Smartphone Smackdown

This sketch was inspired by our experience with smartphones. While in theory smartphones are portable and powerful tools, this sketch explores the real reason why we here at CoBaD think they are so popular. The first speaker, Dr. Current Resident (you probably get his mail all the time; just check the addressee on your junk mail), talks about the how marketers attract customers by preying on their weaknesses (fear, anger, and wanting to fit in with the “in” crowd) and, by conspiring with telecommunication companies, use those weaknesses to get people to buy and to get hopelessly addicted to their phones. For the advertising perspective on how such a product could possibly be promoted (i.e., the “sales pitch,”), see the “What’s New is Old Again” sketch.

The second speaker, the uselessability expert Dr. Kent Workworthadamn, talks about how phone companies reel in (read: tire out) the “fish” once they’ve been “hooked” (so to speak). Once phone companies get the customers addicted, they frustrate their customers just for the hell of it, knowing that they can’t go back to their old ways. What are the customers gonna do, go back to their old dumb phones and risk once again being the laughingstock of their families, friends, neighbors and coworkers gas they mock their theft-proof “baby phones?” Customers could go to another telecommunications firm, but they’ll only do the same thing, since all the telecommunications firms are in on the same racket.

It’s kind of like Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress for his latest data breach or invasion of privacy allegation. Members of Congress takes turns yelling at Mr. Zuckerberg, but it’s all for show, or more specifically, for votes. In the end, Facebook just gets a slap on the wrist. Congressmen know they can’t shut down Facebook because of FOMO (fear of missing out) as Facebook allows them to reach out to as constituents cheaply and without having to dip into their franking privilege budget. And Congressmen can’t boycott Facebook out of principle either because they know their opponents in the next election won’t, and will use that to their advantage. You can almost hear Zuckerberg say “I apologize Congressmen, but I’m Facebook, what the hell you gonna do about it? Where else you gonna go?”

Or better yet, think of the relationship between a drug dealer and his buyer. A man goes to buy heroin and his dealer says “I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, the price of heroin has gone up 100 percent.” The user could complain and lambaste his dealer, but in the end the addict will coughing up the dough. What’s he gonna do? Go to another dealer (who would give him the same story or may be an undercover agent)? Call the police?

The third speaker, Dr. Judge Mrs. Detering, on the other hand, pulls no punches, but then again, given her track record (see the “Victory Garden Leave” sketch), we weren’t expecting anything less.

Lambert: “CUT! Alright, which one of you fiendish imps loaded Dr. Judge Mrs. Detering’s script in the teleprompter?” – For more on Lambert DaVinci, see “Daydream Bleacher.” For more on the mark he made on this channel (well, left his wing and half his abdomen, anyway), see “I Tried Improvisation, Then I Was Perturbed” and “Booth Estranges Diction.”

Dr. Resident: “Now the power is in your hands to do remarkable things, like log on to that cut rate airliner’s website 24 hours before your departure and press that refresh button like a lab rat in a Skinner box until you get your choice of treat, er, SEAT!” – Based on an actual experience. A troupe member of ours was attending a systems engineering conference. The next to last day of the conference had just concluded and he went out for dinner with some colleagues. At about 7pm, 24 hours before his departure, one colleague rudely got out his phone, logged onto a website and began to press buttons. Turns out he had a ticket on a discount airline (we’ll call it “Southwest Airlines” because that’s its name). You can’t reserve a seat on a “Southwest Airlines” plane; you can only reserve a ticket on the plane. So the only way you can get your choice of seat (i.e., front row, window, etc.) is to claim one as soon as the seats are opened up for the taking, which for “Southwest Airlines” is 24 hours before departure. So he went to the website and slavishly pressed the refresh button repeatedly like a lab rat in a Skinner box eagerly wanting his pellets. If his seat matters to him that much, why didn’t he avoid the whole mess and go with a carrier where he could have reserved a seat?

Dr. Kent Workworthadamn: “Consider the smartphone. For years, people have stared at their hands begging to have a device that would someday randomly re-sort the contacts in their address books in no particular order, inexplicably delete text messages, drop network connectivity forcing the users to reset to factory defaults in order to read their email, and have a device that would insist upon playing all of their music in shuffle mode.” – A member of our troupe unfortunately had all of these things happen to a phone of his named after a particular fruit.

Dr. Workworthadamn’s suit was inspired by the “suit joke,” a joke where a customer picks up his custom made suit, tries it on and complains about the slipshod work. The tailor tries to cover up his sloppy suitmaking skills by asking the customer to assume awkward postures to give it the appearance of looking better than it actually is. As seen in his introductory title card, Dr. Workworthadamn works in the Procrustes School of Ergonomics. Procrustes was the son of the Greek God Poseidon, and had a iron bed reserved for his guests. He would invite every passer-by to stay with him for the evening and sleep in the bed. If the guest proved to be too short for the bed, Procrustes would put him on the rack. If the guest was too tall, he would cut his feet off. One size fits all, indeed.

Lambert: THAT’S THE MOST PATHETIC EXCUSE I’VE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE!!! NOW YOU SIT THERE AND FINISH YOUR LINES, YOU SHARP CRAZY DRESSED MAN…“ - If, as ZZ Top argues, “Every girl crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man,” how do they feel about a sharp, crazy dressed man?

Dr. Kentworkworthadamn: “Now instead of fixing a leaky sprinkler with a leaf blower, you’re now hammering a nail with a pair of pliers! Problem solved, thanks to uselessability!!” - A member of this troupe has seen this first hand at an apartment complex where he used to live. Every week a greens keeper blow dried the puddling water off the sidewalk dribbling from several leaky sprinklers to keep the sidewalk from getting slippery from algae and hence avoiding a lawsuit. We think of it as a literal interpretation of the apartment manager’s mantra, “Why fix today what you can blow off until next week?”

Dr. Kenworkworthadamn: “Problem solved, thanks to uselessability!! So make the right choice! Go uselessability, and make your W. Mark Felt today!” – William Mark Felt, Sr. was “Deep Throat” from the Watergate scandal. The appearance of Mr. Felt’s name in a skit on repeatedly wailing away at a corrupt machine to the point of rendering it utterly useless is purely intentional. You can resign yourself to that, folks.
Voiceover: “Dr. Kent Workworthadamn’s wardrobe was furnished by One Two Piece Suit at a Time Clothiers, a Frenchie Marx and Cottonmouth Company.” – Dr. Workworthadamn’s suit was also inspired by Johnny Cash’s 1976 hit “One Piece at a Time.” To paraphrase the great Mr. Cash, “The sleeve buttons were another sight, they had two on the left and one on the right” and “it only had one [coat] tail fin.

“Frenchie” Marx, aka, Sam Marx, was the father of Leonard (Chico), Adolph (Harpo), Julius (Groucho), Milton (Gummo) and Herbert (Zeppo). Groucho once said in an interview that his father was a terrible tailor but a fantastic cook. Sam was so good in fact that he kept his family in more than one instance from being homeless; he would make meals for the landlord in exchange for rent. Yet Sam loved being a tailor. It just goes to show that the saying “do what you love and love what you do” isn’t worth a hill of (rice and) beans.

Voiceover: “Dr. Kent etc.’s weapon of choice was provided by duct tape. Duct tape, your one stop shop for fixing damn near everything and breaking damn near nothing apart from your face in a puerile and idiotic YouTube Challenge!” - A reference to a 14 year old who in 2016 participated in the “Duct Tape Challenge.” The challenge has people bound head to toe in duct tape and try to escape. Their escapes are videotaped and posted on social media. During the course of his escape, the boy in question fell over, and as he was unable to brace himself because he was bound in duct tape, crashed into a window frame and damaged his eye socket.

Ultimately, though, it’s we the customers that are to blame for our addiction to smartphones, much in the same manner that April and June were to blame for their addiction to self-medication in the “Pharmacy for the Devil” sketch (“How are we feeling? Where’s the pain? You’re the doctor! You’re to blame!”). Marketers and the pharmacy industry weren’t forcing them to take meds, and marketers and the telecommunications industry aren’t forcing us to buy smartphones.
And while we can never regain that time we’ve wasted on those mini parlor windows (as Ray Bradbury might call them), we can only hope someday we’ll see the light, make use of those apparently useless Dumbhammers lying all around us, and, like our intrepid prop monkey, release ourselves once and for all from the manacles of oppression and get our damn watering hole back.

References:
Guarino, G. https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157634223524840/
Upjoke.com. Suit jokes. https://upjoke.com/suit-jokes

Morin, A. (11 July 2020). What Parents should know about the duct tape challenge. https://www.verywellfamily.com/what-is-the-duct-tape-challenge-4134141

Podhoretz, J. Commentary.org (Sept. 2013). https://www.commentary.org/articles/john-podhoretz/the-suit-joke/

Wikipedia. Mark Felt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt

Wikipedia. Procrustes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes

Wikipedia. Sam Marx. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Marx

YouTube. 2001: A Space Odyssey - The Dawn of Man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEaGQb6dJk

YouTube. Johnny Cash - One Piece At A Time (Live). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=060A15ELz00

Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” was courtesy premiumbeat.com.

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Convulsions of Birth and Death (CoBaD) is a comedy sketch troupe founded in September, 2022 that posts skits on social media covering varied topics such as music, history, art, science, sports, literature and events encountered in everyday life. The title was inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” (1849), an essay written as a protest against the U.S. government taking his “gift” (i.e., his taxes), and wasting it in ways in which he did not approve (e.g., war and slavery). CoBaD writes sketches in the spirit of Thoreau, but instead of strictly casting its nets outwards towards governments and figures of authority, it projects its protest inwards by taking a humorous, lightheaded look at humanity and specifically those who take the greatest gift of all, life, and senselessly and stupidly waste it on greed, narcissism, self-centeredness, petty-mindedness, arrogance, opportunism, power-grabbing, quid pro quo, the status quo, ulterior motives, and the most despicable waste of all, social media.