For the last in my series of television related rants, I have chosen to unleash my oft abated fury on the infomercial. It is not to say that I have a problem with infomercials, as they are a necessary evil and allow struggling affiliates and cable networks to reap the benefits off-peak-hours advertising. However, as they say, the devil is in the details.
And who doesn't like an infomercial anyway? Their cheesy hosts, the compensated studio audience, and the beautiful myriad of gadgets you can't possibly survive without ... until five minutes after the program is over. They’re an American institution, and an oft marginalized beacon of Capitalism. They bring the magic of the flea market hard sell to the boob tube.
Some of our best inventions have come to us by way of the infomercial. What could be more iconic than the Chia Pet, the George Foreman Grill, or the Ronco Food Dehydrator. Nothing says love like spreading muddy seeds on a clay base with a poorly glazed sheep's head. Who wouldn’t like to “knock the fat”, out of an otherwise juicy and delicious hamburger? And where would we all be without delicious fruit roll-ups made from strawberry jam, the all natural nutrition and pure goodness of dried fruit, or the lumberjack convenience of homemade beef jerky.
That's right, hold the phone, you can make jerky at home. Could life be any better?
But wait, you're depressed with no direction in life? Shucks, nothing a little Tony Robbins can't fix. Top notch motivational speaking from a guy who looks like the girlfriend stealing douche from every 80’s movie. Nice DeLorean asshole…
Thanks but no thanks, I’ll deal with my inner demons on my own. For now, I’ll try to poison the little fucker’s with a steady stream of Jack Daniels and Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburgers. Which is good segue to…
Fat?
No worries my tubby friend. Drop your French fry and jump on Tony Little's Gazelle.
True story time… I almost met an untimely death losing control of one of these fuckers sitting on the back patio of my parents house. Do not, if you value your life the slightest bit, get on a Gazelle.
Better yet, hit up Chuck Norris' Total Gym.
Speaking of Chuck Norris… (better fire up the JRTW Rimshot Monkey™ for this one)…
I hear that Chuck Norris is so strong, Volkswagens lift him to prove their strength.
I hear Chuck Norris is so tough, he shits sideways.
Hmm... one more...
Every time Chuck Norris ejaculates, a third world country suffers a natural disaster.
Thank you! Don’t forget to tip your waitress…I’ll be here all week…try the veal.
I'm sure I could go on for hours about the Chuck and/or the pseudo-benefits of the gadgetry of years past. But this is not about then, this is about now.
And what do we get for our hard earned American dollar these days?
First, there's the ShamWow. A magic little towel that holds 4 billion times it's own weight in water. I recently read in Popular Mechanics that this little towel does in fact work as intended. In their tests it sucked the cola right out of the carpet, and without the clever edit we see in the commercials. From what I could tell they liked it, but felt is was better to dab than to rub, as it had a rough texture to it.
Little. Yellow. Different. Better.
My problem lies not with the product. My problem lies with the former Tilt-a-Whirl operator they've now hired to hock this thing county fair style, Vince Offer (born Offer Shlomi). With his best Sammy Davis Jr. impression, this lazy-eyed psycho is at best the meth-addled incarnation of Billy Mays and at worst... well, himself. Although I guess now we know that Billy Mays was himself meth-addled, so it's kind of a moot point.
Fun Fact! - Coroners used OxyClean to sanitize the autopsy table after his death.
But I digress, apparently no one on set has ever heard of a boom mic so Schlomi here has to use a first generation Bluetooth headset to communicate with us. Secondly, sweet merciful Jesus what is with that eye? Thirdly I don't give a rat's ass what Olympic divers use to dry themselves off with, I only care about when and where they hit their heads and if they're HIV positive or not. I'm looking at you Louganis!
And now Mr. Offer has moved to the Slap Chop. The little gadget with the ninja name. If I had a little person in my employ, I'd seriously dress him up in a dogi and call him Slap Chop. I'd pay him to jump out at my guests at random intervals like a tiny Bruce Lee.
The Slap Chop is endearing in it's ability to whip up tiny mounds of pico de gallo faster than you ever thought possible. It slices and dices, and chops onions WITH the skin on mind you! I haven't been able to chop up anything with the skin on since that incident with the Vegas stripper summer of 03. FYI, it is true, what happens in Vegas, stays in the Glad ForceFlex bag behind the dumpster at CVS.
What's better is the whole kit'n'caboodle opens up butterfly style for easy cleaning. Somehow...sadly… also like the incident with the Vegas stripper. Moving on.
So we sit there having our ears unapologetically raped by "Vince", to the point of ordering the damn thing in the hopes it will shut him up. But no, it won't. You’ll just cry yourself to sleep eating ice cream, like every other night… only this time with freshly chopped nuts.
Moving on....
It used to be the campy things in infomercials that I liked. The cheeseball audience, the ridiculous testimonials that were nothing short of poorly staged, it all had a very silly feel that made them ever so slightly funny.
Now I can't say really when it happened, but somewhere along the line infomercials discovered this as well. So now they're playing to the cheese. Deliberate cheese! Forced cheese, like an Easy Cheese enema.
Now I'm all for camp. I dig it. It butters my bread. But intentional campiness is like Christian metal, it simply cannot exist. If you're doing it on purpose, it's not camp. If you're rocking about the lord, well my friend, you're simply not rocking at all. And if you are truly rocking, you don't pimp a genre.
I recently saw an infomercial that didn't even have it's own paid audience. Instead it had a pre-recorded studio audience edited in. That is something so inconceivably artificial that I can't even begin to wrap my brain around it. And what's worse, is was some infomercial audience from 20 years ago, with clear delineation in audio/video quality. Deliberate cheese.
There used to be a few big names... Ron Popeil, Jack Lalane, Anthony Robinson. Now every douche bag with a British accent need only latch on to the first fly by night time saver to make it big in the infomercial world. I miss the good ol’ days when we'd simply light the hood of a car on fire and wipe our concerns away. What do we get now, a thousand bucks courtesy of the "Magic Jack" stimulus package. Personally, I'm only a few certified Obama silver dollars short of insanity.
Before long, we'll see infomercials re-enacting infomercials using clips of other infomercials. We’ll be fed and re-fed parts of infomercials we’ve already seen come and go, a mishmash of digested parts, like those which inevitably led to mad cow disease. But instead of it causing insanity in cows, it will lobotomize the brains of countless at home drones, waiting with open-wallets and empty closets, longing to be filled with regurgitated junk.
I don't mind crap products marketed to my weakened, inattentive mind in the middle of the night, with the crass authority one can only attain with high volume and a cockney accent. But put some Goddamn effort into it! I like my useless programming with some production value, even if it's a bunch of useless big dick pills being hocked by Ron Jeremy himself.
And that's that. TV, you're officially off the hook for awhile.
That’ll do Hedgehog…. that’ll do.
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