clontzville.com

The year is 1997. The Internet still starts with a capital letter and is accessed almost exclusively by dial-up. Macs are still beige. Titanic is predicted to be the biggest flop ever released.

Despite being a desperately broke journalism graduate student, I wanted to buy a cell phone. I was too cheap for the Motorola RAZR, which was the sex phone at the time, and Nokias were boring, if durable. I wanted something different and cool, expressive and fun, but also affordable. Something funky.

Into my lap fell the Sony CMZ-100 and it is, to this day, one of my favorite pieces of technology.

I mean, just look at it.

To get a sense of its deeply kooky form factor, you’ve got to imagine a Nokia-style candybar phone, but cut exactly in half across the horizontal center. For controls, you’ve got a clickable jog wheel in the corner and a small keypad with a few phone control buttons. A short, but multiline, screen. A dope pouch. And, the thing that made this weird little guy truly unique – a pivoting swing boom mic.

To get a sense of how the mic works, imagine a flip phone with everything removed from the bottom half except mic itself. It’s mounted on a small post that flips open and closed with a completely satisfying “thwok.” It’s one of the goofiest looking things that Sony ever made, and I absolutely loved it. The phone functioned as a fidget item, making it fun to snap the mic open and shut like a Star Trek tricorder. When I was talking on it, I imagined that I looked like some Wall Street somebody barking buy and sell orders, even though in reality I probably looked like King Dork ordering pizza for the sixth time that week.

They really don’t make phones like this one anymore. I kept it for a few years until other phones could, y’know, do interesting things like text or take blurry photos or play Snake. It was really just a phone, with very few other amenities except its unique look, but that was enough. You know the meme of the little girl, Cassie, from “Ant Man” where she’s holding a wretched stuffed bunny and she says “He’s so ugly, I love him!”?

That’s me and the CMZ-100. It’s impossible not to love.