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Entertainment Roundtable: What is the most embarrassing thing on your iPod or smartphone? [The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.]
[September 19, 2014]

Entertainment Roundtable: What is the most embarrassing thing on your iPod or smartphone? [The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.]


(Oregonian (Portland, OR) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 19--Welcome to the Entertainment Roundtable, a new weekly feature in which we throw out a question to our entertainment writers and readers for riveting discussion. Do you have a question you want us to answer? Send it in to [email protected].



Welcome to the inaugural Entertainment Roundtable! To kick things off, we'll head straight for your personal technology. Apple has been dominating headlines lately with the announcement of the iPhone 6, but what many looked over was the quiet death of the iPod classic.

I remember loading my iPod Mini and several iPod classics with weird music and videos, many of which are thankfully locked away in the unreachable memories of those ancient devices. The world has long since moved past the iPod, forcing people to store their embarrassing media in an even more vulnerable place -- their smart phones.


With that in mind, entertainment crew, I want to know: What is the most embarrassing thing on your iPod or smartphone? Kristi Turnquist My little Nano (aka iPod Junior) has traveled many miles with me, filling my ears with music while I run, walk and generally wander around aimlessly. I've been loading it up for the past few years with tunes that sounded like good ideas at the time. Really, they did. But now I've got a playlist that's not just eclectic, but suffering from multiple personality disorder. Eminem and Ethel Merman? Got 'em. Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg's "SNL" duet "(Blank) in a Box" and Enya? Oh, yeah. Meryl Streep singing "Dancing Queen" from the "Mamma Mia" soundtrack and the '80s cheeseball, "Der Kommissar" by After the Fire? Unfortunately, yes. Somebody stop me! Samantha Bakall Oh jeez, where to start? Besides my constantly growing Christmas music playlist which I may or may not have already tuned into, there's Candy Crush. I haven't played in months (I swear!), but I can't bring myself to delete it yet. Don't look at me for help though. I won't send you any lives. At least I deleted 2048 and Super 2048 this morning (Have you reached 8192 yet?). And I've pared my pug picture collection down considerably.

Grant Butler In the recent movie "Begin Again," Keira Knightley's character is shy about sharing her iPod because she says it's loaded with guilty pleasures. It turns out her idea of a guilty pleasure is Stevie Wonder. I mean, come on! Stevie Wonder is one of the musical geniuses of the 20th century. You want guilty pleasures, take a look at my Christmas music playlist, which has more than 600 songs, which is a serious cry for help. It's got your mix of legit classics and carols. But it also has holiday songs by Hilary Duff, Hanson and Josh Groban, which is about as embarrassing as it gets. But at least there's variety, which you certainly don't get from those stupid all-Christmas radio stations that play the same 20 songs over and over.

David Greenwald As a critic, I am anti-embarrassment: if it does no harm and makes you happy, you should celebrate its existence in your life/Netflix account/Apple device. But if I had to be ashamed of one thing on my iPhone, it would be the status of my Nike+ running app, which says I've jogged exactly once in the month of September. Not so great. My pedometer app says I walked 13 miles this week, though, so maybe I'll live to see 2015 after all.

Jillian Cohan Martin My iPhone music app contains almost exclusively free downloads from Starbucks. I never bothered to sync it to my full mp3 library because I listen mostly to streaming music. That isn't horrible in itself (though a little embarrassing for an entertainment editor), but if I forget to lock the phone before putting it in my pocket it winds up blasting Miguel's "Adorn" right when I'm headed to a staff meeting or trying to put my 7-month-old baby to sleep.

Jamie Hale I got a shiny new MacBook for my freshman year of college, and in the long afternoons of procrastination I found the music-making program GarageBand. I spent the better part of a month toying around with the pre-loaded synth pads and beats, furiously trying to keep perfect time with the tapping of the keyboard. The fruits of my labor came in the form of a single, fast-paced EDM track that for some reason I decided to title "Nocturnal Charlie." To this day it enjoys a chilly grave on my defunct iPod classic.

Janet Eastman Why oh why would I confess that I have a photo in my iPhone of me wearing beer booties, and that it makes me laugh and reminds me that even newsrooms funneling grim reports can be fun central? I have been working in newsrooms since high school and I can honestly say my life is better because I spend my days -- and sometimes nights and weekends and holidays -- with people who work really hard to know what's going on. Maybe our fashion sense is faulty -- really Bud booties? Why not some small crafted ale? But I wouldn't trade a day -- or this moment -- for anything else.

JoLene Krawczak I have an entire Pete Fountain album on my phone. I bought it when my mom died because he was her favorite. I don't why I didn't just buy her favorite Pete Fountain song "A Closer Walk with Thee." But when the songs come up on shuffle, I don't mind them.

___ (c)2014 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) Visit The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) at www.oregonian.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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