Going, Going, Gone

Now that the giddy euphoria accompanying President Obama's Inauguration (well, among everybody but the Fox News team and the Alaska State House) has dissipated, we now return you to our regular programming. Before I had my own brief interval of optimism I was readying my next post to delineate signs of increasing desperation in our economy. Well, they are all over the place, and as much a I try to remain unimpaired by the awful recession in my pension-augmented retirement state, it's hard to avoid the evidence--or in the following cases, disappearing evidence.

When I used to frequent the Glendale Galleria, two of my favorite stops were the Sharper Image store for its cool gadgetry, and Mervyn's for its inviting sales. Well, no more. Thanks to a bad review of its proprietary ion machine by Consumer Reports, Sharper Image went into a tailspin from which it never recovered. Bye-bye. Its name will only remain as a label accompanyhing some remaining inventory. As for Mervyn's, it's no longer having a sale, and its stores are now skeletal retail remains.

Circuit City is having a sale--but in a month or two will be closing its doors completely. Linen & Things is also a goner. So is Hamburger Hamlet. So is Washington Mutual Bank. So, of course, are half the brokerage firms on Wall Street, with Citigroup hanging by a thread. There is a huge condo building on a busy corner near the Kodak Theater that has stopped contruction due to diminished funding and looms as one of Hollywood's greatest eyesores. That phenomenon is happening all over, wherever the contruction frenzy built on the real estate bubble. Even in Las Vegas, the huge building complex called City Center has sections suspended, even after funds were pumped in from Dubai. Also vanishing form that region are myriad casino workers, especially in the security departments, victims of the gambling slump.

Some of the problems are not entirely due to the flagging economy; there are also the perils of techhological innovation, which leave old communications standbys in the primordial muck of evolutionary non-adaptiveness. Not only are we saying goodbye, sometime in 2009, to the analog bands on our TV airwaves, but also to any devices that still need that signal, without the requisite digital converter box. And those seem to be vanishing too. Even more problematic, though, is the ongoing calamity befalling our print media. So many old faithful publications are now on life support, with the only outlet being the Internet. Fairly soon we will see the final departure of the print New York Times, Newsweek, and TV Guide, journals I've known since childhood. Their on-line counterparts will provide as much information, to be sure, but will not be as comfortable to read in a lesiure setting. I don't know how I will enjoy my morning coffee with a laptop nearby (as I gingerly try to sip and not spill). Signs of TV Guides' imminent demise are very clear, as I'm beginning to receive a lot of double issues--saving print, one is to assume--as well as hysterical requests for long-term subscriptions. And the L.A. Times has done such a vanishing act that its daily edition is as thin as a supermarket discount supplement.

Well, time and tide wait for no man, or something. Everything dies, everything fades, even before December 12, 2012. But that philosophical sigh does not console one in the face of scary natural disappearances such as that of half the honeybees in the country. Or the likelihood that bananas will be vanishing from the stores in a few years. And I read the news today, oh boy, that our citrus crop is being threatened by some awful parasite.

On the other hand, with bananas, grapefuit and honey on the endangered list, there probably will be no breakfast soon with which to peruse the morning paper.

I could go on, but do you really want me to?