We Have A Winner! - Part II

Don't let the soccer ball motif on the medal fool you: you’re looking at the winner of the second non-annual albertnet Amateur Product Review contest! As you will surely recall from my blog post back in November 2015, “1-Star Reviews: The Fun & The Folly,” I ran a contest to see who could spot the fake reviews that I wrote and hid among actual one-star amateur product reviews. As you can see, I was very generous with the contest entry time period but I’ve decided to finally cut it off and announce the winner: John Lynch of Ithaca, NY. He is pictured above at his victory party in Albany last night. His prize: a First Endurance EFS Liquid Shot. That and untold glory.

[I feel I need to come clean about something: I doctored the above photo because John wasn’t actually in it. Last-minute logistical issues prevented him from attending his victory party but we held it anyway. I did manage to take him out for a celebratory dinner, but for some reason he ended up paying the check. Anyway, I used A.I. to add him to this photo and it didn’t come out quite as convincingly as I’d hope so I figured I better just fess up.]

Amazingly, John is the same close reader who won the first non-annual Amateur Product Review contest. (Rumors that he is the only reader of albertnet are greatly exaggerated.) This time, he upped his game and actually nailed every single question. That’s right, a perfect score. This is particularly impressive given that I myself, taking my own quiz some eight and a half years after I wrote it, scored just 4 out of 5.

When asked to comment on his contest victory, John replied, “Sure, I won again, and by definition the award has to be given to just one person: me. But it must be said that I can’t do any of this without my team. My publicist, my agent, my assistant, my driver, my foot masseuse, my macchiato guy, my dental hygienist, the guy I pay to say ‘top o’ the mornin to ya, guvn’r!’, my landscaper AND my manscaper—they all played an important part! And I want to thank them all from the bottom of my heart, because without them I could never do what I do—which is to tell the difference between actual poorly written Amazon reviews and fictitious poorly written Amazon reviews created by Dana Albert. It’s a hard job—not a job I’d wish on my worst enemy!—but it’s one that I love, and one that I am truly blessed to do (at least once every 3 to 5 years). Thank you.”

Contest background and correct answers

To review: after my discussion of the strange phenomenon of the one-star amateur product review (click here for details), I provided a list of five products, each with three reviews. In each case two of the reviews were real (however improbable they may have seemed), and the other was a fake one that I wrote. I did my best to stymie everybody.

Below are the questions again, for your convenience, followed by John’s responses with his colorful commentary. If you like, you can pretend you’re yelling at the TV during a game show by guessing the right answer before checking the response. (Of course it is far too late for you to enter.)

Review #1: The Turn of the Screw (novel)

a) The Turn of the Screw is quite possibly the stupidest and most pointless story I have ever wasted my time on. Purportedly a ghost story, the “ghosts” are nothing more than occasional appearances by the former governess and valet, both of whom are now dead.

b) A friend told me “I couldn’t put it down.” Couldn’t put it down? I couldn’t pick it up! So hard to read...took me weeks to get through. If Henry James wrote this today, he would NOT get laid.

c) The story is lousy, the characters are unbelievable, the protagonist is annoying, the plot development is glacial, and the ending is absurd. But what makes this book really bad is the writing.

John’s response: “ALL of these reviews are just amazingly good. Review (a) is angry that it is a ghost story about “ghosts” who are actually just people who are now dead! Genius! Review (b) first suggests that the book is an immovable object, and then impugns the author’s potential sexual acumen in the present day—for no reason! Double genius! And review (c) is a straight up list of grievances that ends with a wallop of an insult. I love it! Isn’t the internet marvelous?!? I honestly don’t know which one to choose… But of the three, I guess (b) has the most Dana-ness to it (“I couldn’t pick it up!”). I’ll be sad when I find out that I was wrong.”

Review #2: Apple Watch

a) I had a hard time charging the watch.. The instructions read that that the charger attached magnetically to the back of the watch. When I placed the charger to the phone it seems to repel the watch instead of attaching to it. I tried resetting the watch twice but that did not help. I was finally able to get a charge by physically holding the charger to the phone and strapping it down, but this took 8 hours and I only got a charge 62%. It is our assumption that the magnet was placed backwards in either the watch or the charge.

b) this is poop

c) i thought this watch would replace my iphone (or actually I wouldnt have to buy one and watch is actually reasonable compared to phone cost) but it turns out WITHOUT THE PHONE THE WATCH DOES ALMOST NOTHING also battery life sux

John’s response: “Review (a) is not by Dana, but it almost is. By that I mean that it was clearly written by Harry Albert. Who else would so gamely try to make a defective product work and then reverse-engineer where the manufacturer had gone wrong? Review (b) was written either by my friend O— or his son, C— (both of whom are total poop aficionados, and know “poop” when they see it). So this leaves (c). Review (c) is one of those “Hapless” reviews, or maybe “Irrelevant” reviews, but it hews close to the formula for Terrible Reviews by A) misunderstanding the product and then blaming the product for the buyer’s ridiculous expectations for a product to do things it clearly was never intended to do (e.g., “This stupid external 1TB hard drive doesn’t sort my paper clips by size when I drop them in the little slots in the top! Total garbage!!!”) and B) uses ALL CAPS TO EXPRESS THEIR DISBELIEF THAT THE PRODUCT DOESN’T DO THINGS IT WASN’T DESIGNED TO DO, and C) adds a final jab to the review that looks like an afterthought, but is actually the only relevant part of the review. Well constructed Dana — I think (c) was yours. Again, abject sadness when I find out I’m wrong.

Review #3: toaster

a) Mostly works well except something is catching on the bread and tears bits off that get “stuck” down in the toaster and hard to get out. So I tried to fish it out with a knife (with the toaster off, by the way) and got this big electric shock! My wide actually laughed at me and said next time just turn it upside down and shake it. So I tried that and burned the crap out of my hand! Toaster is going back for sure.

b) I was so excited to buy a four slot toaster, morning arguments solved. However, this toaster was highly disappointing. The level that lowers the slots down is thin plastic and wobbly. The right side of the toaster quickly stopped lowing. The left side often burns part of the bread, while the rest of it is still cold. Overall, a shotty machine. Do not buy.

c) I looked on line and read reviews and decided to get this one, HA! This does not even pop the toast up high enough to grab! It says that you get even toasting on both sides, not! It worked for about a week and after that half the side of toast would cook and then only half of a half, When I use the Bagle button the Bagle is cooked on both sides, not one like it should have been.

John’s response: “Oh goodness… I can’t decide. Is this a trick? Did Dana write all of these? Each one has critical misspellings that seem impossible unless you were impersonating an internet troll (‘wide’ for ‘wife’, ‘lowing’ for ‘lowering’ and ‘shotty’ for ‘shoddy’, and ‘Bagle’ for ‘Bagel’). Sticking a metal object in a plugged-in kitchen appliance?! With ‘wide’ laughing at you?! Complaints about a toaster that has stopped moo’ing?! And let’s consider this sentence: ‘It worked for about a week and after that half the side of toast would cook and then only half of a half…’ They’re describing the Zeno’s paradox of toasting!!! So much genius. In the end, I guess I have to go with (a). Something about fishing out toast bits with a knife while a man’s ‘wide’ is laughing at him suggests a Dana story. But (c) is so good! With that bit about the toaster not even popping the toast up high enough to grab! Ugh. Too hard. But I’m going with (a).”

Review #4: Tom Danielson’s Core Advantage: Core Strength for Cycling’s Winning Edge (book)

a) I would buy this book but not from somebody who was suspended for doping-specifically for using Testosteron-as a Physiciian I know that Testosteron is useful in the recovery and healing of tissues, especially muscles.If his training was as beneficial as he describes why did he need Testosteron-also being as long in the Pro Peleoton as he ,he must must be pretty stupid not to know how easy it is these days to discover Testosteron.Therefore with me he has no credibility and I will not buy the book

b) It’s a shame how these books get published. The so-called co-author, Allison Westfahl, actually knows a lot about core strength training and theres lots of useful info here. Problem is she’s a nobody and couldn’t publish a book without tying it to a celebrity name so she let TD (aka Total Douche) pretend to co-write this. Almost worked but she should have hitched her wagon to a clean rider, if there are any left.

c) I noticed the chapter on doping was missing. Can’t trust a doper. Maybe I will wait for the B sample of this book before buying again.

John’s response: “All of the reviews focus on Tommy D’s doping career, so there’s no hint there. Only the one that is supposedly written by a ‘Physiciian’ is terribly written and full of grammatical and punctuation errors, and I think this is a red herring — it reads like it was written by a doctor for whom English is a second language and who may in fact be hopped up on ‘Testosteron’ RIGHT NOW. Review (c) was short and snarky, which I don’t associate with Dana’s prolix proclivities. This leaves (b), which might actually be right. ‘Total Douche’ sounds like it could have been written by Dana? Maybe? ‘Hitched her wagon’ sounds like Dana? Maybe? Yeah, I’m going with (b).”

[I got this one wrong, having no recollection of writing any of these reviews and supposing that the little bit of research I’d have had to do for response (b) above would have been more than I’d bother with. I underestimated myself!]

Review #5: cordless drill

a) never should have bought cordless drill, remember when drills had a cord and you could just go whip it out and use it, now i always have to plan ahead and charge the batteries, this one particularly bad won’t hold a charge and tajkes forever to charge up do not buy!

b) Only lasted two years and stopped working while my son was assembling soccer goals. Thought it was the battery and installed fresh one from the charger. My son came running to me yelling the drill was on fire. When I got to the drill smoke was pouring from the battery.

c) came with black marks along handle, tip and back of drill. case had interior scratches, battery had a charge, and scratches, second battery had scratches. im not talking about scratches you could blame on rough shipping, this thing was dropped a few times outside of its case. nobody wants somebody elses tool. *cough*

John’s response: “Jeezus, another hard one. I am suddenly feeling a lot of sympathy for Dana for having to read through (I assume) so many on-line reviews to find just the right utterly ridiculous ones to throw us off. I’m going to rule out (c). Sounds like a legit review with a snarky joke at the end about using other people’s tools (*cough*). Looks real. That leaves Mr. ‘Whip Out Your Drill When You Need It’ and Ms. ‘Drill Almost Burned My Son and His Soccer Goals’. I’m going with (a), Mr. ‘Whip It Out’. I love the idea of whipping out a drill with you need it. Also, the punctuation and the insertion of the ‘j’ in ‘tajkes’ (just to remind us that Dana still remembers what a QWERTY keyboard looks like) looks contrived. Then again, most things on the internet look contrived. I’m probably wrong. But (a) is my final answer.

“Dana — your fake reviews are all so inventive and creative. You’ve really mastered the genre! You have a great future ahead of you as an internet troll.”

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Consumer Reviews: Videoconferencing Platform

Introduction

Companies like to measure the quality of “customer experience,” or CX, that they’re providing, but gaining feedback can be difficult. I hate it when I’m asked to submit a “very brief” survey and then several minutes in I have to bail because it’s obviously not brief. I prefer the happy/neutral/frowny, green/yellow/red buttons in airport restrooms for reporting the cleanliness level.

A videoconferencing platform that I use a lot, at the end of every meeting, prompts me to “rate the overall experience of [my] meeting,” from 1 to 5 stars. What if they also had a notes field to type in, since their query is so incredibly general? Here’s what that might look like. (What follows is a blend of fact and fiction.)

The good

BEST. MEETING. EVER. We had one of those guys who turns on his camera even though everyone else’s is turned off, and based on your platform’s default settings, he ended up being on my screen the whole time (and everyone else’s too, I’ll bet). I actually got kind of tired of looking at him, but then he abruptly got up and left the room. So now we were all just looking at his empty chair, and people started talking shit about him! Freakin’ glorious. Nice bit of comic relief during a long, boring day of online meetings.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

OMG, I will never forget the “overall experience” of this meeting. It was our All-Hands Call with like 60 or 70 people, and we all assumed we’d be muted by default but we weren’t. Most of us figured this out (I mean, it’s been like three years since we all started working from home, right?) but a few didn’t, so there was a bit of background chatter as people were joining. And then we all hear, clear as a bell, “Do you need to go potty outside?” I was already laughing and then, a second later, some other guy comes off mute and says, “Nah, I’m good.” I almost cried.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

I really love the half-assed way your platform handles audio buffering when somebody’s Internet connection is bad. I mean, yeah, perfect buffering would make it easier to understand people, but who cares? Some motivational speaker once said, “Nobody will remember what you said but everyone will remember how you made them feel.” As cheesy as that is, it’s pretty much true. The highlight of my workday is usually when something goes wrong, so I love love love it when somebody’s speech slows down to this incredibly low-pitched crawl, like when something terrible happens on a stupid TV action show and they show a super-slo-mo of, like, somebody striking out with a knife and another guy throwing himself in the way yelling, “N-O-O-O-O-O-O” in the super-slow, low voice. And even better, when your buffering then catches up it overcorrects and the second half of the person’s sentence is like Alvin and the Chipmunks! I have to scramble for the mute button because I’m totally cracking up. Keep up the “good” work!

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

This meeting made my day. It started off with the usual BS, with people talking over each other and a lot of mansplaining going on, and then this blowhard named Bruce takes over the screen and starts sharing some dumb slide and blathering about it, and then someone else takes the discussion way off track but without taking over the screen share. So Bruce is still screen-sharing when he totally zones out and starts multitasking. He’s typing up some email on a totally unrelated topic and we all stop talking and just watch him for a bit. He’s so checked out he doesn’t notice how quiet it’s gotten until somebody tells him, “Uh, Bruce, you made a typo.” Bust-ed! Everyone starts laughing and I’ll bet he pretty much died of embarrassment. Which is good, because he’s such a tool. He got what he deserved!

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

The bad

Look, I really like your platform, but since you asked, my overall experience was not good. There’s this douchebag Carl who always commandeers our meetings to go off about animal rights. He refers to animal husbandry as “rape,” etc. and once he gets revved up it’s almost impossible to stop him, even when the professor cuts in and says, “We’re trying to learn Photoshop here.” I’m tempted to say, “Carl, whenever you open your mouth about animals, I add ‘veal’ to my shopping list. And I make good.” So anyway, couldn’t you install a feature where participants could vote to expel someone from the meeting? Like, you could have some AI widget monitoring the chat and if enough people type in “Eject Carl” it’ll just do it? I would be the biggest evangelist for your product if you built that feature…

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

I’ve just about had it. I work for a tech company in Silicon Valley and yet in this meeting that just ended, I could only understand about half the people because the other half had crappy Internet connections. I like how your software shows little green or red bars, so we at least know what the problem is, but couldn’t you take that a little further and speed-shame these people? Like, change their title banner to “TOTAL LOSER” if their throughput sucks? It’s 2022, people. Get a real Internet connection. I’d understand if this were some little school district in Cat Butt, Wyoming, but come on. This is Silicon Valley.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Overall a good audio/video experience, but I can’t give you more stars because I totally lost my focus during the meeting. Why? Because some guy was presented with this big award, and in his little impromptu acceptance speed he said, “I’m truly humbled to win this award.” In what universe is that true? Winning an award doesn’t humble anybody. It goes right to their heads, and then they probably feel all sanctimonious when they graciously say, “I’m humbled.” What a bunch of shit.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

The main presenter in this meeting actually had a lot of interesting stuff to say, but I could barely understand him because a) the audio wasn’t that great to begin with, and b) he was wearing a frickin’ COVID mask! I mean, WTF? Does he really think he can spread an actual, non-metaphorical, living virus over the Internet? I never realized how much I rely on lip-reading when the sound is bad. Maybe this guy just wanted to make sure we couldn’t understand him? Whatever, dude.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Every meeting I’m on, we get people showing up late or not at all, and then apologizing because their PC rebooted  or their home Internet went down. It’s like the modern day equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” I guess it’s not enough that you have a great conferencing app that runs on a smartphone so they don’t need their PC or WiFi. Could you offer a deluxe conferencing package with shock ring collars to remind people to use their fricking phones when their PCs are down? I’d totally pay extra for that.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

How do I lock out late arrivals? I cannot find this in your help menu. Today some guy showed up 26 minutes late for a 25-minute meeting and then proceeded to hold the floor for the next ten minutes and I really had to pee.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Could you make the audio mute and video mute buttons farther apart, and/or more distinctive? Today I had both my audio and video muted, and then someone asked me a question, and I scrambled to un-mute and accidently un-muted my video but not my audio. So then I suddenly appeared onscreen, with my disheveled hair and 3-day beard, my mouth going 90 mph but no sound, and five people all saying at once, “You’re muted!” So embarrassing.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Can you improve the noise-canceling? So many of my colleagues work from home, the virtual meeting room sounds like a fricking day care. Just a suggestion since apparently some teleworking parents don’t believe in telling their kids to shut the hell up.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

The ugly

Your video conference experience is mostly great. I like how I can tile all the participants, because with that other mode where it keeps switching to whoever is talking, I start to get dizzy. But could you add a feature where I can selectively mute someone’s video feed from my end? God forgive me, but some of these people are pretty homely.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

Mostly great platform but man, you guys have got to do something about the fake background. It’s not just that I get sick of looking at a cheesy backdrop like the beach (though I do), but the way your software figures out the outline of the person just isn’t effective enough. Sometimes it looks like a person’s head is cut out of construction paper, or rendered with really bad VR like that “Money for Nothing” video from the ‘80s. There’s this one guy in my meetings who gestures a lot with his hands, and when he gets animated his hands keep vanishing and then reappearing on the screen and it’s totally distracting.

--~--~--~--~--~--~--

I want to start by saying your videoconferencing is amazing! I’m one of those people who can remember the very early days of this technology when the resolution was terrible, all grainy and pixilated with stops and starts and gaps and everything, and now it’s so smooth and hi-res. In fact, it’s actually a bit too hi-res. Which brings me to my request. You know how you can blur the background, so nobody can tell your home office is a mess? Well, could you maybe have a feature to blur the foreground, as in me? My HD camera is mercilessly clear and I’m ashamed of my eyebrow dandruff.

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New York City Bagels

Introduction

I think that, in general, New York City is overrated. Probably this is because of cognitive dissonance … the people who live and suffer there need to overrate everything to justify their perseverance. Granted, I’m basing this largely on the testimony of one friend, who grew up there, assumed it was the only place to be, came out to California for vacation, came to his senses, and never went back.

When several people emphatically told me that you couldn’t get a real bagel outside of NYC, I was tempted to ignore them. So often, overzealous opinions like this are an attempt to promote the speaker in some kind of epicurean hierarchy. However, I have also been inclined to trust this assertion, because these were unashamed Californians promoting NYC bagels, and ones whom I respect. So, during a recent business trip, I made a pilgrimage to a highly rated Manhattan bagel joint to see for myself. Read on for my shocking verdict.

But first…

First, let me bag on NYC some more. (This is to establish my cred as a NYC skeptic, and because most of my readers aren’t from NYC and thus might enjoy this criticism for its own sake.) The weather during my visit was perfect … for NYC. Mild, sunny, but a bit muggy, pleasant enough, but it had nothing on our everyday weather in the Bay Area. The people-watching is admittedly great in NYC, but there are far more people than you really need to see. It’s the only place I’ve been to where bad traffic isn’t just a vehicular phenomenon. The sidewalks are absolutely thronged. It’s kind of hard to move.

I went to the best-rated restaurants I could find, by searching on “best restaurant near me” across Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google and seeing what places came up on all three top-ten lists. Generally this meant places with a 30- to 60-minute wait on a weekday evening. First we had New York style pizza that was supposed to be among the best, and it was, well … fine. Good, in fact, but not actually as good as what I can get 0.6 miles from my home. Two appetizers, three drinks, and one pizza between the two of us ran $120. The next dinner was at this Zagat-rated Italian place where the food was decent but unremarkable, for even more money.

In case you want more objective input, neither place had any local beers on draft . The second place had no draft beer at all and nothing local in bottles. Beer at both places was $9 a pop. The emperor is wearing $400 jeans and a $180 t-shirt.

Planning my pilgrimage

Before heading out for bagels on the last morning of my trip, I did some research to find the best place. Here’s what I found. Thrillist, the first hit when I googled “best bagel in nyc,” says Ess-a-Bagel is the best. The next hit, Grubstreet, ranks Utopia Bagels as number one, but that’s way the hell out in Queens. Grubstreet ranks Ess-a-Bagel as 5th best, so I continued investigating that one. Ny.eater.com says Ess-a-Bagel is 3rd best. Foursquare ranks it 4th. Gothamist ranks it 2nd. Yelp is useless here because there’s a place called Best Bagels that outsmarts Yelp’s query engine. (Well played, Best Bagels.) Since Ess-a-Bagel wasn’t terribly far from my hotel, I chose it. Knowing I might face a serious wait once I reached my destination, I wasn’t about to spend more than half an hour walking anywhere.

(Of course New Yorkers could debate the topic of “best bagel in NYC” ad infinitum, and probably get in a fistfight over it, but I figured this collection of ratings—five top-5s—was good enough. If New York bagels are really all that, you should be able to pick a place practically at random and totally score. At least, that’s how it is with taquerias in San Francisco.)

Notwithstanding my skepticism toward all things NYC, I was pretty optimistic that my bagel would be worth the trip. I based this on the glowing praise of New York bagels I’d encountered in The New Yorker, particularly the article “The Magic Bagel” by Calvin Trillin (March 27, 2000). (No, I don’t carry a folded-up copy of this article around in my helmet. I’d merely held a vague recollection that a solid writer had praised NYC bagels. Only just now did I chase down the precise source.)

At the same time, I was prepared for disappointment, based on my fruitless quest to find a good cheesesteak in Philly. I was there for the better part of a week, a couple decades ago, and ate almost nothing but cheesesteaks the whole time in search of a good one. I interviewed cabbies, newsstand guys, and assorted locals for recommendations, but nobody seemed to know what I was talking about. “Yeah, you can find cheesesteaks here,” was the typical response, delivered with about as much enthusiasm as I’d have if a tourist asked me, “Can you get Oreos in Berkeley?” Every cheesesteak I had in Philly was the same: bland spongy white roll without a hint of character, like Wonder bread; greasy ribbons of uniform grey meat; a layer of Velveeta the consistency of duck shit; not a particle of vegetable matter. When I asked about peppers and onions I just got a blank stare. Ditto when I asked about getting any cheese other than Velveeta. It turns out that Philly cheesesteak sandwiches are enjoyable in inverse proportion to their authenticity. If you want a good one, I highly recommend San Francisco. With that in mind, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the NYC bagel could be equally disappointing.

The one-star reviews of Ess-a-Bagel

Having tentatively settled on Ess-a-Bagel, I perused the one-star reviews. This wasn’t because I actually expected to change my mind (unless I came across a shocker like “this place only has whole-wheat!” or “the bagels are made once a week and come pre-packaged in plastic bags!”). It’s just that I almost can’t resist one-star reviews—they’re a guilty pleasure .

I didn’t find any real jewels among these reviews (most of them were about how rude the staff was, blah blah blah) but a few stood out. One was a long tale of how the reviewer had big important plans and thus placed her order online, only to discover when she arrived that it wasn’t ready yet (imagine!) and then they couldn’t seem to find it, and she waited and waited, and then discovered that her order had been ready for some time but they hadn’t told her, etc. Myself, I really don’t care if a bagel joint is proficient at the Internet ordering game. That’s IT stuff. (I’m sure Chipotle could handle online ordering just fine, but that doesn’t mean they know the first thing about making good burritos.)

Next, a one-star reviewer from Orange County complained, “The decor is horrible.” Décor? Who cares? Honestly, if I discovered that proper bagels had to be dug up from the dirt like potatoes, I wouldn’t care. Then, a reviewer named Kelsea titled her review “Confusing.” I love that. An entire experience distilled to one word. Her review says, “I stayed in the hotel to rest and my husband walked over to the 3rd Ave location.” Resting? Why was she so tired? Could this have compromised her experience? After all, it does take a lot of jaw energy to chew a good bagel. Anyway, what confused her is that her order was wrong. Is that actually confusing? I mean, it happens. Kelsea continued, “I did have a bagel and it was very nice and fluffy on the inside. Unfortunately, they weren't sliced, so we had to scoop the cream cheese onto it.” Um … is your lack of a knife really Ess-a-Bagel’s fault?

The Ess-a-Bagel

Okay, then, on to my own experience. First of all, in the amateur-review spirit of giving all kinds of irrelevant personal information, I must disclose that NYC blocks are really long, like a quarter mile, and I was wearing dress shoes because it’s all I brought on my trip, and after having walked for 3½ hours the evening before (highlight: Central Park has fireflies!), my feet were in a world of hurt. Each step was wince-inducing agony. It was a good half-hour walk. The line wasn’t as bad as all those one-starrers had whined about. But that didn’t matter, because the five-star reviewers had offered a little tip: if you don’t want to wait in line, you can go to the back and buy unsliced bagels, and  little tub of cream cheese, without waiting. (Aside to Kelsea: there are plastic knives there, free for the taking … your husband is just a bonehead.)

Here’s the exterior.

Here is the back counter where you don’t have to wait. 

As you can see, the décor is irrelevant because look at those glorious bagels! And look at the steam coming off that big drum. I have to say, the guy working the counter, Richard, didn’t smile or say a word to me, and that royally pissed me off. The nerve of that guy!

Naw, just kidding … I mean, who cares? I didn’t go there to socialize. I asked for two Everything, two Onion, and two Cinnamon Raisin, and he put them in a bag and handed it to me. How much more complicated does this interaction need to be? Where does customer service come in? What, did the one-star reviewers ask for gluten-free? Did they ask for a taste spoon? Did they ask all kinds of foolish questions, like which bagels had the fewest calories or which ones would appeal to an eight-year-old?

While the cashier rang me up (my order was like $12 with the cream cheese, a bargain), I leaned over the counter to peer into the bakery at a batch of boiled, but not yet baked, bagels. Why have I never gotten to see this before? Fascinating! The unbaked bagels were like little embryos.

Alas, while I was snapping the above photo I completely lost track of my transaction with the cashier, who now said, “Move along, numbnuts.” I won’t knock a single star off my review for that, by the way, because I had it coming: I was holding up the guy behind me. Also, she didn’t really say that. Actually she smiled and said, “You’re all set!”

Amazingly, a little chair and table were available. (In NYC, such simple luxuries are, I’ve found, actually amazing.) I was so relieved not to have to walk all over the city to find a peaceful place to eat. I was feeling kind of rushed, because these bagels were warm. That warmth coming through the bag was tantalizing.

The first bagel I happened to pull out was an Everything. Check this bad boy out.

That’s the underside. I don’t know about you, but I found its appearance pretty thrilling. It helped that this amazing caramelized-onion aroma was coming off of it. Here’s the topside.

Surely there are New Yorkers who would bemoan the size of this bagel, or the shape, or the fact that the hole is practically closed up, but I couldn’t care less. I was practically drooling as I sliced and slathered it.

Then finally—as  I lifted it to my mouth—came the moment of truth.

Here’s where this bagel could suddenly let me down, all the promising early signs notwithstanding. I once drove to every bakery in the vicinity of Columbus, Ohio looking for a decent baguette, and while most could be ruled out through visible inspection alone, one place did have great-looking baguettes. Only when I bit down did I realize this bakery was manned by a bunch of clowns who didn’t know the first thing about baking. Granted, I don’t know the first thing about baking either, but I know what I like. At least, now I do. For years I thought our Bay Area Semifreddi’s baguettes were da bomb, until one day my grocer was out and I tried Acme and realized with a pang that I’d been deluded all along, that this was actually what a baguette should be, how you could hear the quality—that crackling sound as the crust was compressed—before you even finished biting into it. Only when I experienced Acme did I realize Semifreddi’s was like cardboard by comparison. The height of quality cannot be predicted—only recognized after the fact.

Okay. Back to Ess-a-Bagel. What I have to report is that this NYC bagel thing is real, folks. I haven’t had a culinary epiphany of this magnitude since, well, discovering Acme. Chewing my first bite slowly, I set my bagel down and stared at it. My brain struggled to comprehend what it was encountering. “Well,” I said to myself. “It’s certainly the best bagel I’ve ever had.” I took another bite. That initial response really didn’t cover it. This was categorically different from any bagel—in fact, let’s just say it, any so-called bagel—I’d ever had. I ate some more. It was simply remarkable. Every flavor, from the little onion bits to the crystals of salt, was more powerful, more distinct, and better than anything I’d had before. And the texture: oh man. The crust was really chewy, but without being tough. The interior was soft but puffy, like a feather bed. I wasn’t merely chewing this thing; I was plunging into it.

Paradoxically, the pleasure was extremely simple—so much more basic and satisfying than, say, picking at some fussy gourmet thing, some tiny dab of truffle-infused lobster foam emulsion on a shard of tarot chip or whatever. This bagel was like comfort food, but without being lowbrow. It was clearly the result of highly enlightened craftsmanship built on a real understanding of the one right way to make this thing. It was utterly simple and yet unaccountably delicious.

Three bites in, everything fell away except the sensations I was taking in. Well, almost everything. An unrelated thought crept in, an inchoate fear, that something was going to keep me from continuing to enjoy this. It was the panic of an addict whose supply is threatened. I reassured myself that I had a whole bag of these bagels in front of me, a whole tub of cream cheese, and a table to myself, and nothing would stop me from extending this utterly pleasant experience out into the future. Upon having this realization, I started to cry. I’m not just saying my eyes teared up; I mean I was actually crying. Big tears were rolling down my cheeks as I ate.

(Perhaps the great thing about New York City is that everybody leaves you alone. Nobody noticed my absurd behavior; nobody came over and said, “Buddy, are you okay?” I could just keep eating, and keep crying, in peace.)

What was going on? Beats me. It’s not like I’d been a POW for several years, missing my hometown of NYC, who finally got released and headed straight back to the bagel shop I’d been going to for forty years. I was just a newb—but an appreciative one. The pleasure was simply overwhelming. Something about this starchy apogee was flipping switches and throwing levers deep within my brain chemistry, pleasure centers that don’t often get engaged.

I’m not saying that if you head over to Ess-a-Bagel that you, too, will cry over all the bagel-y goodness. I was probably actually crying about something else, perhaps something deep-seated that just needed to be unleashed.( I’ve heard of yoga unlocking people this way.) Whatever the case, it takes a pretty special bagel to do that. I’m now prepared to say it takes a bagel from NYC.

Look, even if you’re not trying to have a gastronomic epiphany or plumb your own emotional depths via starchy indulgence, you should try to get your hands on a New York bagel sometime. They’re really fricking good.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Review - Los Gallos Taqueria (or, How To Choose a Mexican Restaurant)

Introduction

Road trips can be great for dining. They can also be lousy if you guess wrong about a restaurant. (For example, I went to a dynamite-looking Bavarian pastry shop in Michigan back in ’94 that looked so promising until the first grainy, filmy, insipid bite.) Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google can obviously help, if you’re able to sort through the conflicting reviews.

This I did with my brother Bryan on a recent road trip that took us through Reno. This post reviews a great taqueria there, and in the process lays out some solid criteria for evaluating one. I also cover (once again) some of the pitfalls of amateur reviews.

Restaurant Review – Los Gallos taqueria, Reno, NV

While Bryan drove, I searched top-10 lists for Reno taquerias. My method is simple: see if the same taqueria pops up in the top-10 lists of Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google. Then I scan the reviews of a favorable place and look for undeniable evidence for or against a place being good. Undeniable would be along the lines of “whole wheat and gluten free tortillas offered!” (against) and “best lengua I’ve ever had!” (for). What I’m looking for is authenticity and assurance that that Sysco is not involved.

Just in case you’re not familiar with lengua, it’s beef tongue. I only had it once, from a mediocre food truck. My burrito had giant rubbery hunks of it and it made me feel kind of ill. I hauled the tongue out of the burrito and put it in my cat’s dish, so I could set up a family member to ask me, “Whatsa matter … cat got your tongue?” (Nobody did.) Interesting aside: the resemblance of “lengua” to the word “language” is no coincidence, and the Russian word for language, язык, is the same as their word for tongue. Anyway, I will probably never order lengua again, but I like to know it’s on the menu. It’s like a shibboleth.

Los Gallos taqueria showed immediate promise based on this statement from a 5-star review: “Burrito-gasms= spicy pork and lingua.” A 4-star review said, “Any restaurant whose theme is cock fighting, just check the wall decor, has to be confident in their grub… If you ever wanted to try buche, tripas or lengua, this is the place.”

(I thought going into this review that the person would be complaining about the cockfighting motif. Frankly, I would not watch a cockfight, but that doesn’t mean I think this restaurant should be avoided. I mean, I wouldn’t fight in a war if I could avoid it, but I don’t shun Hemingway’s work just because he wrote about war.)

I’ve never wanted to try tripe, but it’s an excellent sign that Los Gallos serves it. And buche? What the hell is that? Google translated it as “maw,” which isn’t really helpful. No animal’s throat would yield much meat, would it? But there’s a Spanish definition given as well: “Abultamiento del esófago de las aves, en forma de bolsa membranosa, donde almacenan los alimentos para reblandecerlos antes de triturarlos en la molleja.” Google translates this as “Bulging of the esophagus of the birds, in the form of a membranous bag, where they store the food to soften them before crushing them in the gizzard.” This puts Los Gallos up there with those really trendy “whole animal” restaurants that cost a fortune. Another good sign!

Of course, it’s important to look at the 1-star reviews as well, to make sure there are no ugly surprises, such as “They don’t have burritos, only ‘wraps,’” or “They charged me $2 extra for guac and it was only the faintest smear,” or “I watched the cook shoot the dishwasher in the stomach just to watch him die” (this was Reno, after all).

But the 1-star reviews I saw weren’t very damning. One said, “Place in kinda run down but was clean. I just found the food to be meh mediocre and do to its dreary decor I don't want to even bother giving it another try.” That first bit, “Place in kinda run down,” is problematic. If “in” was supposed to be “is,” then there’s a verb tense problem with “was” later in the same sentence. If it’s just an extra tacked-on word, well, then the person is sloppy. The fact of “due” being spelled “do” confirms the borderline illiteracy of the reviewer, and any focus on décor shows poor judgment if not poor character. This person does not deserve to be taken seriously.

Another 1-star review said, “Nasty and nasty. I was so disappointed both my husband and I were. I was upset also with the girls that work there at the front they  both were rude. $23.97 went to the garbage can.” The sloppiness of this review (e.g., the run-on sentences) shows remarkable cheek in somebody so utterly unforgiving of her fellow man. And “girls” seems a bit sexist, as surely the employees were adults. I’m not sure what the redundancy of “nasty and nasty” was intended to convey. And I’m dismayed that she threw away her food. (I’ve been known to rescue marginal food from the family compost bin.)

My favorite 1-star review read, “Love the food been coming here for years ... NOW I GET HOME AND THE BURRIOT HAS PICO WHICH I CLEARLY DIDNT ASK FOR!!! ASTONISHED, if this isn't taken care of I will never return, my family won't return and my friends will hear of this.” OMG. Is this person for real? First of all, who doesn’t like pico de gallo? And if this person has loved the food for years, couldn’t a little goof like this be forgiven? “Astonished” … really?

Man, people suck. Fricking prima donnas. I have enjoyed Joe Blow’s Yelp reviews for years, but now I read the non-word “burriot” instead of burrito which is clearly a misspelling! ASTONISHED! If this isn’t taken care of I’ll never read another Joe Blow review, and my family and friends will hear of this! (Note: it has occurred to me that this person’s review could be satirical and/or tongue-in-cheek, but if so that’s no favor to the restaurant given the widespread gullibility of Internet users.)

Of course we should take the favorable reviews with a grain of salt as well. A 4-star review reported, “This place has been on my list for a while.  It’s a bit embarrassing because I live around the corner from the place. Why I haven’t I gone?  The obvious is I’m lazy.” Ah, a classic self-referential blathering review. What do I care of the reviewer’s traits and circumstance? And who is that lazy? Should I trust a lazy person?

A 5-star review raved, “Tacos were filling, meat was savory, and the bottled coke was delicious.” Look, all tacos are filling, if you eat enough of them, and to call any Coke “delicious” shows an exceedingly sunny disposition that must be marvelous in a human being, but not very useful in a critic.

Okay, enough of the received wisdom—on to my own experience. If I were writing a Yelp review, I’d probably give this 5 stars and proclaim, “Totally great place—I was driving through Reno with my brother, coming back from Colorado where we settled our late father’s estate, and we were really hungry from hours of driving along Highway 50, which is a much better route than I-70 or I-80 by the way, and check this out—Los Gallos doesn’t have a parking lot but it does have street parking, and when we got there, there was 36 minutes left on the meter. THIS PLACE ROCKS!”

Fortunately, albertnet has higher standards so you won’t get my life story. We headed in there, and the menu told us straight off that we were in good hands. Check this out:

Not only was the lengua confirmed, but they have cabeza (beef brains) and buche (which term they helpfully translate for us). They also serve menudo, which you will never, ever find at Chipotle or Trump Tower, and birria, which is goat. (I thought about asking if they’d put birria in my burrito—which I happened to know would be great—but remembered that I’d been warned that “the girls that work there at the front they  both were rude.” I wonder what the items were that have been whited out and papered over on the menu.

The super burrito is a bit pricey ($9) but at least the guacamole comes stock. The cashier asked us if we wanted the cheese that the burritos came with. I take this as another sign of authenticity, as I’m dimly aware that traditional Mexican food isn’t brimming with cheese. (Being a gringo, I actually do want the cheese, but it’s nice to be asked.) The food took a while, which is also good. I once went to Chipotle (it was the only place open on a holiday), and although the place was as deserted as it deserves to be, the cook put my burrito together so hastily and half-assedly I almost lunged across the counter to strangle him.

Interestingly, Los Gallos accepts Android Pay. The only reason I care is that I got my housecat from the animal shelter, where they implant every animal with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip. That means if you update your pet’s profile online, adding your credit card number, you can use the animal as a mobile wallet. Not at Los Gallos, though … they don’t allow pets.

While waiting for our burritos we helped ourselves to thick, crunchy chips that were just the right amount of greasy. There was a salsa bar with at least five kinds of salsa, plus the little radishes and pickled jalapenos that I never eat. The salsa was really good and really fiery. It made my mouth hurt. I’m sure there’s a 1-star review out there complaining about this, but it’s how Mexican food is supposed to be (at least as far as I know).

Here’s a photo of the interior. As I’ve said, I’m not hugely into décor, but the original artwork was fun (and decidedly non-institutional). I would give Los Gallos a 5-star review based on this dude’s beard alone. (Yes, that was hyperbole.)

Okay, let’s cut to the chase: how were the burritos? Delicious. I’ll walk you through mine. First, the tortilla was perfectly grilled. (I like grilled way better than steamed.) The first bite obviously had more tortilla than subsequent bites would, as I bit through the “cap,” but I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of wadded-up tortilla like what you get when there’s too much tortilla for the filling. I hate that, even as a lover of large expanses of starch.

The meat—I ordered my burrito al pastor—was a bit greasy, but in a good way. Let’s face it, anyone who doesn’t like a bit of grease would avoid al pastor entirely. The ingredients were perfectly apportioned. I hate it when there’s too much meat in a burrito, even if the meat is good. The flavors must be balanced. The ingredients were also perfectly distributed. I won’t say I dislike coming across a huge pocket of rice, since I like rice, but I obviously don’t prefer any big deposits of a single ingredient. Everything tasted great. Have a look:

I freely confess that’s not a very good photo. The burrito isn’t even in focus. But this actually attests to the burrito’s superb quality. Having tasted it, I couldn’t be bothered to waste a lot of time photographing it. In fact, every moment I spent not stuffing my face was intolerable. But look closely and you’ll see my brother is sweating. That’s because it was spicy. I should have taken another photo toward the end of the meal to better showcase this. (As spicy as the filling was, I kept adding more salsa anyway simply because it was there and it was so good.)

There’s only so much you can say about a burrito without starting to blather like a wine “expert” so I’ll stop now. But I have two things to say about the service. One, when I went back to the counter to ask the cashier to thank the cook for me, she was perfectly friendly. Two, even if the cashier had been totally rude, had insulted me and even my mother to my face, I wouldn’t hesitate to eat at Los Gallos again. I almost wish I had some reason to go back to Reno.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Expensive Wristwatches

Introduction

This post was inspired by a recent New Yorker article, “Time Out,” by one of my favorite current writers, the Russian émigré Gary Shteyngart.  The article concerns Shteyngart’s growing obsession with expensive wristwatches, brought on by the 2016 presidential election and its outcome.

I was also inspired by a print ad for a wannabe elite wristwatch, the Stauer Magnificat II.

But most all, this post is the (perhaps inevitable) result of my long, troubled love affair with my own wristwatch.

Shteyngart’s article

As expected, I found Shteyngart’s article funny and touching.  (For a sample of his style of humor, click here.)  But I was also nonplussed.  I understand his angst, but not his reaction to it.  That is, I grasp that most people found the 2016 election exhausting and stressful, and millions of these people (roughly half the US population) are suffering even more given the outcome; based on Shteyngart’s background and his politics, it’s a no-brainer that he’d be one of these millions.  But his headlong plunge into retail therapy seems like a weird response.

Quick synopsis:  after a panic attack on the subway, during which staring at the soothing glide of the second hand on his $1000-dollar watch helped him cope, Shteyngart dropped over $4,000 on a fancier watch, a German-made Nomos Minimatik Champagner.  Just before Election Day, he says, “as my feelings of dread spiked, I decided to buy a Rolex.”  Then, to bolster himself for the inauguration, Shteyngart bought another expensive watch.  “I knew I had to stop,” he declares, “but I had an excuse.  I desperately needed a waterproof watch for swimming, my only form of exercise.”  WTF!?  His $4,000 Nomos isn’t even waterproof?

That’s not all.  He goes on to admit that his fancy watches don’t actually keep very good time.  The Nomos loses five seconds a day, and the Rolex gains fifteen.  This amazes me.  Apparently the lack of a quartz crystal, and thus the need for incredibly complicated workings, keeps these elite watches from doing their core job very well. 

Okay, that’s not fair.  The actual core job of these watches is simply to look great and be elite.  And that, for me, is the real irony.  The depth of Shteyngart’s existential angst about Trump presupposes that, like most hand-wringing Democrats, he is opposed to Trump’s unapologetic, ostentatious wealth and socioeconomic elitism.  So why would Shteyngart cope by laying out thousands of dollars on needlessly expensive and prestigious luxury products?  Shouldn’t his taste in watches be closer to Bernie Sanders’ than the Donald’s?  (Actually, Trump’s choice in watches is a bit more complicated than you’d think.)

I won’t dwell further on Shteyngart’s retail therapy because a) emotional trauma is a complicated and deeply personal affair, and b) this post is threatening to get political so I’d better nip that in the bud.

Stauer and the paradox of the luxury brand

I certainly don’t mean to imply that I’m above, beyond, or impervious to branding.  I don’t actively seek out prestigious brands, but I instinctively recoil at any product that’s trying to pass itself off as something fancier than it really is.  Which brings us to the Stauer Magnificat II.  I’ve been sneering at Stauer ads for years.  They seem targeted directly at people who suffer from acute brand envy and badly wish they could afford luxury and class.

The ad in question, which is very similar to the online version here, announces, “Upper Class Just Got Lower Priced,” and goes on to say, “Finally, luxury built for value—not for false status.” 

Okay guys, first of all, “luxury” and “value” are not compatible concepts.  They are opposite ends of a see-saw.  Second, there is no such thing as “false status.”  What would that even mean?  Status is a perception of somebody’s standing … errors in judgment are possible, of course, but that’s not the same as falsehood.  If “false status” means “trying to impersonate a higher status,” nobody could be guiltier than Stauer.  But they’re implying that wearing an actual Rolex is pretending to be high status.  How is that pretending?  You buy a Rolex, you put it on your wrist, and then—what?  You laugh maniacally like a criminal mastermind?  You think, “Hahahahaha, when I wear this Rolex, nobody will know that I’m actually lowbrow!”?  It’s as weird a concept as the evil giraffe. 

The ad goes on to ask, “Do you have enough confidence to pay less?”  It chides the wealthy person whom their target market presumably resents, declaring, “Status seekers are willing to overpay just to wear a designer name.”  This is absolutely true, but Stauer isn’t really an alternative.  If they were marketing their watch as “a really nice timepiece that looks great,” that would be fine, but they’re calling their product “upper class” and “luxury.” 

Look, Stauer people:  your watch is $87.50.  It might be a fine watch (okay, “timepiece”), but nobody will mistake the wearer for a 1-percenter.  If anybody even notices the watch and examines it, he’ll either ignore its lack of pedigree or snicker at it.  He won’t decide the wearer is horologically sophisticated, particularly confident, or in any way elite.

One thing I learned from Shteyngart’s article is that people who appreciate really expensive watches are not actually that ostentatious about it.  Their pleasure comes from their awareness of the delicate workings inside the watch that nobody can even see.  Shteyngart calls these workings “perversely opulent” and goes on to say, “Parts of the mechanism are finished by hand but are never meant to be seen  by the owner; only the watchmaker and subsequent watch repairers will see the work in full.”  In the case of Stauer, a watchmaker didn’t make the watch, and the watch wouldn’t be worth ever repairing.  Noone will see anything, if there’s even anything to see.

The painstaking human effort required to produce these watches, Shteyngart contends, is also central to their allure:  “The Nomos was not a quartz watch built by robots in a giant Asian factory.  A German man or woman with real German problems had constructed this piece, blue screw by blue screw.”  This completely flies in the face of the Stauer ad, which boasts, “By using advanced computer design and robotics, we have been able to drastically reduce the price on this precision movement.”  Yeah, you and everybody else producing run-of-the-mill, non-luxury, value-oriented cheap consumer goods.

Shall I bag on Stauer some more?

Let’s have a closer look at the Magnificat II itself.  (Perhaps you’re wondering:  was there an original Magnificat?  Not that I can find.  Somebody in marketing must have determined that “II” at the end would increase the perceived luxury and class of this timepiece.)  I enjoyed the amateur reviews for this.  One review is titled “A watch that is ok.”  I love this headline.  It’s so sad, and so much more profound than “OK watch.”  I’m somehow put in mind of Eeyore.  A donkey who is depressed.

The reviewer goes on to declare breathlessly, “I was so happy but after a few months I have one problem with the watch, in the morning when I get up to look at the time the time is off and have to reset the time and I have to look at my phone to see what the real time is and I was even late for work when I relied on the time my Stauer Magnificat II Watch had.”

Another reviewer seems happy enough—he gives the Stauer five stars—but, to my mind, inadvertently damns it with faint praise:  “I set this watch to my smart cell phone time and today I checked it again. Still accurate to the minute.”  Um … isn’t the gold standard “accurate to the second”?  Are we supposed to be impressed that this watch lost or gained less than a minute in a day?  (The Magnificat II, like the really expensive watches it’s trying to be, is mechanical instead of quartz, which seems like a really poor choice—like buying grocery store sushi or ordering puffer fish at a culinary academy.) 

The reviewer goes on to say, “Great valve, great looks and will buy again.”  I was trying to figure out what valve a watch could possibly have before realizing the reviewer meant “value.”  (Maybe he was trying to be fancy in the Classical Latinate manner, à la  E PLVRIBVS VNVM?)  Moving on to “will buy again,” this suggests loyalty, sure, but doesn’t it also imply that the reviewer expects this watch to have a short life?

My own beloved wristwatch

Honestly, between a) being a lifelong cheap bastard, b) despising the pathetic yearning that causes people to pretend to be wealthy, and yet c) loving well-designed, well-machined stuff like racing bikes, I don’t know what kind of watch I’d buy if I had to buy one.  Fortunately, I haven’t had to grapple with this decision.  I never had to shop for my beloved watch—instead, it kind of found me.

(It’s not like I never bought a watch, of course.  After the inevitable cheap digital Casios of my youth, I decided as a young adult to buy a fairly cool but also humble Benrus analog wristwatch.  I got it for a song because it was a display model and the box & instructions had been lost.  I liked this watch just fine until the original burly rubbery band broke and I had to replace it with this crappy two-tone metal thing that looked like it would smell like an old man.  Meanwhile, the glass face of the Benrus got pretty scratched up over time, to the point of being a bit cloudy.  Still, it never occurred to me to replace this watch.)

Out of nowhere, in 2002, I was a winner in the annual “President’s Club” contest at work, which normally would have resulted in a lavish vacation to an exotic locale where I would get to meet the president of the company.  The problem was, the president at this time was in hot water with the SEC, and the company was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, so nobody was attending lavish corporate junkets.  So instead of the normal prize, I got 1,000 “e-motivation” points, which worked kind of like cereal box tops—you saved them up and exchanged them for valuable prizes.

What was I going to get?  This was an enormous number of points.  I could have had a whole slew of lawn furniture, a mountain bike, or a giant TV, or a bunch of random Hammacher-Schlemmer-ish stuff I didn’t want.  I felt I had to choose something fast, though, because any day the company could go under and the whole e-motivation program could be shut down, its points becoming as useless as my company stock options.  So I rashly threw 250 points at a 512 MB MP3 player, and the rest at a Swiss-made Tag Heuer wristwatch.

In retrospect, the watch was a stroke of genius:  almost 15 years later, this very watch can be purchased used for more than twice what the e-motivation catalog originally valued it at. The MP3 player, meanwhile, is basically useless and inarguably inferior in every respect to a modern one you can buy for about $30.  A watch like mine ends up being a good investment:  it’s impervious to obsolescence, and is as beautiful today as the day I got it, because the face is made of sapphire (meaning only a diamond could scratch it) and the rest is stainless steel.

Does my watch have a soothing sweep second hand, like Shteyngart’s watch (and the Stauer Magnificat II)?  No, its second hand ticks one second at a time, like that of a cheap Timex or a fake Rolex.  Is the movement mechanical?  No, it’s quartz, which I guess the true watch aficionado would find embarrassing.  Do I care?  No, because this watch keeps almost perfect time!  It loses a second about every two months!  (I end up setting it only when I change time zones, or to accommodate Daylight Saving Time.)

It’s kind of hard to imagine why anybody would prefer a mechanical (vs. quartz) movement.  If you stop wearing your mechanical watch for a few days, it runs down and has to be re-synched and wound up.  Plus, as I mentioned, mechanical movements keep crappy time.  Okay, fine, there’s no battery to replace, but check this out:  not only does my Tag Heuer’s battery last about five years, but the watch came with lifetime free battery replacement, by a super fancy outfit in San Francisco that actually pressure tests the seals to make sure, after they put the back back on, that the watch is still water resistant to 200 meters (which is far deeper than I would ever swim, by the way).

Okay, I get that you’re starting to be bored and annoyed by how pleased I am with my watch and myself.  Don’t worry, as always, there’s…

Trouble in paradise

Not everything about this watch is perfect.  For one thing, the bezel stopped clicking at some point and now just spins, which is kind of a bummer.  Also, this watch has a bracelet design feature that backfired.  The bracelet has two modes:  regular and extended, the latter giving you a bit of slack to fit over the thick neoprene sleeve of your wetsuit.  As if!  People buy diving watches because diving watches are cool, not because anybody actually scuba dives.  (Same deal as the basketball shoes I wore in college.)  A tiny metal tab on the little extended bracelet doodad broke, so the bracelet would pop open, and this couldn’t be fixed.  The price of a new bracelet—$250—surely reflects a built-in luxury tax which I am congenitally incapable of paying.  So I decided to epoxy the bracelet extender shut, which is a bit kludgy and makes the watch harder to put on.

Meanwhile, five or six years after I got the watch (which was two or three years after the warranty expired), the date counter stopped working.  This is bad enough by itself, but it carries an extra sting because the date also stopped working on my Benrus, decades ago.  That watch was still under warranty so I sent it in for repair with a clearly written note explaining the problem; waited for weeks and weeks; and then got it back unrepaired with a work order that read “CHECK ALL HANDS DOES NOT ADVANCE.”  The technician must have watched the hour, minute, and second hands for a minute or two, shrugged (or some other equivalent of “Okay, I checked”) and mailed it back without ever considering that the date hand might be frozen.  So now, whenever I reflexively check the date on my Tag Heuer before remembering it doesn’t work, the stupid little voice in my head says, “CHECK ALL HANDS DOES NOT ADVANCE.”

The last time I had my watch’s battery replaced I asked how much it would cost to fix the date.  This put a real gleam in the jeweler’s eye, and though I don’t remember the precise figure he quoted, it was somewhere in the realm of “your firstborn child.”  Bottom line, this is too fancy a watch for the likes of me to properly service.  (Sure, one could argue that since I paid nothing for this watch—other than the income tax on it—that I am already ahead of the game and can afford to splurge on a repair.  But that’s just not how my cheapskate brain works.)

But wait, there’s more!  The big problem is, I suffer from constant dread:  what happens if I lose this watch?  What then?  Normally, the fact of owning something expensive means that at some point you convinced yourself that you deserved it and could afford it.  This means you can replace it as necessary.  For example, if my $1,000 bicycle wheels were to wear out or be destroyed in a fiery wreck, I’d have no problem going out and buying a new pair.  Sure, the outlay would sting, but the decision is a no-brainer.  I’m a bike geek, and that’s the cost of doing business.

But with this watch, I never made that decision.  I never took that bold step of saying, “Yes, I’m worth it.”  It would be difficult to decide this.  I mean, what am I, some kind of dandy?  Am I the slave to status that Stauer so routinely mocks?  Is it fair to my children to make them wipe with regular old toilet paper instead of raw silk, just so I can be all fancy with a decadent Swiss watch?

Given this mindset, which despite my existentialist leanings seems as unalterable as the size of my wrist, the only way to continue having a nice watch is to own this one forever and take good care of it—because there are no do-overs with this thing, no chance of another 1,000 e-motivation points falling in my lap.  The watch feels like a miraculous a gift from Fate, like my wife and kids are. It’s like a one-time chance to live way above my station, so I better hold onto it.

Am I exaggerating this anxiety?  No, and here’s an anecdote to show you I’m serious.  Last summer I was in Colorado on vacation, and played some full-contact water basketball with my brother and my kids at a swimming pool.  Then we went to the diving pool and slid down this giant slide a bunch of times, then went next door to the grown-up pool, swam a few laps there, relaxed in the hot tub, then went back to the kiddie pool.  Suddenly I realized—OMG!  Where’s my watch?!

In a panic, my brother and I swam all over that pool, combing it for my lost watch.  (Yes, my brother was actually in a panic too, because he also wears a Tag Heuer and could fully relate to my situation.)  Amazingly, I found my watch (minus a broken pin).  My relief was twofold:  1) that I was able to find it, and 2) that I had even noticed in time that it was missing. 

Upon reflection, though, I realized that it was inevitable I’d realize my watch wasn’t on my wrist.  There is a watch vigilance process that runs continuously in my brain from the moment I put that watch on until the moment I take it off.  (When I check my watch, am I checking the time, or checking to make sure the watch is still on my wrist?  Probably both.)

I’m reminded of this mental process whenever I go through airport security:  after taking off my watch and storing it safely in my bag, I go to check the time a minute later, see my bare wrist, and panic briefly before remembering I’d stashed the watch away.

It’s kind of like how a PC has a job that runs around every five seconds or so checking all the USB ports to see if something has been plugged in.  How much RAM does that USB-checking process eat up?  And what is the equivalent in terms of brain power devoted to checking for my watch?  And given how much I always have on my mind already, as a working stiff and husband and parent, doesn’t this kickass watch start to look like an unnecessary burden?

Yep, it sure does.  But what can I do?  The way that I’m wired, owning this watch is in fact a burden, but not one I wish to give up.  Perhaps I am as neurotic about watches as Shteyngart, but in my own way.  To him, watches must look like a path to salvation, whereas to me, a watch is like having another kid to both enjoy and fret about.  If Shteyngart worries about losing any of his watches, he doesn’t let on ... he always seems focused on his next acquisition.  To extend my analogy, he’s kind of like the womanizer who leaves in his wake a series of neglected bastard children.

Is that fair?  No, of course not ...  that analogy only highlights how silly my devotion is to my watch and how exaggerated my sense of responsibility to it.  This isn’t a kid, and it isn’t a pet.  It’s just a watch.  I’ll try to remember that.

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