making games about plumbers who eat mushrooms.

Oh, how I should’ve been a plumber.

Dave Rubin is a comedian and writer who has pitched shows to HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central. His cable access show, “The Anti Show” was secretly shot at NBC studios in New York. Dave lives with his gold fish, Fritz. Read more of Dave’s musing at The Daily Dave.

Upon Dave Rubin, our weekly columnist from Comic Meets Gadgets, learning about Microsoft’s new Origami Project, he said:

Microsoft is about to unviel a new product called, “Origami”, that will be part Blackberry, part web browser, part music player, and part video game console. It also will fold into the shape of a bird.

That was perhaps the most obvious joke I’ve ever written.

Read more of Dave’s musing at Rubinville.com.

‘CMG’ is a column about a comics quest to conquer the tech world. Dave Rubin contributes ‘CMG’ to Gadgetell weekly. Read more of Dave’s musing at The Daily Dave.

A few times a week I get e-mails from people inviting me to become their friend on Myspace.  I never accept the invitation, nor even open the e-mail.  Come to think of it, I don’t even delete the e-mail thanks to Gmail’s 2695.453338 megabytes (and couting!) of free storage.  Instead I just leave them there, as reminders of all the people who want to be my friend.

Of course, this begs to ask the question of why I wouldn’t want to use MySpace.  It seems like everyone uses MySpace.  I bet that you use it.  As a matter of fact, I bet that you just recently added some friends, or got added to someone else’s list.  Congrats, by the way, you’re quite the popular cat, aren’t you?  You probably kicked a lot of nerd butt in 7th grade, oh popular one.

Anyway, the reason that I don’t use MySpace, is just that.  I’m just not that popular.  And quite frankly, either are you.

All those “friends” on your list, they’re not really your friends.  They’re people who just connect to you to grow their own friend list just like you do to them.  Sometimes not only are they not your friend, they’re actually your enemy.  Just the other day, I was browsing when I was shocked to see that He-Man has Skeletor listed as a friend.  That was only half as shocking as when I saw that Obi-Wan Kenobi had Darth Vader listed.  The most unbelievable one though was that George W. Bush had Satan as a friend.  Uh, well that one makes sense, but the others are just ridiculous.

But why are we all adding virtual friends to our virtual friend lists when virtually none of these people are actually our friends?  Two words… Friend Envy.  We all want the bigger list.  We all want more.  We all crave more.  We all need more.  It’s a virtual addiction.

I’m old-school though, so instead of joining the masses and faking my friends, I’ll just keep counting my real friends on my fingers like I always have.  There’s Jon and there’s Mike and there’s Skeletor and Obi-Wan, just to name a few.

So please, stop inviting me to be your friend.  I don’t like you.  We don’t have anything in common.  And for God’s sake, take a shower, you smell.

Dave Rubin is a comedian and writer who has pitched shows to HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central. His cable access show, “The Anti Show” was secretly shot at NBC studios in New York. Dave lives with his gold fish, Fritz. Read more of Dave’s musing at The Daily Dave.

Dave Rubin is a comedian and writer who has pitched shows to HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central. His cable access show, “The Anti Show” was secretly shot at NBC studios in New York. Dave lives with his gold fish, Fritz. Read more of Dave’s musing at The Daily Dave.

For any of those who ride the NYC subway, one thing you know is the amount of people who are constantly zoning out in their own world while listening to their iPod.  Frankly, if I could give every screaming moron on the subway an iPod to keep them quiet, I gladly would.  Unfortunately, the good people at Gadgetell don’t pay me quite enough to do that (yet).  Anyway, with the advent of the new iPod video, subway etiquette is changing right before our eyes, and thankfully, I’m here to report it…

See, one practice that is as old as the subway itself, is that if you are reading anything while sitting on the subway, the person next to you will automatically read it over your shoulder.  It doesn’t matter if you’re reading a magazine, a book, an instruction manual or the Holy Bible, someone will always be following you word for word.  Truth be told, I’ve read almost the entire Bible this way, though not in any specific order, so I’m a little confused as to whether Noah built the arc before or after the flood.  I’m guessing before, right?

Suddenly, with the iPod video, people are watching TV shows and movies and a new breed of people are trying to watching along with them.  Yesterday, I sat next to a guy who was watching “Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island”, which is one of my favorite movies.  I kept looking over to follow along (though always moving my eyes when he looked to see if I was watching), and ended up watching all the way from 72nd Street to 14th Street.  I was supposed to get off at 34th Street, but that’s the price you pay to be a video-looker-person.  I enjoyed the movie despite the fact that I couldn’t hear it, mostly because of the great scene with Foghorn Leghorn.  Who would’ve known Foghorn was such a ladies man?  Or to be technically correct, I should say was such the chicken’s man.  Err, I mean rooster.  Yea, he’s was quite chicken’s rooster.  Okay, that’s it, he was quite the chicken’s rooster.  (Whoa, that took a lot out of me.)

As much as I enjoyed watching the movie, I couldn’t hear it, which takes the fun out of anything, especially a cartoon.  So, until cartoonists start animating better mouths for us to follow lips, I propose that it is time for the people who have the iPod videos to start offering one of their earphones for the rest of us to follow along.  Either that, or bring a small set of speakers so people on both sides can watch and hear the video.

Then and only then, will harmony be restored to the New York City Subway System.  It’ll be like in elementary school when we were taught to bring enough cupcakes for everyone on our birthday.  Or like in college when you only took a big hit of the joint only if you knew there was enough for all the stoners.  It is these very things that society it built upon, so let us today start sharing our audio.  If we choose not to, we choose complete and utter anarchy.

Read more of Dave’s musings at The Daily Dave.

Dave Rubin is comedian and writer who has pitched shows to HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central.  His cable access show, “The Anti Show” was secretly shot at NBC studios in New York.  Dave lives with his gold fish, Fritz. He will be updating us on his quest to conquer the tech world, in a new weekly column here on Gadgetell.

My days are limited, and I know it.  For the first time in my life, at 29 years old, I have begun to look back on my life and wonder where the time has gone.  Things were going so well, so smoothly, until that fateful Saturday two weeks ago.  That was the day that it all changed.  That was the day that my 14 year old cousin beat me at Madden Football on X-Box 360…

It seems like only yesterday that I could sit Alex down in front of my Sega Genesis and put the game on “Computer Mode” and let him think that he was actually playing.  It was a win-win situation back then.  He didn’t know that he in fact was doing nothing, and for me, I didn’t have to play against a 4 year old.  Clever, indeed.

As time went on he learned to how to actually play and over the years we’ve played every version Madden known to man.  We’ve matured from Sega Genesis, to the original Playstation, to PS2 and finally to X-Box 360.  I should’ve known before we sat down that day that disaster was about to strike, I mean the controllers don’t even have wires, but I played nonetheless.

Ultimately, the reason for my loss wasn’t because of my advanced age, or because of my lack of practice, but because of the evolution of the video game controller.  See, I grew up playing the original 8-bit Nintendo.  Oh, those were the days.  The controller had only 2 buttons, “A” and “B”, and they were more then enough.  I mean for God’s sake, we even could do fancy codes in there like Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right- B-A-Select-Start to get 30 lives in “Contra.” Yea, they were good times.

Continue on the road to Dave’s gaming retirement…

Then, along came Sega Genesis, with it’s three button controller.  At first I didn’t like the “C” button, but I soon grew accustomed to it, and dare I say my best video game playing days were on this 16-bit system.  Sonic ran where I wanted him to and jumped whenever it was appropriate.  Those too, were good times.

A couple years later, my sophomore year of college to be precise, came Playstation.  Originally, I was scared of the system altogether, much less the controller itself, but eventually I gave it a try.  I found it quite bizarre that the buttons had shapes on them, like square and triangle, instead of letters, but I like to think that I can change with the times, and I think that my play in “NBA Live ’98” reflected such.  The good times continued to roll.

Within weeks of buying PS2, I knew that my best video game playing days were behind me.  Somehow, while I shot my way through “Metal Gear Solid” on Playstation, I just couldn’t get a hold of the second one on PS2.  The controller was the same, but something about it just wasn’t right.  Nonetheless, I have played and continue to play many games on PS2, and while often am frustrated, I still have my shining moments.

And now back to where we started.  I shouldn’t have even played my cousin on that day.  See, I had been doing a lot of drinking the night before and forgot that I had to make the trek on the train all the way out to New Jersey from New York City early in the morning.  On the train I sat next to an old woman who told me her life story while knitting.  By the time I got to Jersey I was a complete mess, and before I could even sit down my cousin Alex was challenging me to a game of Madden ’06 on X-Box 360.

A half hour later I came upstairs from the basement as a defeated man.  Yea, the buttons were mostly the same as the original X-Box, but the various circumstances left my coming up short.  The 4 interceptions I threw probably didn’t help, nor did the two safety’s.  (For the record though, I do think I’m the first person to ever get even one safety in a football video game.)

Anyways, my retirement from video games is now a forgone conclusion.  However, I want to wish all you video game hotshots out there the best of luck when you’re my age and you’re playing against your younger, quicker cousin who also happens to be so hopped up on Ritalin that he can actually leave the room to get a drink during a defensive play and still manage to sack you in the endzone.

So good luck to you, and try to stay as far away as possible from the new Nintendo Revolution Controller…

Read more of Dave’s musing at The Daily Dave