Hearne: Dissecting Bob Lefsetz on the Concept of ‘Too Much’

I’m not sure what, Too much of nothing really means…

Other than being the lyrics to a Bob Dylan song that a lot of people – me included – used to think were “manna from heaven” back in the 1970s and before.

However for music / pop culture scribe Bob Lefstez those lyrics opened a window into the “too much of everything” of today.

Check him out:

“I remember going to college where there was one snowy television station, one lame college radio outlet and one movie theatre, never mind no internet or cell phones,” Lefsetz says. “You had to talk to people for your entertainment.

“I also remember being bored in high school. With the same damn records to play.

“Now I’m so busy catching up that I constantly feel left behind and to employ the old cliche I frequently want to stop the world and get off. I used to be a connoisseur, I used to be comprehensive, that’s nearly impossible in today’s overloaded word.”

HC: Which of course brings us to Lefsetz takes on too much…

NEWS:

Used to be you could watch the 7 o’clock network report and believe you knew what was going on. Back before TV news switched to cable in the 1980s and then mutated into opposing views. Yes, you need to watch MSNBC and Fox to get a fix on our country. But each do little reporting, so you’ve got to go to the papers. The New York Times has boots on the ground, but it still doesn’t cover certain business stories, so you need the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, online you can check out the news of the world, never mind smaller outlets and opinions, because we’ve learned in the internet era that the big boys are last and they often miss things, stories start in the bulrushes. And we’re confronted with news everywhere we go, whenever we launch our browser, whenever we pick up our phone, and at first it’s thrilling, then it becomes overwhelming, and you think you know what’s going on but the truth is you might know less. And did I used to concerned if the head of Pimco jumped ship?”

HC: Well said, except we flyover folks have to put up with the inconsistencies and all-too-obvious biases of local news media, that have little to no real competition except in the case of fires and inner city murders.

Do you know who this man is?
Of course you don’t

SOCIAL MEDIA

“Some people are building shrines to themselves on Facebook, others  have six figures of tweets despite having followers in the triple digits, or the low fours,” Lefsetz says.”What makes them keep tweeting? They want acknowledgement. But for all the people posting, reading is a full time job. The news media above keeps telling us social media is where it’s at, but who’s got the time to read everybody’s feed?”

HC: I’ll tell you who, my 17 year-old daughters. They don’t even know or care who Bono is, but for them Twitter is a lifeline to their peers.

RESTAURANTS

“They’re reviewed everywhere,” Lefstez says. “And you can check them out in Zagat and Yelp, but our country’s financial condition is teetering, most can’t afford to eat out every night, and by the time you check out a couple of eateries the trends have changed and you’ve got to be a 400 pound foodie to get a fix on the scene.

“Then there are the food trucks, which don’t even stay in the same place!”

HC: It’s hard to stay current on the restaurant scene even in Kansas City. Then again, 20 and 30-somethings and office workers don’t seem to have a hard time keeping up with the food truck scene.

MUSIC

“Radio played the best of everything, the deejay was trustworthy,” Lefsetz says. “Now radio has very narrow verticals and there are so many options, like Pandora and Sirius XM and iTunes Radio and…you listen to streams that are completely different from what others listen to, so you don’t feel integrated into society.

“Meanwhile, you’re inundated with new album releases. Here’s Robert Plant! Here’s Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett! Here’s someone you’ve never heard of! And they’ve all got albums in the neighborhood of an hour long and your time is eaten up trying to catch up with everything else, so in most cases you don’t even bother. You want music to be bite-sized, maybe you’ve got time for an EP, but that would require the artist to believe he’s not that important, not deserving of all your time, and they feel otherwise….”

E-MAIL

“Maybe it’s important, but oftentimes it’s the ad from the corporation you interacted with once, spamming away. And then there’s the dreaded cc. And it’s an endless waterfall of information, and your job is to extract nuggets. And everybody tells you not to take it all too seriously, to have digital-free days, but they also tell you to pay attention and apply yourself and you’re left wondering which is it?

“I could say I wish I was a millennial, so I could surf all this info, but I’ve learned from millennials they’re overwhelmed too. Then again, if information overload was all I knew, it would be easier to cope with…And really, you want me to get into my car and battle traffic to pull some levers?”

HC: You know, I remember way back when – post Y2K – when certain friends that shall go unnamed began cc-ing me and everybody else they could think of on Internet stuff somebody had copied them on. Like a lame chain letter.

Even then – in the days of dial-up – it seemed tedious and lame. Fortunately  only know one person that still does this and he’s really old, has a bunch of cats and his first name is Wade. Take Bob’s advice and don’t do it, no matter what.

I DON’T HAVE TIME!

“P.S. Never mind too many TV shows and too much music at our fingertips and too many apps and…”

HC: Information over load. I’m looking forward to seeing how my kids handle it but at this point I suspect that the secret of their sanity is ignoring maybe most of it. You know, the news. But as most people grow older, the news becomes more central in their lives. When I was in college at the University of Arizona, I had a roommate that was seven years older than me that actually took the newspaper. He might as well of taken up knitting or curling, for the life of me I couldn’t understand why he would waste his time like that.”

For more Bob Lefsetz check out lefsetz.com/wodrpress.