Chicago — The Consumer Electronics Show: thirty-five thousand over-weight, potential coronaries in white plastic shoes not believing for one minute that the people who buy the records are are the people who buy the record players. Circulating through this crotch rubbing, company man crush are several hundred Japanese, the men responsible for the technology that allows the rest of them to keep up on their time payments and fantasy-frustrations of scoring one of the hot pants honies who are spread out across the McCormick Place convention center handing out shopping bags, promotional literature, and an air of desperation. I spent four days wandering through this crowd, alternating between my suit and my bell-bottoms, trying to make contact, to find some common language which would allow me to tell these people that what they�re selling is the future. I didn�t have any luck. The fact is that the people who sell the communications equipment are totally devoid of the ability to communicate.