Hey kids! This month, Mac Junkie has a special surprise for you. Raise your hands if you've been to the Apple Road Show. Well, for the benefit of you three in the back who haven't, the Apple Road Show (more info at http://www.apple.com/roadshow/) shows up at a different mall every weekend to show off snazzy new Macs and neat third party products.
What goes on behind the scenes while setting up the show? What do these road show guys do to make it successful? I don't know. I was more interested in what these guys do when they're not running the show. I mean, what would you do if you had all that stuff at your disposal?! Add to that the fact that you had the...(dramatic pause here)...Apple Truck! That's why, when I kidnapped two of the road show guys, Kurt and Michael, I felt it necessary to probe them for details on their adventures.
Mac Junkie Looks Out For You, the Reader
I asked important questions like, "Where have you taken the Apple Truck?" Rumors have it that these knights in red polos have braved the extremes of the salt flats of Utah and the confetti-laden Bourbon Street. However, after talking to these guys, Bourbon Street doesn't appear to be as bad as you might think. Were these guys accosted by the New Orleans police, or weren't they? Apparently, the police were more interested in getting tidbits on ways to spruce up their Macs! They also attempted to get the truck up Pikes Peak, but the Man shut them down. I've received word that the Man has recently been purchased by Microsoft, and apparently Michael and Kurt weren't allowed up the mountain because it was being refitted as Pikes Peak NT. This is going to be bad for Colorado, because the chances of Pikes Peak NT freezing are pretty high year-round now and a cold reboot has taken on a whole new meaning.
Another part of the road show is life in America's malls. I asked deep questions like: "Do you get tired of mall food? After several months on the road, do you eventually break down and check out the softer side of Sears? Is the cookie stand really part of the food court or an autonomous eating establishment for mid-mall snacking?" These road show pros had no problems answering these questions. Apparently, it's impossible to get tired of mall food, and the softer side of Sears has some of the steel coned chestwear that these guys have been wanting to wear when doing PhotoDeluxe, et al. demonstrations with the microphone headgear. Alas, the budget doesn't allow them to charge the chestwear to their Apple accounts unless Madonna does one of those "What do you have on your Powerbook" ads but do we really want to know the answer to that one? The good news is that Apple is considering Kurt’s proposal "to do my last stage presentation in Portland with nothing on except an Apple logo covering my private parts." See, Apple really does Think Different! Apparently, Kurt has discovered the answer to the Cookie Stand question, but because of his contract, Apple now owns the right to that knowledge and the board unanimously voted against giving us that information.
What about mall competition? The road show is open to all sorts of sabotage from PC software dealers who fear the Mac, and rumors have it that an unnamed Dell CEO showed up to damage the Macs on display, but was thwarted by Michael, who has played a lot of Quake in preparation for such a meeting. In case you didn't know, Apple thoroughly trains their people for every eventuality. The one thing that they didn't face on the tour were some pansy-pink-suited Intel guys. I guess they're having a problem with their Pentium II truck overheating, huh? "Intel guys can't hang with us! I'm waiting to catch them at a Flying J Truck Stop so we can Jack them and Burn the Van!" Spoken like a true Mac genius. The road show guys also use these skills to harass software dealers in the mall who think that OS 8 is some new game, and don't want to carry Mac software because, "Didn't you know, Mac is going out of business?" Kurt says a quick blow to the head takes care of these problems and may prevent those "glorious MMX and Pentium II" sales pitches.
Contest? Opportunities? Or Just Another Cheap Ploy by Mac Junkie
Speaking of Pentium II's...how many Pentium II's does it take to heat a mid-sized home during the winter, and will the Pentium II eventually replace the fireplace/furnace/sun for overall heat generation? Feel free to write me at macjunkie@applewizards.net with your thoughts on this one. Also, I think that all of the Macs on the tour deserve their own names. Send me suggestions and I'll bombard Kurt and Michael with them! Maybe this is the beginning of the Apple Road Show Fan Club. Who wants to be the president?
Conclusions and Such
I'd like to thank Kurt and Michael for their help with this column. Without them, this month's article wouldn't be nearly as funny, and there would be fewer quotes, too.
One more thing — last month I used some slick icons that I had found at http://www.iconfactory.com/ and well, the message kind of got messed up during editing, and they weren't given their proper credit. See you next month.
