Herculodge

Is the Wrist Watch an Obsolete Timepiece in an Age of Ubiquitous Time?

Responding to my hyper-masculine, rhapsodic praise of the Nautica Ocean 50 Chronograph, Ed Strnad writes:

"I think wrist watches had their day. Now they are quaint and superfluous. No one under 25 wears one. Every cellphone tells the time, which is now the younger set's default time-piece, as well as your PC, radio, toaster, TV, car, etc etc etc. Who needs a chunky klunky thing around their wrist anymore?"

 My take is that the watch is superfluous as a timepiece indeed. But it is a sartorial add-on. One can dress down in jeans and a t-shirt and give their look "pop" with a striking watch. When it comes to fashion style takes precedence over function. 

We May Thwart Identity Thieves from Stealing Our Identity, But They Still Steal Our Time

Your back aches after stooping over your paper shredder for hours as you turn all your personal papers with your identity numbers into confetti in the service of protecting your identity. After an hour, you still have a closet full of tax returns from the last 10 years. They need to be shredded, soon than later, since your closet is bursting over. That'll take you another several hours. Yeah, you've repelled the thieves from stealing your identity. But your time--like your documents--is going down the shredder chute.

We are a nation well stocked with industrial grade paper shredders and we spend a huge chunk of our waking hours shredding away our lives so that insidious predators won't steal our identity. And our wasted time and money doesn't stop there. Firewalls, anti-virus software, encryption codes, patches . . . welcome to the Internet Age.

Computer Nerds Turn Paradise Into Lord of the Flies

What happens when you attract a bunch of anti-social, emotionally-arrested computer addicts to an apartment development that promises to be the Holy Grail of Bandwidth Speed? What happens when this apartment development becomes the Womb of Existence? The answers to these questions are laid out in Katy Vine's masterful article "Love and War in Cyberspace," published in the Texas Monthly.

Baby Your Child at Your Own Risk

Do you micromanage your children, accompanying them to job interviews, writing their compositions, doing their homework, coddling them with safety equipment and anti-bacterial ointments every time they take two steps off your property? You're raising a wimp and your wimpy child, soon to be a reflection of your own narcissism, will impose his or her noxious behavior on the rest of us. If you think this is cool, it's not. Read A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting by Hara Estoff Marano.

This narcissistic parent who obsesses over managing every granule of his or her child's existence must be an epidemic. For as Marano's book hits the book stores, so does another book dealing with the narcissistic parent, Carl Honore's Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting.

I've heard both authors do radio interviews in the last month and it's striking how identical their "hyper-parenting" stories and anecdotes are. Please take heed from these timely polemics and spare yourself, and the rest of us, from the obnoxiousness of a wimpy, coddled child.

If You Lose Your Desired Weight, the Weight-Loss Clinic Is Free.

Dr. Dean Edell reported today that there is a weight-loss clinic that charges $10,000. You get a full refund if you lose your desired weight. If not, the clinic keeps the money. I assume the clinic is confident that the failure rate is high enough to keep their business profitable. I would be uncomfortable using a service that needs a significant percentage of its clients to fail in order to stay in business.

The Unexamined Talk Radio Host Isn’t Worth Listening To

Like it or not, your radio host is a reflection of you—your tastes, your values, your sensibility.

If you listen to slovenly hedonists who sound like Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is presumably the prerequisite for getting a job at 97.1 FM, you’re probably a disaffected slacker looking for people to affirm your lizard-eyed ennui. 

If you listen to Tom Leykis, you’re probably one of those dudes who feels that he is an okay guy embattled by the opposite sex who, for reasons beyond his control, inflict him with the most irrational punishments.  Constantly victimized by women, this self-pitying misogynist sees no reason to look inside himself for his abysmal bitterness and loneliness.

If you listen to self-righteous, chest-thumping AM talk show hosts who rant about how our society is going down the drain because outsiders, traitors, and misguided do-gooders are in our midst, you’re probably poised to grab a pitchfork and torch and join the mob as it chases down the scapegoat de jour.

If you listen to NPR, there’s a good possibility you make compost, mulch and have a sustainable organic garden. Additionally, you may find that you have a lot in common with the people described in David Brooks' Bobos In Paradise.

If you listen to 103.1's Steve Jones (former guitarist for the Sex Pistols), who sounds like he's nursing a hangover and seems to be mumbling from a soiled bed, you probably have an unhealthy obsession with being cool.

If you listen to Danny Bonaduce, you're probably a narcissist, a masochist, or both.

You and your radio host become more intense versions of each other over time because you both exist in an intractable symbiosis. Your host becomes you because you can’t get enough of yourself. And you become more of your host because your host gives you a sense of identity and belonging in a world that is becoming more and more impersonal.

So what about me, then? Am I immune to these unsavory symbiotic relationships? No, I am not. But I have developed a healthy irritation to most hosts so that I don’t feel a close bond with them. Hosts are either too perky, too pompous, too self-satisfied, too languid, or too something for me to drink their Kool-Aid. I listen as an outsider, not as a member of the club.

Two Televisions in the Living Room Save a Crumbling Marriage

The other night I was walking my dog Gretchen around the block. As my dog squatted on a well-manicured lawn, I could not help but notice an old couple watching TV in their living room. There was not one but two televisions in the living room. For the wife loved her soap operas and the husband loved his sports. And the husband used headphones so that his program would not interfere with his wife’s, nor hers with his. The televisions illuminated their cavernous living room. Their eyeglasses reflected the TV’s flickering blue images as they sat reclined in their lumpy Barcaloungers. They remained motionless like wax figures. Drool shined on their double chins.

In front of them were TV trays with a metropolis of prescription drugs for a multitude of sedentary-related ailments. Chinese take-out refuse was strewn on their front porch. Puddles of bright orange congealed grease mottled the front patio. A stale, vaguely rancid halitosis from their living room wafted in my direction. I listened to their dryer humming and I smelled cloying fabric softener. It then occurred to me that the couple had been sitting in this manner for over three decades.

I had heard through neighborhood gossip that the couple used to always fight over what TV shows to watch until their marriage counselor suggested putting two TVs in the living room. The counselor's suggestion seems to have worked, for the couple has stopped fighting and their marriage seems intact. Whether or not the marriage is thriving and buzzes with the energy of emotional growth and intimacy is another matter.

For Too Many Americans, Marriage Is Little More Than a Convalescence from the Rigors of Single Life

I was recently talking to a British woman, now married and living in America, and she complained that when acquaintances saw her in a bar they feared her marriage was on the rocks. She was appalled by their assumption. In fact, she said, she had gone to the bar simply to talk among her friends, a pastime that is quite common in England. In America, however, many married couples don’t really have friends. The bar is a place to sell ourselves while using every trick up our sleeve. Married life, then, is a place to convalesce from all those exhausting single years of self-promotion and predation. We seem to be a nation of extremes, either promoting ourselves with all our resources or retreating into the cave of domesticity while living our final years in withdrawal and enervation.

Narcissism and Indulgence Equal the Death of Common Sense

Yesterday I heard on Larry Mantle's Air Talk (89.3 KPCC) that there are laws in the works to make it illegal for drivers to have dogs and cats roaming freely in their cars because of the obvious potential dangers. So today I hear on the morning news that a woman crashed her car into a power pole after her cat, sitting on her lap, scratched her.

In a society built on common sense and a sense of accountability to others, these laws would be unnecessary. But as people become more and more narcissistic and indulgent, local, state, and federal governments will have to play the role of nanny issuing correctives for a population suffering stunted emotional growth. Therefore, we can expect these types of laws to grow like weeds.

The theme of a nation that never grew up because it decided that adulthood is a scam and a dud and that the best life of all is one characterized by the indulgences and narcissism of teenage life is well explained in Joseph Epstein's essay, "The Perpetual Adolescent" and in Tom Perrotta's novel Little Children.

I'm Sorry to See Stephen A. Smith Leave ESPN Radio

On ESPN Radio, Stephen A. Smith announced that today is his last day. You can read about it in NY Daily News. To me, Stephan A. Smith made for great radio, full of visceral fire, fair-minded, smart, candid, spontaneous. He never grandstanded without being a bit tongue-in-cheek because he was smart and gracious enough not to take himself too seriously. But he treated serious topics, such as race in America, with appropriate seriousness and evenhanded intelligence.

I fear ESPN prefers the corporate-pleasing bland radio personalities and Smith was too brash. I think ESPN is going in the wrong direction. Airing before Stephen A. Smith's now defunct show is Mike Tirico, a smart decent guy whom I respect, but I don't think Tirico's vanilla personality has the punch for good radio. I gave his show a month and all I heard was pleasant chatter. Good radio has to have some sharp drama and psychological intensity without resorting to hate-mongering or Raptor Theater.

Stephen A. Smith is one of those personalities who, like another favorte of mine Dan Patrick, is so smart that I could listen to him talk about topics other than sports. While there is some consolation that Smith will still be on TV, television is not the same as radio in terms of the connection between the speaker and the listener. I will greatly miss the candid Stephen A. Smith and can only hope he returns to radio sooner than later.