The Big Boomerang Theory: Surfing an Endless Trend to Blend
The Rufus II by Nike: Is it a walking shoe? A clog? A sports sneaker? The no-heel, rubber-soled, slipperesque thing looks like all three.
The palm-size Handspring Treo: Is it a cell phone? A video game player? A personal digital assistant? A mini-computer? All of the above?
And the Pontiac Aztek: AutoWeek proclaims it “a minivan, SUV, station wagon and motor home all rolled into one.” So what is it?
Time was you could tell a cookie from a candy bar, a spoon from a fork, a restaurant from a playground, and a hot dog from a hen. Then began the blending of America. Along came sofa beds, El Caminos and the candy mint/breath mint that took the Cert out of certainty. Now we’re surfing along on an apparently endless blend trend, living in the age of the Twix, the spork, the McDonald’s PlayPlace and the chicken frank.
The blend trend is changing:
* Vanity. At the MIT Media Lab, scientists are developing a digital mirror that will help you monitor your heart rate and blood sugar levels.
* Banks. They used to be simply places to stash your cash. “Now banks can sell any kind of product,” says Tracey Mills of the American Bankers Assn. “You can get auto insurance, mortgages, brokerage services, life insurance--basically any financial services product you need.”
* Churches. Once unprepossessing spots mostly for preaching and praying, houses of worship today offer a smorgasbord of opportunities: family life centers, fitness clubs, TV and recording studios, radio stations and gift shops.
* The military. Battle-minded blend trenders believe in the newly developed Objective Individual Combat Weapon, a hybrid killing machine that combines an assault rifle and a grenade launcher with day and night sighting, laser targeting and a helmet-mounted display screen that can receive video signals. You can watch “Apocalypse Now” while you live through it. The strange-looking Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey marries the vertical takeoff, hover and vertical landing qualities of a helicopter with the long-range, fuel efficiency and speed of a turboprop aircraft, according to its designers. Is this another shining example of fusion? Or confusion? More than 40 Marines have been killed in Osprey crashes.
Just look around. The Blizzard at the Dairy Queen blends ice cream with candy. New Crest toothpaste with the Scope-mouthwash component also whitens your teeth.
Cutting into the Swiss Army Knife market is Toollogic, with its 10-function Credit Card Companion--including tweezers, a compass, an awl and a screwdriver--that’s as flat as road kill. Your Monteverde pen is a pencil, a highlighter and a PDA stylus. Your favorite bookstore is also a coffee shop and music hall. Your cable TV connection delivers movies and Internet access to your home. Everything is becoming everything.
Call it globalization, call it imperialism, but cultures, too, are commingling at an accelerated pace. There’s a Burger King in Budapest. And Tex-Mex in Beijing.
Nowhere is there more blending than in the United States. We’ve melted the melting pot and become a pureed people. We toss races and ethnic backgrounds and ages and classes together into a combination salad.
We blend our words into neon neologisms--as recorded by Logophilia.com--such as barkitecture (dog houses), tankini (a bikini with a tank top), hasbian (a woman who was in a lesbian relationship and now is with a heterosexual man) and Enronomics.
There’s nothing new under the sun, so things are melting into one another. We’re trying to cram 10 pounds of living into a five-pound life. We try to multi-task. As a result, devices meant to save labor actually create work. We spend hours programming our Casio WQV3D-8, a wrist camera watch that tells time, takes color pictures and transfers them to our computer.
The blended life is more complicated. We’re all cross-dressed up with nowhere to go.
Or perhaps the world is getting simpler. Who needs a backpack full of equipment when you’ve got Jeep’s new 11-in-1 Survival Kit? In one appliance, you’ll find: a five-inch black-and-white TV, an AM/FM weather band radio, a lantern, a fluorescent lamp, a flashlight, a warning siren, a clock, a thermometer, a compass and audible mosquito repellent.
We’re blending foods. Pass the tangelos. And the broccolini. And energy-drink boosts that mix , herbs, vitamins and botanicals.
What’s going on?
Perhaps the universe has stopped expanding. The big bang is over and the big boomerang has begun. Like an over-inflated balloon, the firmament has gone about as far as it can go and is now beginning to contract. Matter is collapsing in on itself, creating some very strange compositions, such as the Afro Celt Sound System, a six-member British band that combines Celtic harp lightness and West African melodies with rhythmic Asian undercoatings in a London clubbish mix-mash.
Is that explanation too simple? Or too confusing?
Or a mixture of the two?
