Babble On & Off

Mr. Irresponsible isn't naive. I know that business doesn't really see me as an individual, a living person with cares and sorrows and an itch between the shoulder blades that I just can't reach. Business sees me as a source of raw nourishment, much as the alien invaders saw Earthlings in "War of the Worlds," or as teenagers view their parents. And this is okay with me. For example, I have no beef with the fact that the people who beam TiVo service into my home consider me a unit of data, which exists in part to be aggregated and sold to advertisers. Does this really harm me in any material way? I mean, TiVo and I are a summertime thing. It's not like I carry a spiral notebook on which I've scrawled "Mr. Irresponsible-TiVo" and "Mr. I. TiVo" and "Mr. I. & T 4-ever." And should the day ever come when TiVo has to choose between me and, say, marginally better 4th-quarter pre-tax earnings, well, I know that'll be the day I see the last of TiVo. All I'm saying is, I'm a big boy. I can read the Terms of Service as well as anyone. 

Where business and I do part company is in its use of language. I don't understand why the people who speak for business insist on talking some ghastly hybrid of English and Fortran. Take this piece from today about TiVo's introduction of -- oh hell, who cares what it's the introduction of? Some new subscriber-parsing capability in their software or something. I think it allows users to click a key on their remotes and get instant access to product information. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to do it. You're not going to do it. Is there really anybody sitting home watching a time-shifted episode of "Six Feet Under" who actually thinks, "Say, I would like to be sent product information on the new Hypodermicon 6000 TransDermal Pudding Delivery System from ConGlomCo! Honey, hand me the remote!" No, of course not. What matters is the way TiVo's Level-4 PRbots describe their new gewgaw:

"We have seen the need to provide greater entry point to this advertising space ... to support enough advertisers concurrently," said Kimber Sterling, director of advertising and research sales.... "Advertising is a substantial growth area," Sterling said. "It is not a material revenue for us yet relative to our overall revenue picture."

Why do the people in press releases always talk like they've been struck by lightning? Is it some sort of badge of insidership, like a secret decoder ring? The English language, and by that I mean the off-the-rack version spoken by you and me and everybody we know, or at least by anybody you'd want to hang out with, was good enough for F. Scott Fitzgerald and Arthur Miller and Joseph Mitchell. It ought to be good enough for Kimber Sterling.

The good news here, of course, is that corruption of the language is pretty much the only large-scale corruption that business hasn't managed to pull off. Most people don't talk like PR drones. But Mr. Irresponsible is a purist about some things. I like my bourbon straight up and my English the same way. So the next time some yutz with an MBA and a Blackberry tries to talk to you about synergism, why not do as Mr. Irresponsible does: Smile pleasantly, nod agreeably and throw the switch in your brain that allows you to tune their babble out in favor of something more authentic. Me, I like an endless loop of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," which has the side benefit of making the inside of my head sound like a Daffy Duck cartoon. You feel free to go ahead and pick your own, though.

And We've Got Luckies on Draft

Mr. Irresponsible isn't in the habit of doling out compliments, as I believe they tend to make us logy and complacent. Still, there are exceptions. For example, I would very much like to shake the hand of the person who coined the word "logy." Man, that's a great word. And I'd give anything to meet the fine folks at Germany's impressively-named Nautilus GmbH Laboratoriumsbedar, the marketing geniuses behind nicotine-infused beer. The press release is a little hard to decipher, either because it wasn't drafted by English speakers or because the writer had been ducking into the test lab. But as far I can figure, the company and its US partners seem to be positioning NicoShot, each sixer of which contains the nicotine load of about two packs of filtered cigarettes, as "the world's first smoking-cessation beer." (This places it on a par with Lone Star, which I believe to be the first beer engineered to get people to stop drinking beer.)  There's a nice euphony to the phrase "world's first smoking-cessation beer," but it pales next to the magnificence of what follows: "NicoShot is cigarette satisfaction in a beer without the smoke." Can't you see that on a billboard?

Even taking into account the awe-inspiring inventiveness of the idea that you can wean yourself off smokes by drinking beer, the release isn't all gold. It has the usual weaselly, lawyer-parsed quibbling:

While NicoShot can lessen cravings, it is not a 'cure' for smoking. But it can help you make changes in your lifestyle without having to walk out of the bar for a quick smoke to deal with sudden withdrawal symptoms. Over time, when you are more comfortable being a nonsmoker, the use of nicotine beer can be reduced and then stopped.

"Stopped"? Are they nuts? Or, as they say around the break room at Nautilus GmbH Laboratoriumsbedar, verrückt? NicoShot is rich with malty greatness, if only for the time it promises to save us all. Think of it: How many precious seconds have you wasted fumbling for a smoke when you could have been drinking? Or, conversely, hoisting a beer mug when you could have been smoking? My own research indicates that for the average barfly, the figure is upwards of eleven hours per year -- hours that could potentially be devoted to the brisk, time-efficient practice of what we will now call "smoke-drinking," or simply "sminking™." And with the time thus saved, one might conceivably volunteer in one's community, brush up on a foreign language, whittle away at those pesky household chores, or simply better oneself by reading or studying the arts. I'm telling you, NicoShot is an absolute boon to mankind. The only potential wrinkle: Anybody who actually drinks the stuff seems likely to end up in a beer-and-nicotine haze so profound as to make the late Hunter S. Thompson look like Barney Fife.  But can't I dream? Shouldn't I dream? And when I awake, as we all must, somebody do me a favor: Get me a NicoShot. I've got me some sminking™ to do.

Reality Bites

Webster's defines "synergy" as "the dumb-ass melding of two things that were too wrong and awful to stay separate for very long." Case in point: The inevitable cross-pollination between reality TV and what Reuters calls "the '80s revival." The wire service is reporting that producer Mark Burnett ("Survivor," "The Apprentice") is joining forces with INXS, the Australian band best remembered for the hits "What You Need," "Kahlua, My Kahlua" and "Down The Boozer With Stan." (I may not have these exactly right, as they come from some notes my assistant Debbie hurriedly cribbed from the Internet.) The result: "Rock Star: INXS," a new series starting tonight on CBS and continuing for 39 episodes over a grueling 13 weeks. The show is built around the band's search for a new lead singer, which they need because original frontman Michael Hutchence killed himself in 1997, despondent over the discovery that his career had been a lot more interesting thirty years earlier, when Jim Morrison had it. According to a press release, the band's surviving members decided to go ahead with the series now because they "need money really badly," and also because Burnett did that pinwheel thing with his eyes and hypnotized them into thinking it wasn't repellent. And say, did somebody say "repellent"? Because the show will be hosted by semi-pro freak show Dave Navarro, who used to be a rock star himself until he decided that working even that hard was a drag, and the bizarrely pneumatic Brooke Burke, who, whatever it is she does, she's now doing it here! Wow! Now how much would you pay? No, I mean to avoid having to watch this. Seriously, how much would you pay? Because I'm cashing in some bonds.

(Hang on, this just in from the "Rock Star: INXS" web site: Burke currently stars in EA Games' hot new video game "Need for Speed: Underground 2" where she plays Rachel Teller, a street-wise adrenaline junkie who runs an elite, underground street racing circuit. For her performance, she received a Spike TV Video Game Award for Best Performance by a Human-Female. I'm not making this up, because I'm not this funny.)

Look, Mr. Irresponsible has done some terrible things for money. I don't want to go into details, because honestly they're a little hazy, but I'm pretty sure I remember playing Russian Roulette for cash in the back room of a Cambodian gambling joint.  That's a summer session at Andover compared to "Rock Star: INXS." Can these guys really be so desperate that they actually need to do this? Don't they have families they can put the arm on?

Luckily, there's a life lesson here: There is no shame in losing one's fortune -- particularly if one has gained it in a pleasant fashion, like, say, being a rock star, and dispensed of it in the pursuit of mindless good times, like, say, a rock star. There's a reason why the phrase "Easy come, easy go" has been cited in languages dating all the way back to Aramaic. Where one loses the good will of one's community is in kvetching unattractively about the loss. And make no mistake, that's what "Rock Star: INXS" is: a 13-week, 39-episode kvetch, a whine for attention writ large, a mooching electronic panhandle. This sort of thing not only demeans the supplicant, it plants the seeds of psychic stress in the audience, reminding them as it does of good fortune's fleeting fragility. It is, as an act, anti-social. So if you find yourself fallen from the Olympus of free spending and palmy times, do your society a favor. Don't go on TV. Do the right thing: Go away someplace remote -- someplace like Australia, say -- and take to the oldies circuit. There are worse ways to scratch out a living. Although, to be candid, I can't think of them just now. Still, you see my point.   

London Calling

American singer Omarion, who is in London but was uninjured in today's terrorist attacks, has issued a press release asking for prayers that he remain uninjured. I wouldn't have believed it either, but here it is, via PR Newswire. The release is short and sweet, untroubled as it is by any mention of the three dozen people known so far to have been killed, or the several hundred who were hurt.

Mr. Irresponsible doesn't have a comment on this, because some breaches of manners -- or, for that matter, of humanity -- speak for themselves. I did want to alert you, though, that if you hear something that sounds like grumbling under your feet tonight, it's Satan trying to figure out how to clear a little room in Hell for one more jackass pop star and his toadying PR reps.

UPDATE, July 8: In fairness, because Mr. Irresponsible is all about the fairness, Omarion is claiming that he never sanctioned yesterday's press release, and that he has no connection with the PR firm Reuters identified as its source. This doesn't exactly square with information on the firm's web site about an Omarion record release party held in May. So it seems fair to assume that the firm did at one point work for the singer, and that as of yesterday at least one person there was under the impression they still did. Semi-mysteriously, however, the firm's site seems to have been taken down since I looked at it yesterday, and its URL (do I have that right -- "URL"?) now points to Yahoo. But Google -- do I have that right? "Google"? -- does have a cached version of the site's front page, containing the item about the Omarion party.  So you be the judge. Or don't. What do I care? This much I do know: There is in all likelihood one very-recently-fired junior PR drone wandering around Los Angeles today, wondering in a shell-shocked fashion if it's too late to apply to law school. 

And Tell The Pepper Grinder To Keep It Down

An Italian company has announced plans to market a "talking wine label" -- in reality a small chip which would be implanted in wine bottles to dispense advice on "how to enjoy the wine, where it came from, everything you'd hear from a sommelier," says Tuscan entrepreneur Daniele Barontini. (Reuters fails to note whether Barontini twirled the tips of his walrus mustache and added an enthusiastic "Atsa-nice!", but let's just assume for the moment that he did.)

Mr. Irresponsible has heard some knuckleheaded ideas in his time, but this one takes the biscotti. Consider this: Wine is a social pleasure. Imagine the warm, glowy feeling you get from a nice bottle of Chianti. Imagine settling in with a group of companions to discuss the affairs of the day. Now imagine that the half-empty bottle adorning the table just won't shut up. It's "I can't believe you served me with that fish" and "Oof, I'm feeling a little corky tonight" and "Whoa, easy there, Guzzly; how about you gimme a nice sip once in a while?" Oh, you'll try to be polite and go on with your conversation, but the damn thing just will not be ignored. You think a Cabernet is assertive? Wait'll you sit down across from a talking '97 Rufina. Before long it'll be singing Neopolitan folk songs and leering at your date. And then, brother, you might as well signal for the waiter, because the evening is over. And don't expect the wine bottle to chip in, either. Oh no, you can count on one thing: The wine bottle will go dead, stony quiet when the check comes. It'll be humming innocently and pretending to be absorbed in the export information at the bottom of its label, and if that doesn't work it'll start whistling and craning its neck to study the ceiling tiles. You might as well just sign the check and head for the valet stand.

The prospects for this sort of thing are frightening to think about. You'll have Australian Shirazes bellowing out "Waltzing Matilda" in every liquor store, and German ice wines wheedling "Ach, is it cold in here or is it me?" Do you want to live in a world where every trip to the wine cellar is like some crazed, babbling Model UN? Not me, baby. So the next time you're presented with a glimmering gizmo and a New Age huckster who promises it'll change the very life you live, do as Mr. Irresponsible does and apply a simple test. Ask yourself this question: Is it likely to increase or decrease the amount of time you spend each day wanting to murder someone? If you can truthfully answer the latter -- as with, say, TiVo, or a really good toaster oven -- then by all means knock yourself out. But if you can't, run as far and fast as you can in the opposite direction.  And let the microchips fall where they may.

ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!

It isn't always pretty, the work of a professional advice columnist. It requires me to cast a cool, appraising eye on the human condition, and sometimes what I see isn't very nice. Take the criminal justice system. I think we all know that the conditions under which convicted felons serve their time can be brutally harsh and repressive, and sometimes the cri du coeur that comes from such a person rends the air so painfully that I just can't turn away. (Also, I have a chronic back condition which makes it awkward for me to turn to the left, so cris du coeur that come at me from the right tend to get my attention.) It's just such a case that caught my eye this morning. Stock swindler Martha Stewart finds her house arrest "hideous," and complains that the electronic bracelet she's forced to wear on her ankle irritates the skin.

Gosh. Where to begin?

Let me sketch the outlines of Stewart's confinement, as I'm not sure her case made the papers.  Stewart is restricted to a cramped 153-acre estate in poverty-stricken Bedford, NY, where the median house value is $447,000 and median income is a bottom-scraping $100,053. This is according to City-data.com, which also notes that in 2001, the last year for which crime data are available, the mean streets of Bedford were wracked by murders numbering in the no digits. There are six structures on the property, which cost Stewart $16 million in 1990, and at least two of those have been reported to be "drafty." Stewart is forced to remain within the estate's old stone walls (only some of which, according to USA Today, have been "spruced up") for all but 48 hours a week. Which means, according to the crushing logic of penological math, that assuming Stewart's driver spends two hours a day shuttling her to and from her offices in Manhattan, and that she spends from 10 to 3 every weekday browbeating her underlings, she only has six hours left to get out and brutalize the local merchants on Saturday, and seven to catch a movie and some lunch in the village on Sunday.

Have we all gone nuts? Is she kidding? There are weeks when Mr. Irresponsible doesn't get out of his PJs at all, and this biddy is pitching a fit because she only has enough time in her average week of unspeakable privilege to, say, drive non-stop from New York to Las Vegas?* And a respected wire service -- or, in this case, the Associated Press -- actually prints it? As if it were news? 

Once again Mr. Irresponsible is forced to crib from James L. Brooks' "Broadcast News," a movie that had a good deal to say about keeping one's humanity in the workplace. "What do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams?" asks Tom Grunick, the impossibly blessed anchorman. Aaron Altman, the correspondent who is drowning in his own decency, answers succinctly: "Keep it to yourself."  And apply a little Lubriderm to that place where the electronic bracelet chafes your ankle.

____________________________________________________

*Mr. Irresponsible has done this, and doesn't recommend it.

Can You Hear Me Now?

A magazine editor I know described the best thing about skydiving this way: "For a few minutes," he said wistfully, a tone coming into his voice some men use in describing the long-ago summer when they first experienced love, "I knew nobody could get me on the phone." This is why I don't own a cell phone: There are moments when I want to be absolutely inaccessible. In fact, given my general nature and the distrustful relationship between me and the rest of the species, I probably have many more of those moments than the average person. In fact, hang on -- I'm having one now!

I'm back.

The point is, you won't see Mr. Irresponsible riding the escalator at the mall, yammering loudly into a small hunk of plastic about his plans for the weekend. It isn't only that I don't wish to be reached when I'm riding the escalator at the mall, or, for that matter, the fact that I don't much care for the mall. It's also that there's an implicit assumption in this act which violates every tenet of good manners -- the assumption that one's every thought is so compelling that it needs to be broadcast to the immediate vicinity. This is the purest kind of narcissism. The vast majority of our thoughts during the day are for office use only. I'll sometimes find myself thinking "I wonder what ever happened to that guy who used to play the piano on the Dean Martin Show -- what was his name, Ken something?" Or "This gum doesn't have any flavor left. I better get rid of it pretty soon. I'll keep chewing it in the meantime, though." Or "Hey, that thing looks like that other thing I saw that time!" Do you see what I mean? You don't care about these thoughts. I barely care about them myself. But the average person with a cell phone seems to feel that the capability to express his inner monologue somehow equals an imperative to do so... and that means imposing it on anyone unfortunate enough to be in earshot. (There is a corollary to this: People who talk on cell phones in crowded public spaces invariably do so at decibel levels approaching those of the average leaf blower.)

With that as background, I've been troubled over the last 24 hours to read two wire stories describing new cell phone-based stranger-disturbing technologies. The first will enable subscribers to watch vintage Looney Tunes cartoons on the screens of their mobile handsets. Forget for a moment  the grave disservice this does to the memory of animators like Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, who poured endless hours of craft into each hand-inked frame of their seven-minute creations.  Here's a conversation I bet never happened:

Jones: "Man, I sure do hope people get to watch choppy broadcasts of these things on 2-by-2-inch screens someday!"
Avery: "You bet! Especially while they're driving!"

No, the real insult here is that the people offering the service don't actually intend for anyone to enjoy the cartoons at all -- they're simply being offered as one more shiny thing to mesmerize a back seat full of noisy kids into simmering down. "Industry observers," without whom Reuters would just have to stop writing entirely, have apparently dubbed this the "pass-back" phenomenon. ("Industry observers" just love the hell out of dubbing things, don't they?) In the UK, meanwhile, mobile users will soon be able to enjoy a phone-based version of Etch-a-Sketch. Which is good, because driving in London isn't terrifying enough -- you need that little extra soupçon of thrills you get from the guy behind you trying to draw a horsie with the "4" and "7" keys while maneuvering a huge Vauxhall sedan right up your tailpipe.

Mr. Irresponsible is no Luddite. I own a giant plasma TV, several Kevlar vests and the world's most powerful blender. But there ought to be a limit to the encroachment of technology, and it ought to be right at the margins of what I call the ZoPS™, or "Zone of Personal Selfishness." This is a theoretical space in which a person is entitled to be free of any real or imagined disturbances.  Everyone's ZoPS™ is constituted differently; mine is quite enormously large, comprising an area equal to the distance from my wet bar to the far side of the PGA Tour golf course on which I make my lavish yet tasteful home. Yours may well be smaller. But you have one and you are entitled to respect within its limits, and freedom from every yahoo with a Motorola flip phone and a tinnitus-inducing version of "Let's Get It Started" for a ring tone.  You are well within your rights to demand that respect of any person rude enough to violate your ZoPS™. And when he waves you off, as he is sure to do because he is deeply contemplating the tiny bowling game or teensy NFL highlights or minuscule unabridged version of "How The West Was Won" displayed on the screen before him, it is your right to drop him with a short right to the kidneys, shatter his kneecaps with a good swift kick and stomp the offending cell phone into the turf. Whatever you do, though, don't descend to his level of rudeness. When he moans that he's hurt and needs a doctor, by all means oblige him. Direct him politely to the nearest pay phone.   

Announcing The Tom Cruise CrazyWatch

Mr. Irresponsible hates to flog a dead horse, but he also hates to jump off a living horse when it's giving him the ride of his life. So today's Tom Cruise story -- in which the tiny superstar breezily answers a question that's stumped science for generations, and then spikes the ball by calling a German reporter "arrogant" -- left me a little puzzled. On the one hand, I do appreciate the opportunity to draw moral lessons from Cruise's increasingly nutty and mean-spirited behavior; on the other, there are other things in the news, right? I mean, right? There must be. So I've decided on a small compromise. Starting today there will be no further items about Cruise or fiancee Katie Holmes, whom he has apparently had surgically attached to his right cheek. Instead, I've added a sidebar to track new sightings of Cruise in the wild.  Enjoy!

Grace in victory

Mr. Irresponsible has, for more than 20 years now, plumbed the very depths of human dysfunction.  (And believe me, the depths of human dysfunction need some plumbing.) So Mr. Irresponsible isn't easily stunned. Mr. Irresponsible knows the score, he's been around the block, he's seen some things. But Mr. Irresponsible has never, ever seen anything like the statement Michael Jackson's put up on his web site.

It isn't that you expect quiet good taste from the man who built Neverland. That would be unrealistic. Wouldn't you think, though, that after a protracted trial in which, acquittal or no, his reputation was dinged seemingly beyond repair, a guy would think, Okay, well, time to putter quietly in the garden for awhile and regroup. Or Maybe I'll finally get around to painting the garage. Or Man, those New Yorkers have really been piling up around here -- time to stack 'em up by the old easy chair and have a nice read! But that guy wouldn't be Michael Jackson... and darn it, we just wouldn't want him to be, would we? No, the Michael we want is the one who constantly redefines the term Big Crazy, the one who exuberantly dashes our dwindling hopes that maybe this traveling circus of celebrity and jurisprudence and journalism will just quietly pull up stakes and slip out of town.  And that's the Michael we get on his website, in full, eye-gouging, bandwidth-hogging Flash animation.

The introductory fanfare, which makes the music they play at the opening of the Olympics sound like a kazoo solo, is only the beginning. Then -- wait for it -- yes! It's the montage of "Great Moments in The History of Mankind Which Previously Did Not, But Now Do, Include The Acquittal of Michael Jackson"! You'll stare in horror as Jackson compares his acquittal to the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr.! You'll gasp in frank disbelief as Jackson compares his acquittal to the fall of the Berlin Wall! You'll reach for something heavy as Jackson compares his acquittal to Nelson Mandela's release from jail!  (Lemme see, what was Mandela in jail for again?... I can't remember, exactly, because right at the moment I'm being pummeled into insensibility by the quick cutting and relentless pacing of this Flash thing I'm seemingly unable to stop watching. But whatever it was, I'm sure it wasn't a bigger injustice than what The Man did to poor Michael Jackson... What? No, I'm afraid I've lost the ability to remember anything that happened to me before the beginning of this animation, which is now actually seeping into my brain and wiping out my childhood.)

Fortunately, there's a lesson here. It's in the form of a simple "DO and DON'T" formula, and it applies to even those among us who don't live on vast Central Coast ranches with private zoos and amusement rides and a secret underground lair stuffed with death rays and ex-Staasi hitmen and a crack cadre of the deadliest female Ninjas the world has ever known. (I'm just assuming.)  The lesson is this:

Life is capricious, and frequently unjust. So if you should be fortunate enough to hit the karmic Lotto, in whatever way, shape or form it applies to you...

DO grab your hat, button up your overcoat and head out to enjoy the second chance the cosmos have dealt you. You may even, if you so choose, issue a cheery "So long, suckers!" as you glide on out the door.

DON'T hang around buttonholing strangers in the street and haranguing them about about how unfairly you were almost treated.  The life of the average citizen is as studded with real unfairness and random misfortune as a tasty cinnamon bun is with delicious raisins. All that post-game yammering about the historic scale of the injustice that really, no fooling, came this close to happening to you...? It's simply unattractive. So take the great big bus pass the Fates have given you and use it to go away and quit bothering people.

See Cruise Implode

Mr. Irresponsible hates to wax his own car, but Thursday's Tom Cruise/Matt Lauer slapfight provides a neat illustration of the kind of overreaching I warned against in my post about "Fitting The Black Hat."  (Video is here. Skip ahead to about the eight-minute mark to get to the good stuff.) Cruise made a critical miscalculation in picking Lauer as his Punch-Me Clown; people tend to like Lauer, or at least they think they do, in the way people tend to think they know something about the true natures of the celebrities they see on TV. They like his easygoing nature and the menschy way he didn't try to hide the encroachment of his male-pattern baldness. They like the big-brothery kick he seems to get out of co-anchor Katie Couric, even as she sinks and sinks into the death grip of that gooey fake empathy that's now de rigeur on the morning shows. In choosing Lauer to scold for his "ignorance" and "glibness," Cruise made amateur mistake number one, as enumerated here just two days ago: He failed to fit the black hat on somebody who is less appealing than he is. That "whoosh" you heard was all the remaining air going out of Cruise's rapidly deflating regular-guy reputation. Sparring peevishly with the amiable Lauer, who wisely refused to take the bait, it was Cruise who came off looking silly, uninformed and mean. Tom. Tom. Didn't I try to tell you?