Irrelevant

Is time running out for the wristwatch? Surveys and sales data show that young shoppers are shunning watches for snazzier time-telling gadgets, such as cellphones and iPods. Last year, the number of people who bought watches not in the Rolex and Patek Philippe stratosphere dropped 12% from 2004, according to a leading market research group. The runaway favorite brand for teens, Fossil Inc. of Texas, acknowledged an 18.6% decline in wholesale U.S. sales of its namesake brand. Oakley Inc.

The death of 13-year-old Devin Brown at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department has generated a wide array of complicated emotions in the black community, including shock and anguish, confusion and introspection. Why, people wondered, was this boy killed? Could his death have been prevented? Were the police rash and trigger-happy? Or were they simply defending themselves?

Re "Keeping Che Alive -- With Capitalism," Commentary, Sept. 20: If those on the political left wonder why they are largely irrelevant in U.S. politics, here is part of the reason. By clinging to the iconography of lost causes like Che Guevara, they alienate themselves from the U.S. middle class, which they must influence if they are to have any hope of stopping the conservative tide washing over all of us. For most Americans, Guevara carries all the bad associations with the communism and Marxism that were America's enemies for so many years.

Joseph "Sepp" Blatter, president of FIFA, on Monday dismissed as irrelevant the sexual escapades that have led to the resignation of Mark Palios, chief executive of the English Football Assn., as well as two other F.A. employees, in a scandal that also involved England's Coach Sven Goran Eriksson. "It is human relations," Blatter said in Athens of the affairs Palios and Eriksson had with F.A.

It is time to retire Cinderella. The penniless gal saved by a handsome prince has been a Hollywood favorite ever since Disney's animated version hit the screen in 1950, but "The Prince & Me," the latest retread, proves that the story has run out of steam. The target audience -- tween-age and teenage girls -- stayed away from it in droves, as well as from several other recent versions of the once-unassailable myth.

For the 2004 edition of the Whitney Biennial, Los Angeles sculptor Paul McCarthy has placed a wicked version of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float on the roof of the Madison Avenue museum building. Festive and foolish, both carnival attraction and serious work of art, the bronze-colored balloon makes an ideal emblem to represent the WB.

The Elder and the Future held court on the stadium court at the Pacific Life Open on Saturday. Andre "the Elder" Agassi and Taylor "the Future" Dent each won second-round matches on a hot and busy day in Indian Wells, their victories presenting reminders of what was and still is, and what very well might be in the men's game.

Oops, he did it again! Or am I alone in thinking that pop music critic Robert Hilburn had a bad meal before sitting down to watch the Grammys as he must have last year when he went so off course in his review of the show? That, to paraphrase the second paragraph in his review of this year's show ("Affirmation," Feb. 9), in which he begs for a response to the question, "Or am I alone in thinking the 46th annual edition of the Grammy Awards felt torturously slow and mostly irrelevant?"

Despite the ongoing theater surrounding the primaries, Americans already know -- barring a bombshell -- who the Democratic presidential nominee will be, making 2004 the most truncated primary election cycle in U.S. history. If you're Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe -- who has reportedly told all the contenders that if they're not winning by March 10, they need to drop out of the race -- this is good news.

It's crunch time for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who will come under pressure from the United States and its Iraqi allies today at a meeting to help rescue plans for forming a new Iraqi government by July. If Annan agrees to send United Nations political and electoral experts back to Iraq in force, they will need extensive security protection from the United States -- and the authority to arrange the political transition without being overruled by U.S. occupation authorities, U.N.