This morning I couldn’t recall the name of the alien that was Fred’s pal on the Flintstones. My wife was no help either. So after a solid four seconds of contemplation on the matter, I wiki-googlied the interwebs and was reminded almost instantaneously that the little green bugger who helped all of Bedrock jump the shark was none other than Gazoo. The Great Gazoo if we’re being formal. It is a floating green alien with an overly large head that has rabbit ears on it after all, so formality does seem to be in order here.
The thing that troubled me here wasn’t that I failed to have instant recall of what The Great Gazoo’s name was. It didn’t bother me that my wife was at a loss - though she is typically Johnny-on-the-spot in these situations. It bothered me that I gave the matter no intellectual (if we can refer to this endeavor at all as intellectual) even slightly. In other words, I didn’t even try to think about it on my own. I just lumped over to the old Apple Mac-a-doodle and waited the requisite .245 seconds for a meaty information sandwich to get shoved down my lazy, gaping gullet.
There was a time when I would have taken it as a point of pride to pull the Great Gazoo’s name from the ether when asked this sort of question, even if I was the one who asked it. The rules of that game of pride would have also insisted that I be given a reasonable length of time (somewhere between 3 hours and a week) to come up with the correct answer without the benefit of using reference material. An attitude something akin to: “The good lord did not put me on this earth to just look shit up. He put me here to remember it with my powerful pop-culture noggin - and eating a pint of Haagen Dasz chocolate chocolate chip while watching nine straight episodes of Happy Days in a row, all while playing Trivial Pursuit laying down. In other words, don’t spoil it for me, I will get to it on my own, God Damn It!
Now, it’s either just too easy, or I’m too tired of playing the rough and tumble game of pop-culture Raymond Babbitt. I just don’t care that much anymore and the only reasonable scapegoat I can give you is the internet.
I am a 38 year old man with a family, a business, a reasonable amount of self-esteem and a still more than healthy first-hand knowledge of marginal television shows, Quentin Tarantino dialogue and expertise of Velvet Underground records. So, how could I possibly have let myself lose to something like the internet? I, unlike the internet, have a heartbeat, a soul and the pudgy/bookish good looks of the assistant librarian that works the closing shift on a Wednesday. In summation, I am a man. These qualities apparently cannot compete at all with the internet’s total recall of the TGIF lineup from 1999 even after I have had three Dogfish Head 90 minute IPAs. My mushy frontal cortex “could” figure it out on it’s own like some 8th grade story problem, but it’s a helluva lot easier to jump to the back of the book, write down the answer and explain how we got there later.
More than once I have explained the lack of personal effort in this arena to age. The late 30s (where I currently find myself clinging on with nothing more than a slight hold via poorly groomed toes) is when the memory begins to fade ever so slightly. My schedule has certainly tightened since my peak performance years of my late teens to early 20s. Furthermore, I used to subject myself to a fearless regimen of taxing and exhausting trials/trainings involving games of quick memory recall, movie title free associations and chronological actor filmographies. Now it’s a miracle if I can make it all the way through the 10 pm rerun of American Dad. Yet, inasmuch as I would like to blame time, practical application, the onset of my 40s and my rest home bedtimes, it falls directly at the feet of laziness.
I scurry to the internet to answer these important questions of life because I can, not because I have to. With straight face and clean conscience I could probably swear that after 32 minutes of deep deliberation I just couldn’t come up with The Great Gazoo as Fred’s vaguely gay, green alien chum. But the truth is that I gave it not 32 seconds of thought. This is what is so truly troubling about this. Complacency has run amuck, and I fear this could permeate (nay it already has) into my realm of things that are borderline important that I really should know. More disturbingly, I can’t imagine why I would “waste the time” working at it on my own, when I could just let some wikipedia nerd do it for me.
While I was growing up, I was quizzed on the state capitals prior to meal time. I had a nifty place-mat with all of the states and their capital cities on it. My folks would quiz me and by the third or fourth grade I knew all of them by heart. Now, the average 8 year old doesn’t need to know this stuff.
Knowing trivial things won’t make you smart and it won’t make you money unless you’re Ken Jennings. But, for me at least it provided an early lesson that any knowledge is inherently valuable - even if it’s trivial. It’s a terribly useful skill like knowing how to balance your bank account or tying your shoes. Even if what you know about is just a floating alien that helped a mediocre animated sitcom that ripped off the Honeymooners. Stupid Gazoo.
The thing that troubled me here wasn’t that I failed to have instant recall of what The Great Gazoo’s name was. It didn’t bother me that my wife was at a loss - though she is typically Johnny-on-the-spot in these situations. It bothered me that I gave the matter no intellectual (if we can refer to this endeavor at all as intellectual) even slightly. In other words, I didn’t even try to think about it on my own. I just lumped over to the old Apple Mac-a-doodle and waited the requisite .245 seconds for a meaty information sandwich to get shoved down my lazy, gaping gullet.
There was a time when I would have taken it as a point of pride to pull the Great Gazoo’s name from the ether when asked this sort of question, even if I was the one who asked it. The rules of that game of pride would have also insisted that I be given a reasonable length of time (somewhere between 3 hours and a week) to come up with the correct answer without the benefit of using reference material. An attitude something akin to: “The good lord did not put me on this earth to just look shit up. He put me here to remember it with my powerful pop-culture noggin - and eating a pint of Haagen Dasz chocolate chocolate chip while watching nine straight episodes of Happy Days in a row, all while playing Trivial Pursuit laying down. In other words, don’t spoil it for me, I will get to it on my own, God Damn It!
Now, it’s either just too easy, or I’m too tired of playing the rough and tumble game of pop-culture Raymond Babbitt. I just don’t care that much anymore and the only reasonable scapegoat I can give you is the internet.
I am a 38 year old man with a family, a business, a reasonable amount of self-esteem and a still more than healthy first-hand knowledge of marginal television shows, Quentin Tarantino dialogue and expertise of Velvet Underground records. So, how could I possibly have let myself lose to something like the internet? I, unlike the internet, have a heartbeat, a soul and the pudgy/bookish good looks of the assistant librarian that works the closing shift on a Wednesday. In summation, I am a man. These qualities apparently cannot compete at all with the internet’s total recall of the TGIF lineup from 1999 even after I have had three Dogfish Head 90 minute IPAs. My mushy frontal cortex “could” figure it out on it’s own like some 8th grade story problem, but it’s a helluva lot easier to jump to the back of the book, write down the answer and explain how we got there later.
More than once I have explained the lack of personal effort in this arena to age. The late 30s (where I currently find myself clinging on with nothing more than a slight hold via poorly groomed toes) is when the memory begins to fade ever so slightly. My schedule has certainly tightened since my peak performance years of my late teens to early 20s. Furthermore, I used to subject myself to a fearless regimen of taxing and exhausting trials/trainings involving games of quick memory recall, movie title free associations and chronological actor filmographies. Now it’s a miracle if I can make it all the way through the 10 pm rerun of American Dad. Yet, inasmuch as I would like to blame time, practical application, the onset of my 40s and my rest home bedtimes, it falls directly at the feet of laziness.
I scurry to the internet to answer these important questions of life because I can, not because I have to. With straight face and clean conscience I could probably swear that after 32 minutes of deep deliberation I just couldn’t come up with The Great Gazoo as Fred’s vaguely gay, green alien chum. But the truth is that I gave it not 32 seconds of thought. This is what is so truly troubling about this. Complacency has run amuck, and I fear this could permeate (nay it already has) into my realm of things that are borderline important that I really should know. More disturbingly, I can’t imagine why I would “waste the time” working at it on my own, when I could just let some wikipedia nerd do it for me.
While I was growing up, I was quizzed on the state capitals prior to meal time. I had a nifty place-mat with all of the states and their capital cities on it. My folks would quiz me and by the third or fourth grade I knew all of them by heart. Now, the average 8 year old doesn’t need to know this stuff.
Knowing trivial things won’t make you smart and it won’t make you money unless you’re Ken Jennings. But, for me at least it provided an early lesson that any knowledge is inherently valuable - even if it’s trivial. It’s a terribly useful skill like knowing how to balance your bank account or tying your shoes. Even if what you know about is just a floating alien that helped a mediocre animated sitcom that ripped off the Honeymooners. Stupid Gazoo.
No comments:
Post a Comment