The Female Half will not sit on it…

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 8th, 2013

watch

Anyone who’s worked with either or both of us in the past few weeks has been driven nutty with our proselytizing re The Casio Vibrating Poptone Watch. And anyone who has worked with either one of us over the past 20+ years has been fascinated by/utterly bored with our obsession with “nailing our time.”

Behold the awesomeness that is the Casio Vibrating Poptone Watch! Get this: It’s an inexpensive, lightweight (and passably good-looking) electronic watch with a countdown timer that vibrates when it hits zero! And you can set it to repeat when it gets to zero!

Think about that. Say you’re doing a 20-minute set. And you want to know when it’s over… but you also wanna know when it’s… halfway over. Set the countdown timer for 10:00 and, just as you’re being introduced, you hit the lower left button and… exactly ten minutes later it gently pulses your wrist for ten seconds. And the, ten minutes later, it does it again!

Of course, you can do variations. During a five-minute set, you could set it to go off every minute! (Of course, that might get confusing.) The possibilities are many and varied.

Of course, some folks don’t care so much about time. (Some don’t even wear a watch.) You might depend on the sound guy to hit you with a light. But that doesn’t always work out. Like the time the sound guy– who was supposed to be giving you the two-minute light– was instead “out back,” talking up the chick with the Korn tattoo. Or the time you asked for a two-minute light and the guy running the room dutifully flicked the light off and on… when you were two minutes into your set! (Both of these actually happened to The Female Half.)

We work casinos a lot. In casinos, a comic is obligated (more so than in nearly all other venues) to do the time and no more. Going over is, just as the various stories attest to, a grave sin in the world where gambling and entertainment collide. Just the other day, The Male Half used his during a 20-minute clean set in a casino theater. He set it for 7:30. After it buzzed twice, he knew he had five to go. Peace of mind.

It comes in white and black. And, says The Male Half, the black one doesn’t look much like a woman’s watch. Be advised, it isn’t a very good everyday watch. It’s hard to read in sunlight. And in regular light. But it’s an awesome “work watch.” It’s a bit tricky to master the process of setting the timer, but with a little practice, it’s easy. It’s just a matter of memorizing the sequence of button-pushing. It’s just $26.95, via Amazon.com, with free shipping.

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