Op Ed
Minor Rant in Stereo
I listen to a lot of music, much of it through headphones. Sometimes because I have to, like when I’m on the train or if my girl is watching TV. But a lot of the time I use headphones because I want to. I like the solitary feeling of that enclosed sonic space. It allows me to listen to the same song over and over again. Maybe I want to hear I Would Die For You by Prince on repeat my whole commute. Don’t judge my journey.
I have great memories of headphones going way back to my single digits. Dad had huge over the ear cans when I was a kid with a thick coiled wire that allowed you to go anywhere in our green shagged living room. I remember that blasting Santana’s Abraxas through those were like a portal to another world.
Years later in my teens I’d take long pouty walks listening to Synchronicity by The Police on my Sony Walkman. Eventually, the discman came along and I dug nothing more than cranking some Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Outkast, and They Might Be Giants at dangerously high volumes through my headphones. You got a problem with They Might Be Giants?
Every year it gets harder and harder to figure out which is the right and which is the left headphone.
I’m not talking about audio fidelity here. You can argue the pros and cons of compression till the cows come home. I’m talking about something a little more practical; labeling.
Every year it gets harder and harder to figure out which is the right and which is the left headphone. Take a look at your headphones after a few months of use. Can you even tell which is which anymore? Look at these Samsungs. Came with my phone. White, barely raised, tiny, hardly noticeable at actual size. Great setup for a penis joke but not a headphone.
Do I really need a flood light so I can tell which holes to put these in? I’m liable to stick them anywhere.
I can’t understand who benefits from this.
Look at these pricey discontinued Sennheisers. Even zoomed in I can’t get a sharp picture of the indicator. That R looks like a dot at 100%, trust me. Especially bouncing on the bus, yo.
Maybe we’ll get to the point where everything is Bluetoothed right to your ear drums or hard-wired into our colons, but for now I need solutions.
These Klipsch headphones have two indicators. It’s too bad you can’t read either. See the indicator on the headphone wire itself? Dark grey against a darker grey?
And can you even see the other indicator? Nighttime happens, headphones companies. And dimly lit afternoons. You’d have trouble seeing these in the clearest light of day.
Wait, maybe it’s eyeglass companies that benefit from this?
And it’s not just in-ear headphones. These Velodyne’s over-the-ear cans have a small stamp in the metal on the inside of the headband that you can only see if you angle it towards Mecca.
Really? Do I have to draw large L’s and R’s with a permanent marker on all my headphones? How am I supposed to look cool?
Listen, I know a lot of stuff is going on in the world that’s super-important. Maybe ISIS shot down a Russian plane over Egypt. Maybe our next President will be a billionaire xenophobe or a narcoleptic neurosurgeon. In the grand scheme of things, blogging about headphones seems like whiny hipster bullshit… but to paraphrase Plato, music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and flight to the imagination. That’s some important shit right there.
Almost every year for the past 6 years and on the same day, I’ve posted the same pic of me in the hospital during my temporary and untimely demise in 2015. A few weeks after I was back to “normal”, I asked Eric “Why’d you take the pics?” And he said, “I knew you would want to write about it if you lived.” Eric was right. Eric was often right and Eric always had my best interest at heart. I am going to miss my friend.
You ever meet someone and become friends immediately?! Well this was not the case with Eric. Before he was my manager at Morgan Stanley, I would often see this 6’4″, giant white guy walk up to the only black woman at work, say something then walk away without any hint of human emotion. Naturally I thought he was a jerk until I asked her “Yo, is that dude bothering you?” She laughed and proceeded to tell me he was a great person, which I ultimately got to experience first hand. Little did I know this Italian from Staten Island was more Brooklyn than most Brooklynites.
Eric was not with the shits!! If there were ever someone who lived their life in direct, honest and no uncertain terms, that would be Eric. He would ask me questions at work like “Why are the other consultants making more money than you?” I knew the answer to that question and so did he. Eric then proceeded to increase my salary by 15K. After arguing with all our managers that “You need to hire Alfred!”, they eventually did 1 year prior to the 2015 incident. In the hospital, one of my friends asked me, “What if you didn’t have health insurance when this happened?” I would be in debt for the rest of my life is the obvious answer. I still am in debt for the rest of my life but at least, it is to those who made sure I had a more enjoyable life and for that, I will gladly repay.
My mom loved to tell me the story of how she met Eric. After they told her I was going to be in the ICU for some time, she told the doctor “Well I’m not going anywhere.” She then hears a voice from that back of the room that says “Well I’m not going anywhere either!” That was Eric and in true form, he was at that hospital every single day until I was discharged.
Eric passed away in December 2021 of stage 4 cancer. After feeling faint on his way to my bbq, he went to get checked out and was diagnosed. During the past 5 years, Eric lost his mom, twin brother and dad. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must have felt like but I’m glad that pain he was feeling is no more.
From being my manager to my business partner, writer, book editor, artistic director, and most importantly, my friend, I am going to miss you MC Krispy E a.k.a “Enrique Pollazo!” And although you told me Enrique means Henry in Spanish and not Eric, it was too late!
Sidebar. The day I was discharged, while everyone was deciding what was best for me, no one had remembered that I would need clothes in order to leave the hospital. Eric shows up (unasked) with all the clothes I had on the day I coded, laundered and ready to go. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve friends like this but i need to keep doing it! Sidebar complete.
Rest in Peace Eric. “Be Good.”
