You've of course seen Apple's current "Get a Mac" campaign, which features these two guys: "PC" (on the left, if it's not obvious) and "Mac."

I don't think these ads do to me what they're designed to do, unless the goal of these ads is to turn consumers off of the Macintosh brand, perhaps permanently, which would be an odd goal for an Apple ad campaign.  Why?  Because I like PC Guy; on the other hand, I want to take the smug face of Mac Guy and smush it around in cat diarrhea.  (I'm all talk on issues such as rubbing people's faces in things like cat diarrhea, btw.  This isn't something I'd actually do.)

Anyway, as it happens, my friends Amanda, John, and Alex had a party last night, and I stopped by, and both of them (Mac Guy and PC Guy) were there.  (Amanda, John, and Alex: not their real names.  They're not real people, actually; they're imaginary people, and imaginary people only have imaginary names, not real ones.  The party they threw -- which was in John and Alex's newly renovated loft and was sort of a housewarming -- was also imaginary.)  PH, incidentally, didn't go with me; she stayed at home because she was way behind on her design blogs.

So I showed up around 9:30, and Alex (my only real friend among the hosts; I like Amanda and John and have known them for years, but as acquaintances, really) introduced me to Mac Guy.  I shook his hand.  I said, "Nice to meet you," and he said that it was nice to meet me too, and he tried to give me one of those multi-stage handshakes, but he sort of fumbled it; this was when I realized that he was really, really, really, really baked.

Mac Guy didn't have much to say for himself.  You know how that happens sometimes at parties, that you get stuck talking with someone (who quite possibly feels stuck talking with you) who doesn't seem to have much to say for himself (to you, at least)?  After we'd exhausted the topic of how he knew Alex (he didn't; he'd dated Amanda's sister at Wesleyan, and I had the feeling that he wasn't completely over that, despite having graduated eight years ago) and how I knew Amanda (I didn't: or, I did, but really only through Alex, with whom I used to work in 1997 and '98), we were pretty much done.

I was thinking about how best to remove myself from this conversation when Mac Guy said, "Is your lady here?"  I didn't know how he knew that I had a "lady" or why he cared if she was there (I later found out that he was looking for temping jobs because he'd just gotten fired from what could have been a long-term temping gig at some law firm, and Alex had told him, inaccurately, the PH might know about "opportunities" at her office), but I realized that PH had just become my excuse: I said that no, she wasn't, but actually, that I had to call her because she was sort of ill (GI-tract issues), so I politely excused myself and went into one of the bedrooms and made a fake cellphone call, which I always think are sort of fun to make.

I emerged from the bedroom, having made my fake phone call to PH, and wandered over to the bar area.  Amanda descended on me (I don't know her well, but I've always liked Amanda, and she does descend: I don't recall a time, including the first time I met her, when she didn't greet me by descending on me, if that makes sense) and asked if I was finding what I was looking for, and I said that I'd found some club soda, which was all I needed, and she took me by the arm and turned herself and me away from the bar and all of a sudden there's PC Guy, and the three of us have just been formed, by Amanda, into a little conversation group.

Amanda introduces me to PC Guy and says to him, "so are you going to tell Steve whom you're going to see at the Garden next week???"  This was friendly ribbing, I could see.  PC Guy made dismissive noises and sort of tried to wave her off, but she was having none of it and supplied the answer herself: "Barry Manilow!!!" -- and then Amanda smooched PC Guy on the cheek and PC Guy sort of blushed.  Barry Manilow???  PC Guy tells me that actually this will be his eighty-third Manilow show, that Manilow is the most charismatic stage performer he's ever seen, that he'd spent a summer several years ago being what he called a "Barryhead," where he followed Manilow around from city to city and show to show.  His unfiltered enthusiasm for a performer whom many people (I'm one of them) consider to be sort of a joke was infectious.  Within about three minutes, he'd asked me if I wanted to go to the show with him, and I don't really care if you believe me or not, but I'm going -- we're going, PC Guy and his girlfriend and I, and PH if she wants to go -- next Wednesday.

Then, this: "But when Manilow isn't in town?  Which is most of the time, obviously?  Nude hang gliding."  Nude hang gliding -- I mean, you've seen this guy, of course, in the ads: does he look like a nude hang glider to you?  I'm not sure what nude hang gliders are supposed to look like, actually -- not like PC Guy, though, I'm pretty sure.  But what do I know.  Again, PC Guy's unfettered enthusiasm takes over.  I ask who goes with him; he says it's a lot of people (mostly guys but a few women) from his current job (he works in payroll at some insurance company in Midtown), and friends of those people, and friends of his.  And now he's describing it ("The rush -- it's just like, this rush -- plus you don't have any, you know, clothes on!!") and again his enthusiasm is infectious, and again, I don't care if you believe me or not when I say that I'm going nude hang gliding with him and his friends at the end of July.

And it turns out that Manilow and nude hang gliding are not PC Guy's only passions.  There is also the collecting of doilies (and an emerging interest in learning how to make his own); there is also origami, and his "online origami" concept.  And there is polka: now he's talking about a "polka convention" he went to last year, and describing this spontaneous polka-thing that happened on the last night of the convention, and I realize that it's not Amanda and PC Guy and I having a conversation amongst ourselves anymore; like twenty people have sort of gathered around to hear PC guy's polka story.  I have the feeling several of them have heard it before, but the ones who have are enjoying it as much as the ones who haven't; as much as I am.

And I notice, looking over PC Guy's shoulder, that Mac Guy is in a far-off corner of this large loft watching TV by himself (with a whole tray of artichoke dip, which he is eating with a spoon, as if it were breakfast cereal).

Screengrab of "Get a Mac" ad from here.