There Is A Parallel Universe

Sometimes I think that young people are living in a different world.  We may share words and syntaxes with the young, but we're not really speaking the same languages.

Youngsters and oldsters communicating are like two travelers trying to rendezvous in some city that's equally foreign to both.  They're in the same vicinity and they know it (both of them are certain of being "downtown" (or "uptown" or "in Chinatown," as the case may be)), and they're both walking around on their cell phones describing to each other the various landmarks around them in an attempt to orient themselves to each other's position.  They're each viewing and describing the same skyscrapers and the same parks and the same plazas, but the one's descriptions never quite match those same landmarks' aspects that the other is witnessing at the time.  And so the travelers end up looping round past each other over and again. Eventually, the sights that they're seeing start to match the descriptions that they've been hearing, and a common topography begins to emerge in their minds.  If they can keep at it, they'll find each other.  (Hell, if they wander around long enough then they'll eventually just stumble onto each other.)  But often they run out of patience or minutes or both and they give up, and so they never end up meeting up and they must forever wonder what the other would have been like in person.

I don't mean to say that language is spacial.  I was just being metaphorical.  Of course, language is practiced in space and so there definitely can be geographical consequences to linguistic expression. For instance, people in the San Fernando Valley can't see the Hollywood sign, which makes them much less cool than the people in L.A, who bask in the sign's glamor.  Conversely, the tribe whose village is out of earshot of the war drums isn't obligated to participate in the war, which must be a pretty sweet situation.  But I don't think that the fact that language manifests itself in space makes language spacial per se.

I think that language is better thought of as a story, a chronology developed over time.  And the spot where one lands on this chronology's timeline factors indelibly into one's understanding of the narrative. And these landings are arbitrary, as random as the day when your dad impregnated your mom.  Yet our respective births and their timing, these mere historical accidents, frame and color our reality and our articulation of that reality.

For example, are you familiar with this new idiom: to "jump the shark"? It's been floating around for a decade or so, and it means to suddenly go from being lightly amusing and/or comedic to being profoundly serious and/or tragic.  The term usually applies to TV shows, but it can be used to describe any ongoing creative endeavor (e.g., an advertising campaign, a comic strip, a periodical).  Well, today at lunch one of my co-workers, about 25 years old, said that Taylor Swift had really jumped the shark with her new album, meaning that Swift's musicianship and songwriting skills had matured dramatically compared to her previous work and that Swift's newer songs' lyrics carried more poignancy and depth than the lyrics of her earlier songs.  I asked this co-worker if she'd ever heard of The Fonz and of his role in the first shark jump, the jump from which the phrase "jumping the shark" was born, and she had no idea whom I was talking about.  And so, as I shall explain below, I think that it's therefore fair to say that my co-worker didn't entirely know what she herself was talking about and that she was not in the best position to say whether or not Swift had truly jumped the shark.

Those of us over the age of forty will likely remember Arthur Fonzarelli from the sitcom Happy Days, which ran for about a decade through most of the 1970s and which was set in the 1950s.  The Fonz, as Arthur was known, was a sort of lone-wolfish, young hoodlum from the wrong side of the tracks, and the show revolved around his relationship with Ritchie, a white-bread high schooler from the 'burbs, and Ritchie's bourgeois parents (Mr. and Mrs. C).

I s'pose that maybe "hoodlum" is too harsh of a characterization because I don't remember ever seeing The Fonz actually committing any crimes, at least not any malum in se crimes, but I will say that his means of support were obscure at best.  He was a street tough, a shady sort of character, hangin' out on street corners at night with other tough guys, and who the heck really knows what's going on out there in the streets?  Who can say?  (I'm pretty sure they aren't just lickin' lollipops out there, though.)  Anyway, The Fonz would occasionally pick up some work here and there as a mechanic, but he mainly just hung out, riding around town on his motorcycle and picking up chicks at the juke joint and staring down cops and squares from behind his sunglasses.

Technically, I think that Fonzie was a "greaser."  I don't mean this pejoratively; it's just that he was of Italian descent, he maintained a menacing persona, and he slicked back his jet black hair.  Also, he almost always dressed in a greaserly fashion (black leather jacket, tee shirt, jeans, boots).

Fonzie was a heavy, or at least he seemed like one.  He intimidated almost everyone he met, and the implication was that his toughness was, at least partially, the result of a difficult childhood.  As an orphan growing up during the Depression and then the war, he must've seen some nasty, naivety-shattering scenes as he roamed the mean streets of Milwaukee.  The adversity that he'd faced and overcome lent Fonzie a certain gravitas, to be sure, but underneath his stern, badass demeanor was a strong current of joyful innocence.  Outwardly, The Fonz posed as a brooder, but deep down he loved his life, and his joie de vivre was irrepressible.  And in The Fonz' happy-go-luckiness lay his appeal (at least, for the first several seasons).  He and Ritchie would get into their share of jams and rumbles, no doubt about it, but we always knew that everything would come to a happy, light-hearted conclusion by the end of the episode.  We were safe with The Fonz; his confidence and his fundamentally easygoing nature ensured that any hijinks would end peacefully.

But then, about five seasons into the show, its producers at ABC decided to change Happy Days' format from a breezy comedy to a tragic drama. Having been pummeled in the ratings by more serious and thoughtful and somber shows, such as CBS' M*A*S*H, ABC executives decided that the American viewing public's tastes had changed.  Nobody believed in Mayberry anymore, and nobody gave a shit about Opie or Beaver.  There was a widespread and growing awareness that the world was a mess.  People were pretending to still like disco, sure, but by then everyone had figured out that it was shit.  Oil prices were through the roof, Idi Amin was eating people, inflation problems, Pol Pot, the PLO…life was a bitch, everybody knew it, and facing up to that fact had become part of the zeitgeist.  The mega-hit movie of the day was Spielberg's Jaws, and this was emblematic of the culture.  Mayhem, existential threats, and shark violence were problems that folks could relate to, indeed, problems to which folks needed to relate.  People were scared, people were pissed, and people were generally interested in angst and discontent.  ABC wasn't stupid; they went with the flow and decided to give the people what the people wanted.

And so we had "the episode," the Happy Days episode that took primetime TV to the next level of dramatic artistry.  If I remember correctly, it was the season premier of the fifth or sixth season: Fonzie and the gang go vacationing in southern California and end up tussling with some surfer thugs…to defend Milwaukee's honor, The Fonz accepts a challenge to waterski over a penned shark, a confirmed man-eater…Fonzie wipes out and, to America's horror, the shark attacks him and eats his legs.

Suddenly Fonzie wasn't so funny anymore, and in a flash the show's title became imbued with irony.  The remainder of that season dealt with The Fonz' painful and bitter rehabilitation, and things got awfully real awfully fast for Mr. Arthur Fonzarelli.  All of his subconscious fears and torments had come to the surface after his accident, and so Fonzie was forced to wrestle with his insecurities around cowardice and fallibility and mortality.  His agonizing psychological self-analysis, along with all the torturous physical therapies, proved too much for his girlfriend, Leather Tuscadero, who broke up with him in a heart-wrenching episode that ended with Ritchie telling The Fonz that Leather was right to leave and that he (The Fonz) had "sat on it long ago."

This excruciating drama continued on for years.  Millions of schoolchildren stopped carrying their lunches in Happy Days lunchboxes, and it was instead their parents who were discussing the show.  This, not so incidentally, is where we get the term "a Mr. Coffee show": each week, office workers across the country would dissect the previous night's Happy Days episode as they gathered around the company coffee maker.

Fonzie, having racked up a huge debt in medical bills, sought solace in the bottle and in the needle.  The next season, he finally got clean and adopted a little orphan girl, but she died along with Ritchie and Mr. C when Mr. C's hardware store burned down.  The next season, The Fonz again turned to alcohol and drugs to ease his anxiety, but this time he got mixed up with some Born-On-The-Fourth-Of-July Vietnam vet types, who ended up rejecting him when they discovered that his disability was the result of a shark rather than combat.  "Ain't no fish scarier'n Charlie," they all said.  The Fonz argued that none of the vets had even the slightest fucking clue how scary a shark attack was, but to no avail.

Fonzie later invented and patented some assistive technology that enabled amputees to ride motorcycles.  His invention was basically a rolling stabilizer, similar to a set of training wheels, that automatically descended down from the bike's chassis whenever the speedometer went under 1.5 miles per hour.  This stabilizer, when combined with a manual gearshift and a manual rear brake, promised motorcycling's thrills and delights to legless people everywhere.

Initially, Fonzie's bike-stabilizer was a huge success, but soon he was being sued by the estates of thousands of dead amputee-cyclists, the victims of traffic accidents around the globe.  The Fonz' attorneys argued that, yes, but for The Fonz' adaptive equipment the amputees wouldn't have been riding motorcycles in the first place but that that didn't mean that Fonzie's equipment was the proximate cause of any of the plaintiffs' traffic accidents.  "If you're worried about motorcycle crashes," they scoffed, "then don't ride a motorcycle, for Chrissake."

The Fonz' best-selling model, pretty much the Model T of bike-stabilizers, had been called the Icarus 3000, and so plaintiffs' attorneys argued that this name evidenced Fonzie's knowledge that his product was inherently dangerous.  However, defense counsel countered that this reference to Icarus served as a disclaimer to all of the products' consumers, who knew or should have known of the inherent danger and therefore should be deemed as having assumed all risk.  Fonzie's legal issues still hadn't been resolved when ABC canceled the series in the early 80s, when the Reagan era was ushering out the American public's fetish for tragedy.

Now, I'm not suggesting here that Taylor Swift's emotions are somehow not real or not important or that they're in any way less legitimate than The Fonz' emotions.  I'm not seeking to trivialize or minimize or in any way diminish Swift's experiences and problems.  (Well, actually, I suppose that I'd be happy to minimize and diminish her problems, assuming that she wanted me to do so and assuming that doing so was fairly easy.)  Sure, Swift may have youth and beauty and talent and wealth and fame, etc., but these attributes can't protect a person from heartaches, especially not heartaches in the romance department, to which I'm assuming her songs relate.  So I'm in no way trying to imply that Swift's feelings aren't profound or that she doesn't have the artistic chops to convey those feelings to her fans or that her fans (such as my 20-something co-worker) can't genuinely understand and be moved by Swift's pathos.  I'm just saying that unless you were there with The Fonz when he jumped that shark, unless you witnessed that horrifying attack and its aftermath, then you can't really know Fonzie's pain and you can't really know the strength that it took for him to recover (not that anyone ever truly recovers from something like that) and you can't really know what it means to jump the shark.

My Girl, Cockroach

My ex-girlfriend, Cockroach (just a nickname), was so special (and, for all I know, she still is).  I remember how she worried about me being dressed too nicely before I met her parents for the first time, how she insisted that I change into something even more slovenly than what I was already wearing.  She was so comfortable with underachievement. I think she might have romanticized failure, and we were so heavy into each other.

Once, in preparation for a European holiday with her family, she was reading up on the Hapsburgs.  I remember her telling me some story about the Hapsburg army decimating some other king’s army at some battle.  The non-Hapsburg king was felled and was clearly dead, but his outnumbered soldiers who’d been fighting by his side remained loyal. Rather than fleeing, as they could have successfully done, they instead dove onto the king’s corpse (and toward their certain doom) in order to shield his corpse from the indignity of further blows from the swarming Hapsburg halberdiers.  Cockroach was nearly ecstatic.  She thought that story was so sexy, and I knew right then that I’d never be enough for her.

Cockroach was hella anti-Jesus.  She was pretty much down on religion generally, but she had some particular grudge against Jesus.  She had these blowdarts, and on her dartboard was an image of Jesus, one of those old-fashioned icons like in Andrei Rublev.  She’d invite visitors to play blowdarts, and she’d distrust those who declined.  “I can’t trust anyone who isn’t willing to shoot Jesus in the face with a blowdart,” she’d always say.

One time we were at my house and I was playing Big Star and that song “Jesus Christ Was Born Today” came on, such a good song, but Cockroach claimed that she found the song deeply offensive.  I suggested that she should relax because it was such a good song and because Jesus wasn’t really all that bad, but she just got up and turned off the stereo.  Cockroach was so rude, almost pathologically so, and she had such terrible taste in music.

What I never understood is how Cockroach couldn't see the erotic charm of Jesus’ martyrdom.  The very concept of the martyr, the heroic victim, involves just the sort of paradoxical interplay between power and helplessness that always seemed to turn Cockroach on immensely. How could those absurdly enthusiastic anti-Hapsburg soldiers of hers have been so sexy, but Jesus’ sacrifice not be sexy?  That never made any sense to me.

I mean, even as a heterosexual man who hovers somewhere between agnosticism and atheism, even I can see that Jesus is obviously sexy. Jesus Christ, He’s totally sexy...He's fuckin’ rock-star sexy up there, all sweaty and half-naked and delirious with His sufferings and passions. He’s the original bad-boy heartthrob, brooding and tortured and misunderstood.  You can practically see His persecuted, defiant boner poking out from ‘neath His robe or His loincloth or whatever He’s wearing.  There wouldn’t be any James Deans or Donny Wahlbergs or any of that shit if it hadn’t been for Jesus.  He's the reason for the sleazin'.  How could Cockroach not have seen that?  It just never made sense to me.

Seinfeld As An Hour-Long Dramedy Today

Jerry notices several FEMA vehicles around town and suspects that disaster is headed for Manhattan.  He decides to check in on his Nana to make sure that she has a well-stocked emergency kit, but she's not home.  His Nana doesn't use a cell phone, so Jerry visits Uncle Leo to see if he (Uncle Leo) knows where Nana might be (he doesn't).  Uncle Leo confides in Jerry that he (Uncle Leo) has been diagnosed with cancer; he's been undergoing chemotherapy for the last several weeks, which is why his eyebrow hairs have fallen out.  Uncle Leo asks Jerry to help him obtain some marijuana to help with the nausea.  Jerry recommends that Uncle Leo sign up with a medical marijuana dispensary.  Uncle Leo reminds Jerry that medical cannabis still isn't legal in New York.  Jerry suggests going to New Jersey, but Leo is worried about marijuana use ending up in his permanent medical record and negatively impacting future eligibility for Obamacare benefits.  He would prefer to score some weed on the street.  Jerry says that he doesn't have any pot connections and refuses to help.  Uncle Leo accuses Jerry of anti-Semitism.

George is returning home from a job interview; he's wearing his slickest suit, which he recently purchased (on sale, 50% off) specifically for the interview.  He walks past Zuccotti Park and is mistaken for a fat-cat banker by some Occupy protestors, who beat him brutally.  When he gets home, his fiancee mocks and berates him for having been beaten up by anarcho-hippies.  After this humiliation, George is unable to perform sexually, and to overcome his impotence he tries Viagra.  The Viagra works like a charm, but in order to deal with his near-constant erections George must continually pop into public bathrooms around town to masturbate.  Because the doors of the bathroom stalls do not extend all the way down to the floor, a pervert in an adjacent stall attempts to initiate footsies and, in the ensuing commotion, George is discovered masturbating and is charged with lewd and lascivious behavior.

Elaine gets back together with Puddy.  They're engaged in some pillow talk when the TV announces that there's been a mass shooting at a local school.  Elaine is horrified and decides to take the money that she'd been planning to donate to the fight against global warming and instead use it to support Mayor Bloomberg's gun-control initiative. Puddy, however, feels that a Columbine-style incident every now and again is a reasonable price to pay for our Second Amendment freedoms. Elaine is disgusted by Puddy's callousness, and they break up.  To forget about Puddy, Elaine immerses herself in her work.  Her boss is absent, having been recently detained by Iranian authorities while on a hiking trip in the Near East, and so Elaine is in charge at the office.  She institutes a ban on oversized sodas in the workplace (in observance of Diabetes Awareness Month), but her underlings rebel and threaten to download virus risks onto company computers.  To ease her stress, Elaine goes binge-drinking and blacks out.  When she wakes up the next morning, she must reconstruct the events of the previous evening in order to determine whether or not she should take a morning-after pill.

Kramer and Newman are volunteering at a local AIDS clinic in order to steal medications.  They figure that if the drugs can so successfully boost the immune systems and suppress the symptoms of those with HIV then they'd do wonders for people without HIV.  Word of their racket spreads, and they start selling the drugs to folks in the neighborhood, using Monk's Coffee Shop as their base of operations. In a botched attempt to use social media as a marketing tool, Kramer posts about the scheme on Facebook.  Crazy Joe Davola, who is Kramer's Facebook friend, shows Kramer's posts to the manager of Monk's, who promptly bans Kramer and Newman from the coffee shop.  Kramer consults attorney Jackie Chiles about the possibility of suing Monk's and/or Crazy Joe, but Chiles refuses to represent Kramer because of his (Kramer's) racist tirades.  Kramer insists that he's not really a racist, and to bolster his claim he later returns to Jackie's office with an African-American youngster whom Kramer has been mentoring as he (the youngster) prepares to audition for American Idol.  The young man performs for Jackie, and Jackie is so impressed by the young man's poise that he agrees to take Kramer's case.

Meanwhile, Jerry is at Mendy's Restaurant having soup with Kenny Bania, whom Jerry has reluctantly promised to treat to lunch in return for a past favor.  Bania is making Jerry critique some new terrorism material that Bania's come up with ("...what's the deal with 9/11? ...they should call it '11/9' in Europe..."), but Bania's routine is interrupted when Uncle Leo texts Jerry to let him know that his Nana has gone upstate for the week, having eloped with her longtime lesbian lover.  Leo, a traditionalist, is beside himself over the marriage, but Jerry texts back to say that he doesn't think that there's anything unlawful or wrong with it.  Jerry calls his parents to inform them of Nana's nuptials, but Helen and Morty can't take Jerry's call as they're in the middle of a Zumba class (Morty's in training to disprove Jack Klompus' prediction that he (Morty) would break his hip were he to compete at the All-Florida Zumba Senior Challenge).

After lunch, Jerry and Bania are sharing a cab and Jerry mentions his uncle's cancer and search for medical marijuana.  Bania excitedly, almost hysterically, informs Jerry that he (Bania) knows a pot dealer who sells excellent weed.  Jerry doesn't like the idea of buying marijuana illegally, but Bania persists.  "Jerry, it's medical grade...the best, Jerry, the best!"

Schadenfreude And Its Converse

Solitude and companionship are both compromises. With solitude comes loneliness along with relative peace, and with companionship comes strife along with relative intimacy. Either scenario seems a bit of a wash as to whether the prioritization of one psychological need (peace or intimacy, as the case may be) over another psychological need (intimacy or peace, as the case may be) is ultimately advantageous. Together these alternative scenarios present a larger, more metaphysical wash: I'm screwed either way, on the one hand, and it could be a lot worse either way, on the other hand.

I know that I should try to be grateful and count my lucky stars. After all, imagine how difficult life must be for the confirmed bachelor[ette] who's unhinged, mad with inner turmoil. Imagine the loveless couple who must negotiate their competing interests without empathy or tenderness. Think of these wretches! I remind myself that maintaining a positive outlook is important, that optimism breeds happiness, and I think of these wretches. These losers are mere figments, hypothetical patsies in my mind, but I'm confident that their real-life analogs must number in the many thousands (if not the millions). Their misery fortifies me. Their sad lot helps me to put my own situation into perspective and enables me to regard my fate with acceptance and even some modicum of thankfulness.

Of course, this is not to say that I don't suffer crises of faith, far from it. I've tossed and turned through my dark nights of the soul. I've felt in my gut that sinking, sickening feeling that somewhere out there are those who have everything. Oh, God, damn them! Is there a blessed hermit who has never cried out into the silence, desperate for fellowship? In my nightmares, his cup runs over and he mocks me. Are there charmed lovers whose interests never diverge, who share an agenda as closely as they share confidences and passion? In my terrible fantasies, they toast their bliss and they pity me. These smug specters trumpet the rudeness and the cruelty of a destiny that I suspect to have sorely cheated me. Why should these fortunate few have it all? What entitles them to such perfect happiness?

Yes, there are times when I seethe and, yes, it's unhealthy, but as the jealousy and the rage begin to swell in my breast I try to calm myself by remembering those less fortunate than me. I reflect on those condemned to plumb the endless depths in search of ever lower stations into which to settle as they sink with their woe, and doing so almost invariably lifts my spirits.

Sully's Reputation

If you're like me then you watch a lot of TV, and if you watch a lot of TV then you've probably seen a lot of Sully Sullenberger.  I'm so sick of this guy.

Sullenberger's the holier-than-thou spokesman for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.  He comes on surrounded by sad-looking, skinny, bald kids and he says, "Hi, I'm Captain Sully Sullenberger.  People call me a hero, but these kids here at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital are the real heroes…."  Then there's a montage of sick little patients looking forlorn and helpless in their hospital beds with wires and tubes and shit all hooked up everywhere.  Then Sully comes back on and tells me that I should give St. Jude some money so that these kids can continue their desperate struggle.

Wtf?  Cancer's a drag, no doubt about it, and I don't like dead children any more than the next guy, but who the hell is Sully Sullenberger?

I'll tell you who Sully Sullenberger is: Sully's the guy who crash-landed his airplane into the Hudson River a few years ago, US Airways Flight 1549…all 155 passengers and crew aboard the plane survived.  It was a slow news week, I guess, so suddenly Sullenberger's a national hero and he's meeting the President and he's writing a best-selling memoir (which he entitled Highest Duty…gimme a fuckin' break).

Last I checked, landing an aircraft without killing anybody was a pretty standard duty in any pilot's job description.  It's essentially one third of the job: you take off without killing anyone, then you fly the plane somewhere without killing anyone, and then you land the plane without killing anyone.  I'm not saying it's easy, necessarily, but it's certainly fucking doable.  Pilots all around the world are doing it every day.

It's true that Sully had to unexpectedly land Flight 1549 due to equipment failure, but the reason his equipment failed is because he flew his plane into a flock of geese.  Wasn't this fucker ever trained to not steer his plane into flocks of geese?  I've avoided geese plenty of times (Lake Merritt, y'all…yo, yo, Oakland!), in a car and on a motorcycle, and it ain't that hard.  Granted, I'm on the ground and I'm not going that fast, but, still, it's pretty easy to refrain from ramming your vehicle into a flock of geese.  Don't crash into shit…pretty much Aviation 101, folks.

So basically Captain Chesley Burnett Sullenberger is a hero and a celebrity because he did his job, the job that he signed up to do and that he was getting paid to do.  What the hell?!

I do my job, too, you know.  I'm there by nine most mornings, and I stay past five.  On my most recent performance evaluation I was rated "very satisfactory."  I've been involved in zero on-the-job fatalities.  So am I a hero?  Most people would say that I'm not.

You see, I don't fit the hero stereotype.  I'm not a veteran fighter pilot like Captain Sullenberger is.  I didn't go to the United States Air Force Academy, and I didn't win the Outstanding Cadet in Airmanship award.  So because I don't conform to people's preconceived notions of heroism, I'm just some shmo who's adequately doing his job.  But ol' Sully does his job, and, hooray, he's America's fuckin' sweetheart.  He's throwin' out the first pitch of baseball season.  Mayor Bloomberg dubs him "Captain Cool."  He's on the talk-show circuit.  He's the Grand Marshal of the goddamn Tournament of Roses Parade.

Whatever.

I'll tell you what, though: if I had Sully's reputation, I'd try to use it to do something cheerful to uplift the community.  I wouldn't come on TV trying to make people feel like crap and guilt-trip them into donating money.

Alpha Males And Omega

I'm thinking that I might have to buy this Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean, which apparently is featured in the new James Bond movie, Skyfall.  007 wears it on the steel bracelet, or so I've read, but I would wear it with the rubber strap.  I'd prefer to wear it with a NATO strap, but it's much too thick for that.

If this watch were just a few millimeters thinner then I'd've purchased one months ago (long before I ever knew about its being featured in an upcoming Bond installment).  It looks super badass (you'll get used to the weird hands if you look at it long enough; also, those unnecessarily beveled lugs that Omega so stubbornly insists on work much better on a diver than on any other model) and it has a particularly accurate, rugged, and innovative movement (including a silicon balance spring that never loses its shape), much superior in precision and durability to the hideous Rolex Submariner's caliber 3135 (which, by the way, will cost a fellow a couple thousand dollars more than the Planet Ocean's rather sensibly priced co-axial 8500).

It's just so ridiculously thick, though (16.3mm!).  Such thickness might not be so bad on the 45.5mm-diameter version, I guess, but, given my modest wrists, I'd surely have to wear the equally thick 42mm-diameter version.

My point here is that I have a massive wad of watch money burning a hole in my pocket, but I can't seem to find a watch that I really, truly want.  My mother, who lives in poverty, could probably put the money to good use and I do feel guilty, but I need a new watch, something super fresh and totally kick-ass.

Don't get me wrong: my trusty IWC Mark XV pilot watch is exquisite and I'll always love it.  But I need something less elegant and more macho (i.e., bigger...I'm looking for 3-4mm more diameter than the levelheaded and understated Mark XV's 38mm diameter).

Nowadays, all the bigger IWC pilot models (except for the so-called Big Pilot, which is clearly way too big for my wrist) are abominations aesthetically due to their absurd date displays.  The only cool-looking IWC diver is the retro Aquatimer, which (a) has an inner rotating bezel...so inconvenient, (b) isn't very waterproof at all for a diving watch, and (c) is, if we're being honest, definitely too big for me with its 44mm diameter.

Jaeger-LeCoultre makes a cool-looking and nicely sized retro diver, but it doesn't have a date function.  Only a fool or a wastrel would ever buy a watch without a date function.  I could see James Bond wearing Jaeger-LeCoultre, though.  I'm pretty sure that Bond's always worn Rolex or Omega in the movies, but I could see him wearing JLC.  Clive Owen, that British actor who was in The Bourne Identity, happens to be a sort of spokesman for JLC (they call 'em "friends of the brand"...George Clooney is Omega's friend, as is Cindy Crawford) and I've heard that he was almost cast as James Bond.  In fact, I think maybe I read that Daniel Craig got the part after Clive Owen turned it down.  I can't remember.

I suppose that if I didn't care about the date, I'd consider getting a sporty, flashy Rolex Milgauss.  James Bond would never wear a Milgauss, though, and not just because it lacks a date (let's not forget, after all, that Sean Connery was sporting a no-date Sub in Dr. No back in the 60s when Submariners were cool).  The design of the Milgauss' indices, hands (especially the seconds hand), and crystal (especially the green crystal) is too futuristic and science-nerdy for someone like James Bond, who requires something more traditional and more virile.

From the TV commercials for Skyfall, it looks like Q is now a young, hipster type.  If so, a Milgauss might be perfect for Q.  But remember the old Q, that old guy from the 70s and 80s Bond flicks who always wore tweed and disapproved of 007's cavalier attitude?  I'm sure that geezer very much cared about what the date was.  That guy was hella uptight.  I wouldn't be surprised if that old stickler carried a pocket watch around on a fob.  The old Q was a full-on goofball, as pompous as you like, and I can't imagine that anybody ever gave the slightest shit about his watch.

Peoples Of The World, Unite (But Retain Your Distinct Senses Of Cultural Identity As You Refrain From Genocide)

I've been trying, without a lot of success, to get a handle on the notion of indigenousness as it applies to persons.  These efforts have led me to wonder if the world's population is better thought of as comprising people (i.e., the plural noun defined by the New Oxford American as "human beings in general or considered collectively") or whether it should instead be thought of as comprising peoples (i.e., the pluralization of people, the sometimes-construed-as-singular noun defined by the New Oxford American as "the men, women, and children of a particular nation, community, or ethnic group").*

First, allow me to disclaim any potential suspicions, on the reader's part, of any racist or imperialist sympathies on my part.  I have read Howard Zinn, and I am aware of and appalled by the murders, brutalizations, and general havoc wrought by Christopher Columbus and his cohorts.  I'm against all terrorism.  I'm disgusted by those who would kill for purposes of generating profit, promoting religion, or expanding empire.  Furthermore, despite my name I am not really Italian and, while I'm a huge fan of Verdi's Rig/Trov/Trav, I don't have any particular stake in Italian cultural pride.  I'm glad that Columbus Day has, in many parts of America, come to be known as Indigenous People's Day.

But who, exactly, are the indigenous people?  My dictionary, referenced above, tells me that indigenous means "originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native."  According to this definition, everyone is indigenous (or, at least, we're all indigenous so long as we are within a reasonably close proximity to the place where we were born).  Perhaps I could argue that, under this definition, test-tube babies aren't indigenous as they're born of unnatural means, but I'm no anthropobiologist or whatever (I'm not even sure what a test-tube baby is…a womb's gotta be involved at some point, right?).

Surely the observance of Indigenous People's Day isn't a celebration of humanity in its entirety, with the possible exception of test-tube babies. (Not that such a holiday shouldn't exist, but wouldn't it simply be called People's Day?)  And certainly Christopher Columbus himself shouldn't be thought of as having been an indigenous person…after all, the purpose of changing the holiday's name was to detract from Columbus' reputation vis-à-vis the reputations of his New World victims and their descendants.

So I dug deeper and googled indigenous people.  The first thing I learned is that Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for "indigenous people"; it only has an entry for "indigenous peoples."  I also learned that the term "[i]ndigenous peoples primarily refers to ethnic groups that have historical ties to groups that existed in a territory prior to colonization or formation of a nation state."

This information in no way allowed me exclude Columbus from the rubric of indigenous persons.  First of all, although I'm not really sure what it means to be ethnic, I'm assuming that Columbus, a Genoese, was ethnic.  (In Oakland, California, where I live, there's an Italian delicatessen called Genova, and I can tell you that the people who run that place are a real swarthy bunch, hella greasy too, and they all have super thick accents...not that there's anything wrong with being swarthy or greasy or accented…besides, the greasiness is probably just a result of working with so many greasy, delicious lunch meats).  Second, the Genoa of Columbus' day, though it had been a city-state for centuries, preceded the formation of any Italian nation-state (indeed, it would be almost 400 more years until the various republics of the Apennine Peninsula would unify and become what we now know as Italy).  Third, I presume that Columbus maintained some sort of ties, at least some of them historical, to his Genoese ancestors and their fellow citizens and that most of these folks must have remained based in Genoa throughout much or all of their lives.  And, thus, I continued to be stuck with the awkward proposition that Columbus, like many or most or all human beings, was an indigenous person.

I didn't want to go on researching this shit all day, and so I concluded that "indigenous people" -- at least, for purposes of Indigenous People's Day -- is a shorthand that refers to indigenous people who are not (and who are not related to) people who have conducted themselves in a terrible, genocidal fashion.  I'm still confused, though, as to whether Indigenous People's Day is dedicated to all such people or only to those who live[d] in the western hemisphere.

As suggested (albeit, obliquely) above, my inquiry into who rightly should be considered an indigenous person involved my clarifying whether today is Indigenous People's Day or whether today is Indigenous Peoples' Day.  Wikipedia, notwithstanding its lack of an "indigenous people" entry, confirmed that today is, in fact, Indigenous People's Day and not Indigenous Peoples' Day.

I question the wisdom of devoting this holiday to indigenous people rather than indigenous peoples.  Maybe I'm splitting hairs here or being overly sensitive, but Indigenous People's Day seems to imply that those being honored are monolithic in their indigenousness, that the people being recognized are defined more by their indigenousness than by their membership in a particular community.  I'm guessing that, if they were to be asked, most indigenous persons would much prefer being identified according to their specific group (e.g., Navajo, Taíno, Hmong) over being identified according to their type of group (i.e., the non-genocidally indigenous).  Therefore, I am recommending that this renamed holiday be renamed Indigenous Peoples' Day.  This second new name would underscore the great diversity of histories and heritages among the world's various indigenous peoples.

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*Of course, I use the verb "to comprise" in its proper and time-honored sense (i.e., to consist of or to include, as in "the United States comprises California, Maine, Kansas, etc.") and not in its spuriously conceived and new-fangled sense (i.e., to constitute, as in "California, Maine, Kansas, etc., comprise the United States").  While I welcome the evolution of language to the extent that such evolution enhances our ability to communicate effectively and precisely, bastardizations brought about by people's ignorance and blurry understanding rarely amount to useful linguistic developments.  It's true that "to comprise" has been used to mean "to constitute" so frequently in recent decades that this confused usage has gained legitimacy, but this is a fact about which no self-respecting speaker of English should be proud.  It's worth noting, however, that the rampant and obscene abuse of "to comprise" pales when compared to the horror of people using the term "to beg the question" to indicate that a question not yet addressed has been implicitly raised rather than to indicate that some party is assuming, without argument, the truth of a proposition to be proved.