On Dumb T-shirt cannons and Smart Watches. 02/21/25

John and I were talking about this baseball highlight we once saw where the batter hit a screaming foul ball into the stands towards a dad who was cradling his infant child in one hand. He calmly stuck out his free hand and caught the ball. The announcers went crazy about what a phenomenal catch he made while also noting that he was going to be in huuuuge trouble when he returned home. Which got us to thinking about how often we have seen basketball games and even the occasional baseball game where a player goes diving into the stands for a loose ball (basketball) or a foul ball (baseball) causing the fans in those seats to lose whatever they were eating and/or drinking. When I spoke about this with John, he immediately put a huge bucket of popcorn on Al’s lap and you know the rest. I then sat courtside with a friend at an NBA G-League (the NBA minor leagues) game. My buddy came back with a huge bag of popcorn. The players were literally 10-15 feet away and I was wondering what would happen if they crashed into us. They also shot those t-shirt cannons into the stands during stoppages in play. Sitting in the front row, nobody was firing a cannon at us but you never know. Just don’t bring a baby to the game, alright?

The second comic is about smart watches. I own one and I hate it. It constantly harangues me with messages like “time to stand up,” and I speak back to it with messages like, “I’m driving a car,” or “I’m in a plane and the ‘fasten your seatbelt’ sign is on.” I think they are designed to tell you what you’re doing wrong. Occasionally they say nice stuff like, “Congratulations Andrew (nobody calls me Andrew except for one friend and you know who you are), you’ve achieved your move goal for the fourth time this week. That’s worth a medal.” And then this sorry looking icon of a medal flashes on the screen and turns 360 degrees. Wow, what an award. So if it ticks me off when it tells me I need to do something different and I look askance when it “rewards me” with the aforementioned medal icon, then why do I wear it in the first place? Especially when I have a perfectly good old school watch sitting unused by the side of my bed by my night table. For this reason I will not allow a watch to monitor my sleep patterns. If I wake up feeling groggy, I know it wasn’t a good night’s sleep. If I awake all full of energy, I know it was good. Why do we need a watch to tell us that? And why do we care what it says? All we know is this, Al cares.

Have a great weekend and, oops, my watch is telling me it’s time to go or I’ll miss my train.

Andy and John