My Shoes Are Telling My Tank Top to Schedule Me for a Yoga Class
Electronic Fashions: Coming soon to a mall near you: clothing with a brain. As if talking appliances and cars weren’t strange enough, scientists are now putting tiny computers into shirts, shoes and other wardrobe items.
For example, the September issue of Details magazine reports that “intelligent earrings” will double as cell phones by 2004. And “smart sunglasses” will contain built-in face recognition software that flashes a person’s name across the inside of the lens when he or she comes into view.
This is all well and good, but we see room for improvement. The earrings would be far more practical if they also featured “white noise” machines to drown out boring dinner guests, or speech translators for when you’re traveling in other countries. As for the sunglasses, how about face recognition software that also alerts husbands to wedding anniversaries--or flashes a list of believable excuses for coming home late?
Other apparel mentioned by Details includes the “underwear computer,” a tank top that stores your medical records (in case you’re hit by a bus or small asteroid) and “smart shoes” that monitor your heart rate and instruct the tank top to dial 911 if you keel over.
Again, so much missed potential. If the tank top had its own defibrillator, the 911 call wouldn’t be necessary. And why not make the shoes smart enough to move their owner’s feet through dance steps just like the ones in those Gap commercials?
Another breakthrough we’d like to see are socks that tell you when they don’t match.
Aside from that, we’re out of ideas, which means it’s time for another Off-Kilter contest. As always, the winners receive an all-expenses-paid trip to . . . oh, wait, wrong contest. You’ll have to choose from the following prizes:
A Swiffer anti-dust kit; “Animalicious” (a video about animals attacking humans); a Pillsbury Doughboy doll; a special-edition Mr. Potato Head; a Weekly World News shirt or cap; Y2K Jelly skin lotion; a Scooby-Doo clipboard and socks; “These Aren’t My Pants” (a book about dumb crooks); wind-up chattering teeth; a mini-trash can that announces, when opened, “Jerry Springer, lick my toes” (why do people send us this stuff?); various cookbooks; games (electronic sports trivia or Don’t Make Me Laugh); CDs (frog noises, “Why 2YK” or the greatest hits of the past 2,000 years); a kit to make your own gum; a Frommer’s travel guide to the moon; a Magic School Bus CD-ROM; a Hot Wheels car; or a tongue scraper and drops from Breath Remedy.
To enter, dream up a humorous suggestion for futuristic clothing and send it--along with your name, rank, address and phone number--via fax, (213) 237-4712, e-mail (see address at end of column), or letter to Roy Rivenburg’s Off-Kilter, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.
Deadline is Nov. 5. All entries become property of The Times.
Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Gorillas Armed With Stolen Rifles Terrorizing Africa!” (Weekly World News)
According to our favorite tabloid, the guerrilla gorillas have been conducting military drills and target practice, apparently emulating human troops they saw in Zaire.
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Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service. E-mail Off-Kilter at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Today’s column is dedicated to humorist Jean Shepherd, who enchanted us 30 years ago with his radio show on WOR-AM. Best known for writing and narrating the movie “A Christmas Story,” he died Saturday at age 78.
