Glassy-Eyed
Whether or not you think that the new decade began on January 1 of this year or will begin on January 1, 2011, there’s one thing we can all agree upon: the makers of novelty New Year’s sunglasses are screwed.
This occurred to me as I walked east on 48th street at lunch today and I passed a newsstand still selling those 2010 glasses. Every year for the past decade hawkers of overpriced chintz all over the city foisted sunglasses with frames in the shape of the year (that’s the Gregorian calendar year, of course) on eager-to-spend tourists and they were quite easy to construct given that you had a “00” smack in the middle. The 2010 glasses seem to have the “1” wedged between the lenses, not too unwieldy. However, next year is 2011. So now what are they going to do?
I suspect somewhere out there there’s a novelty sunglasses designer sweating it out over this. He lays in the dark trying to imagine an alignment of digits that would not result in a reduced field of vision, accidents and ultimately lawsuits. I suppose you could have the “2” on one side, the “01” squeezed over the bridge of the nose and the final “1’ on the other side. That might do the trick. But, Mr. New Year’s Novelty Sunglasses Designer, what do you do with 2012?
It does not look like a rosy future for the New Year’s Novelty Sunglasses Designers.
This occurred to me as I walked east on 48th street at lunch today and I passed a newsstand still selling those 2010 glasses. Every year for the past decade hawkers of overpriced chintz all over the city foisted sunglasses with frames in the shape of the year (that’s the Gregorian calendar year, of course) on eager-to-spend tourists and they were quite easy to construct given that you had a “00” smack in the middle. The 2010 glasses seem to have the “1” wedged between the lenses, not too unwieldy. However, next year is 2011. So now what are they going to do?
I suspect somewhere out there there’s a novelty sunglasses designer sweating it out over this. He lays in the dark trying to imagine an alignment of digits that would not result in a reduced field of vision, accidents and ultimately lawsuits. I suppose you could have the “2” on one side, the “01” squeezed over the bridge of the nose and the final “1’ on the other side. That might do the trick. But, Mr. New Year’s Novelty Sunglasses Designer, what do you do with 2012?
It does not look like a rosy future for the New Year’s Novelty Sunglasses Designers.
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