I was on my way home a couple nights ago and I was feeling like nothing so I put my phone in shuffle mode (this is what I do when I don’t know what I want to listen to). I landed on Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.”

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio

A Nation turns it's lonely eyes to you

(Woo, Woo, Woo)

What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson

Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away.”

The ambiguous ending of the song being my favorite part doesn’t make me unique. It actually makes me just like everyone else. (I hate being just like everyone else… I only ate apples for lunch for the entire second semester of my senior year of high school just to be different.) Everyone that is interested in this song is most interested in the ending. These are the questions people asked themselves when hearing “Mrs. Robinson”: “Why is he asking where has he gone? Come to think of it, where has he gone? Why Joe DiMaggio?” I’m younger and didn’t experience this song when it first came out, but these are definitely the questions anyone who was interested in this song would’ve asked.

When DiMagio died in 1999, Paul Simon actually wrote about the time he met DiMaggio where he elaborated on the time he ran into DiMaggio who was perplexed at what he meant by the song. “A few years after ''Mrs. Robinson'' rose to No. 1 on the pop charts, I found myself dining at an Italian restaurant where DiMaggio was seated with a party of friends. I'd heard a rumor that he was upset with the song and had considered a lawsuit, so it was with some trepidation that I walked over and introduced myself as its composer. I needn't have worried: he was perfectly cordial and invited me to sit down, whereupon we immediately fell into conversation about the only subject we had in common. ''What I don't understand,'' he said, ''is why you ask where I've gone. I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial, I'm a spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank and I haven't gone anywhere.” I said that I didn't mean the lines literally, that I thought of him as an American hero and that genuine heroes were in short supply. He accepted the explanation and thanked me. We shook hands and said good night.”

Simon grew up in New York and is a die-hard Yankees fan, so it makes sense that he was writing this song and was also thinking to himself “Where the hell has Joe DiMaggio gone?” since DiMaggio had mostly disappeared from the spotlight in 1968 (when “Mrs. Robinson” was released). Above all, it fit nicely into the third and final hook of the song, capping off a great song that still exists in the culture today. When Simon said he didn’t mean the lines literally, that’s what he meant. The lines fit perfectly into the song so that’s the best explanation for why he asked the question. I’ve often found that great art is way less thought out than people think. You have an idea about something but once you start working on it whichever direction it takes you is the place you go.

This gets me to my point. The song after “Mrs. Robinson” in shuffle mode was “I Try” by Macy Gray. “I Try” was a hit in the truest sense of the word. But it was a hit in 1999 and I don’t know of anything she’s done in a long time so, talking to myself like a crazy person on the El (I know my role), I asked myself the only logical question one would ask in this situation. “Where have you gone Macy Gray?”

I started to speculate where Macy Gray had gone. Why do I not know anything she’s done in a long time? Is she hiding? Has she made peace with everything in her life so as to not have to make music anymore?

Some of you already know the answers to these questions. Maybe Macy Gray has done stuff in the public eye recently and I just haven’t heard about it. If this is all true, I’m in the same spot Paul Simon was but he still asked the question because it’s an appealing question to ask. Where have you gone Macy Gray, a nation (mostly just me) wishes you still would sing the tunes, woo woo woo. What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson, Macy Gray has left and gone away (probably not).

I’m less interested in where Macy Gray has gone, and where Joe DiMaggio went, and more interested in the alluring idea of asking the question. What I’m trying to say is that I don't like that we know too much about our larger-than-life figures; nobody is hiding (even if they want to be). It’s actually irritating that this whole piece can be answered by simply using Google. No trip to the library, no investigation with glasses and a cigar pipe. Just Google. Some might view this as a positive, but to me it’s disconcerting. One of the best scenes in Field Of Dreams is when Kevin Costner’s character (Ray Kinsella) is doing all the hard work and research to find out where James Earl Jones character (Terrance Man) is located. Nowadays, I wouldn’t be able to do that kind of research in a library to find a lost hero. I’d just Tweet at them. I don’t know whether Macy Gray has a Twitter account or not and I refuse to look because I’m 800 words deep in this baby and I won’t quit now. Also, my imagination concerning the life and times of Macy Gray would be ruined.

I wanted to write a piece abstractly speculating about what Macy Gray's life is like these days. This is not about research. This is about not researching because it’s more fun to imagine. I pictured her living in the south of France, picking daisies and singing with that beautiful raspiness she was famous for. I pictured her singing about finessing a love life while also having a passion for dandelions. This could surely be a broadway play, except for it can't be because of the internet. I picture Macy Gray as the type of gal to really like The Rugrats. I can't say this for a fact though because I could shortcut that thought and find out if it's true because the stupid internet has all the answers that aren't important.

I didn't do this piece because of the internet because the internet ruins everything. There's no fun in speculation anymore because of the internet. I had planned on writing a book titled "Reckless Speculation" with a bunch of anecdotes and ideas about famous people like Macy Gray who are out of the spotlight. They aren't in the consciousness of our lives, but that doesn't mean they're dead. I wanna pretend they're doing something and I wanna write about that but I can't because of the Internet. The Internet sucks. I hate the internet.

Here’s an excerpt from my amazing book that will never happen:

Now that Lil John isn't making club hits from heaven any longer, he's chilling on his porch drinking Bombay sapphire straight out of the bottle and talking to his pet Poodle he named "Bruiser."

But I can't do this because of the internet. The Internet feels like a positive for everyone but it feels like a negative for me. Although there’s a lot of things that have gotten better because of our advancement of technology, a lot of things have gotten worse. What I’m saying is this: I think we should’ve walked away from the blackjack table once we figured out polio. After we figured out polio, we should’ve agreed that it was the best that technology was ever going to make our lives without making them substantially more complex. To me, life is very complicated and seems to only get more complicated as time goes on. This might be just the natural human experience, but I’m going to blame it on technology because it’s more fun. Also because I’m skeptical of everything.

That skepticism has led me to this point: I’m the old man complaining about young people and their gadgets (the get-off-my-lawn type of guy). I don’t understand this new world and don’t like the extreme ways it's changing our lives (even if I didn’t like the way we were living before). My broad-minded skepticism is the lens I see the world through. That is, at least until I’m forced to wear the Google Glasses.

I have some questions about all this: How are we supposed to make up absurd facts or anecdotes on the spot to make a point??? You can't do that anymore. If I want to explain to people why I think Stevie Wonder probably (definitely) isn't blind, I actually have to give sound answers like all the women Stevie Wonder has been with look the same (aka he has a type; what kind of blind guy has a type?) Now, this is a sound point and any sentient creature would come to the conclusion after hearing that, that Stevie Wonder can definitely see. But not everyone is a sentient creature, so for these people, I have to go the extra mile to convince them.

If the advancement of technology after Polio didn’t happen and the stupid internet wasn’t around, if this was thirty years ago, I’d say that I actually was at a PF Changs where Stevie was eating and I saw him take off his glasses to make sure there weren't any peppers in his Beef Lo-mein. I took a photo and everything and I sent it to my local newspaper. They wouldn't do the story because it would be bad PR for them. Plus, they took the photo (savages). This would all undoubtedly be a lie. But is it a bad lie? No. It would be a lie to get to the truth, like when Lincoln said he wasn’t going to abolish slavery in states that already had it or when Obama said he wasn’t for gay marriage because he needed to say that to get elected. More importantly, would it make the night at the bar more fun to tell this bizarre story about Stevie Wonder actually having excellent vision? So crazy that it has to be true, right? Yes. No one could ever make something that crazy and intricate up...

...is what someone would've said theirty ago. Now they would go, "I know you're lying because you could've tweeted the photo and it would've went viral. Or I would've been able to find it on the internet somewhere."

The irony here is I never would’ve written this piece without the advancement of technology. I wouldn’t have had a portable music player (my iPhone), and if I didn’t have a portable music player I wouldn’t have had a shuffle mode that landed me on two completely different songs from completely different generations. If it wasn’t for the nerd who plugged in that specific algorithm for shuffle mode, I might’ve landed on Chingy’s 2003 hit, “Right Thurr” (Did I just call “Right Thurr” a hit? I did, but if you were in Mrs. Nolte’s 3rd grade class you would understand.) and this piece would’ve been about Chingy. “Where have you gone, Chingy?” doesn’t have a nice ring to it.

There’s no real way to conceptualize how we’d live today without the advancement of technology because it’s so central to how we live. To live in 2017 without the internet is to not live at all.

In conclusion, Macy Gray probably isn’t even gone, I still haven’t used Tinder yet, and technology has had some positive effects on our lives. But I stand by the larger idea of this piece; technology, although it’s probably a positive, feels like a negative to me. Mostly because it was quoted the other day to me that there’s only four phone booths left in Manhattan. By the time I graduate college in May, that number will likely be down to three. Phone booths are almost gone and I don’t like it.