The (I)CRVN Blog

In SEPTEMBER, Fairfield, Ohio residents woke to some 1,600 pairs of women’s underwear strewn all over a wooded area.  Officials vowed to get to the bottoms of the situation.  Herman Cain wins the Florida Republican “Anyone But Mitt” contest.  Infamous basketball player Ron Artest changed his name to “Metta World Peace,” in the broadest use of irony in sports in some time.  The ashes of the creator of the Dorito were buried with his famous snack chip.  No word on just how orange the ashes were.  Rick Perry, after failing to remember the third reason he should drop out of the race, attempted to show how tough a candidate he could be by scheduling the executions of the remaining candidates.

OCTOBER began as Ireland ended their 350-year tradition of judges wearing wigs traditional in British courts, at a savings of nearly $3000 per wig.  Garters and corsets were left alone.  A Michigan woman sued producers of DRIVE for a misleading trailer, complaining that the movie was not as exciting as trailers suggested.  An Alabama company began converting the ashes of the deceased into ammunition.  No word on if they described the ammunition in advertisements as “live.”  Herman Cain failed miserably at “Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego?”  The kicker for Michigan’s Pinckney Community High varsity football team kicked the game-winning field goal after being voted homecoming queen at halftime.  The kicker was the first girl to play on a Michigan varsity boys’ squad.  Senator John McCain called Mixed Martial Arts fighting “human cockfighting,” and based his knowledge on his behind-the-scenes arguments with Palin’s people.  In the “can’t make this stuff up” category, it was revealed that the Catholic Church of Germany is the nation’s leading publisher of pornography.

NOVEMBER started with A South African man was killed when his pet hippo started chewing on him, and didn’t stop.  Neighbors described it as “hungry-hungry.”  Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi stepped down despite a suitable cad not being available to replace him.  Chik-Fil-A sued a man for producing tee-shirts that read “Eat More Kale,” even though the man was heterosexual.  An unmanned rocket was sent to explore Mars after Flash Gordon and Bugs Bunny turned down an offer to pilot the rocket.

The year wrapped up in DECEMBER when it was revealed that Medicare paid $240 Million over 10 years for ED treatments for men over 65, a bill the government was stiffed with.  A crash in Japan involving Lamborghini and Mercedes collectors resulted in $4 million in damage, and 5 million jokes at the owner’s expense.  Herman Cain suspended his campaign and joined Fox News, celebrating by releasing a single, “I Had 9-9-9 Problems and the B*%$#@ were One.  And Two.  And Three…”  And, ending the year much like it began, 4-year-old Italian Tommaso Assunta inherited a $13 Million fortune when Maria Assunta died. Tommaso is a feline.

Thanks for playing along, and I’ll try and do better about getting this thing posted earlier!

The second third of 2011 got off to a good start in MAY when Herman Cain won the Republican Party Obama Look-alike contest, with Michelle Bachmann taking first in the Hilary Clinton division.  Newt came in second in both, strangely.  Because South Carolina had missed a few months, a man charged with assault appeared in court with a tattoo on his forehead that read “please forgive me if I say or do anything stupid.”  Under orders from President Obama, Osama Bin Laden was found and killed by a U.S. Special Ops team.  Republicans were ecstatic, praising Dubya’s brilliance in finding Bin Laden in the brush on his Texas ranch.  Representative Anthony Weiner tweeted a late entry into the Brett Favre look alike contest.  The head of the IMF was arrested for sexal assault in what many think is the worst Mission Impossible plot ever.  Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals that he fathered a child with a staff member, increasing the number of known women to seemingly be totally blind.  The expected Rapture didn’t happen, prompting a rescheduling on the Mayan calendar.

With JUNE, Mitt Romney formally announces his candidacy for the Republican Presidential Nomination at a farm actually named “Bittersweet.”  John Edwards was indicted by a grand jury for using campaign funds to cover up his extramarital affair.  His defense, “but I’m prettier than Newt,” is a colossal failure.  Anthony Weiner finally admitted that yes, his hotdog has a first name.  The state of New York legalized gay marriage, sending most of Broadway to the courts for marriage licenses.  David Gest and Marcus Bachmann could not be found for comment.

In JULY, the Minnesota government shuts down due to a lack of funds, and not even Wisconsin notices.  South Carolina kept itself active in the news when a SC couple announced that they saw Jesus in their Wal-Mart receipt.  Rupert Murdoch testifies that he knew nothing of a phone-hacking scandal involving his newspapers.  He then tells the judge that the judge’s wife left a message to get milk on the way home.  The News of the World closes amid new revelations about the scandal, which FOX News neglects to cover, on the basis that everything NOTW did is “SOP” at Fox.  Space Shuttle ATLANTIS lands for the last time, and former President Dubya defends his policies that shut down the program by claiming that the Shuttle going to space was a waste of funds because everybody knows Atlantis is in the ocean.

AUGUST started out with Michelle Bachmann throws her hat into the Presidential nomination ring and apparently hires Sarah Palin as her fact-checker.  Rick Perry and Ron Paul also enter the fray, giving the Republicans Pawlenty of losers to choose from.  Standard and Poors lowers the U.S. credit rating from AAA (“could be better”) to AA+ (“consider learning Chinese”).  In what could be seen as the ultimate statement on the postal service worldwide, an elderly British man that had complained for years that the postal service was not mailing his letters was finally told that he had been putting his mail into a doggy-doo recepticle.  Australia was forced to spend an additional 100,000 on a 700 Million torpedo system when the system’s instructions came in French and Italian without translation.  Old Navy shows their school spirit by selling a line of tee-shirts that read “LETS GO [school name].”  More than 70 universities were represented by the shirts, all of which were missing an apostrophe.  Perhaps considering the Old Navy “situation,” Abercrombie & Fitch paid the cast of Jersey Shore not to wear their clothing, because it might give the chain a creepy image.  A Quebec man had a 20-ton boulder placed in the driveway of his ex-wife following years of her complaining that he never gave her “a big rock.”  Less than 5% of computer users panic when Steve Jobs resigned from Apple.

Part three coming soon!

There really is no greater window to the American psyche and character than late night ads and infomercials.  Nothing else helps us understand our idiosyncrasies and failures.  Only in this country (maybe England, as well) could we create celebrity out of commercials.  (Latest example?  He smells different and is on a horse.)  From the Maytag Man to the late Billy Mays, and from Clara Peller or the Snapple Lady to Vince the Slap Chop guy, we have an uncanny ability to create fame from nothing.  Clearly, advertising in this country is a powerful thing.

However, it also shows another side of our collective persona: we are a nation of gullible idiots.  The most recent case in point is something called the “EZ Cracker,” a rather archaic torture device supposedly designed to take the difficulty out of cracking and separating eggs.

One commonality amongst these ads are those few moments at the beginning of the ad where we are shown various scenes designed (hopefully) to make us sit up and take notice of some otherworldly dilemma.  Said dilemma will soon be completely solved for us by the miracle product they are breathlessly waiting to sell us!  However…

Pay any attention to these ads and you will notice that no matter how useful the gadget being sold might be, the people acting out our frustrations involving said activity the gadget is designed to end are, and this is only my observation, lobotomized hand models.  At best.

Is it really that difficult to form a hamburger patty, Mr Mays?  No, of course not.  A piece of plastic wrap and the lid from a 32-ounce jar of mayonnaise will do the trick if you don’t have the patience to form them by hand.

Are blankets really that complex and difficult in relation to one’s arms?  No.

But these product prove that when you have a fairly goofball idea and an audience of insomniacs (or better, people recovering from surgery that can’t sleep and are hopped up on pain meds) in front of their teevees with credit cards in hand, you can make a lot of money.

Sure, you might be saying to yourself that you are a lot smarter than the average bear, and as such are not vulnerable to such obvious pitchwork.  That may be true, dear reader, but if I may note: Someone is.  After all, if these adverts were not successful, would you know who the hell Billy Mays was at all?  Or would there be a television show centered around the creation of these adverts on the Discovery channel?

So, whereas all advertising is designed to make us want something no matter how much we do not need the product, or how stupid the product really is upon reflection…  What the hell makes those late night adverts and infomercials so…  Compellingly ridiculous?

Seriously, what the hell made a blanket with sleeves, a super-absorbent cloth, or a knife that (supposedly) can cut a brick such national phenomena?

The advert for the EZ Cracker may help, in general terms.  (One sidebar: the first “spokesperson” for the EZ Cracker?  The Snapple Lady.  Not kidding.)

First, we have the intro, which shows us that you are not alone!  No, you are not the only person having trouble neatly cracking eggs, especially when you throw them at a frying pan!  Or how about when we’ve all had to recover an egg once we’ve slammed a fork onto the egg, like some out-of-practice Nazi torturer?  And don’t forget how everyone cracks an egg by squeezing it like a stress ball while simultaneously slamming it on the counter?

Clearly, these first few moments are designed to make us feel superior, and setting us up to feel inferior.  Why superior?  The examples of egg-cracking are so absurd that we all pretty much react with a jaded “oh, come on!”  The inferiority comes at the next segment, which introduces the product.

At the introduction, to counteract any potential rejection of the product, they move to the phase where they explain just why you need this product!  For the EZ Cracker, that particular reason is that it saves you from cleaning up poorly cracked eggs.  And, to drive home that point, they use the same lobotomized hand models who were just playing handball with the eggs to crack them in segment one to clean up the mess.

These nitwads use a variety of items to clean up the eggmess, including a washcloth and a single paper towel.  Ironically, no one uses a Shamwow.

Then we get another handful of demonstrations of how well the product is supposed to work, or how much easier it is to read now that you have sleeves.  Then the more maddening aspect of the ad begins, and we are shown just how much we can do because of this miracle device!

Only now with the EZ Cracker, for example, can you make an eggwhite omelet, or make a meringue.  Because, of course, there was just no way in hell you could ever do these things before, but now that you can (Shazam!) get into the egg…

But wait! There’s more!

Now that we’ve been lulled into feeling both superior to the product, and unable to live without, it…  The kicker!

Not only do we get our egg cracking whiz of a device for only $19.95 (or, in another version, just two payments of ten dollars!), we get…

(Are you sitting down?)

A free gift!

The EZ Cracker has been advertised with two different free gifts: The Bacon Wave (designed to microwave a pound of bacon by standing the strips up in a bizarre truss), and the Egg Scrambler.

I have to admit that the egg scrambler looks more like an…  Adult toy than a culinary tool.  (And no, by “culinary tool,” I do not mean Rocco DiSpirito.)

Basically, you stick an egg onto this stick with a needle protruding from the top, and the needle vibrates enough to scramble the egg within the shell, which (exactly!) you then crack with your snazzy EZ Cracker!

Genius!

Not so much.  Considering my firsthand experience when icepick meets thumb, I am perfectly fine scrambling my egg with a fork in a bowl, which is probably far more sanitary than a hard to clean (without drawing blood, anyway) device like the Scrambler.

How these devices are supposed to sweeten the pot and make you pick up that phone and order this eventual kitchen sculpture is unclear, but it works.

The finale is usually designed to incite near panic, with the announcement that not only should you act on this great deal, but these products are not available in stores!  (Again, anyone who has inadvertently wandered through the center sections of one’s local megamart or discount store can tell you they are not only available in stores, they’re cheaper!)

Sigh.

What makes these adverts so maddening is that they do work.  Someone will buy the advertised product because at that moment, they have to have it!  With this egg cracker, people will order it not realizing that (a) they will have to handle the cracked shells no matter what, EZ Cracker or not, and (b) a small saucer and a moment of care cracks the egg just as well, if not better, than said device.  (And if you really need that thing to separate eggs, you can buy something much like the separating attachment for about $5 at your local discount-mart.)  Normally intelligent people are stupid at times.

Don’t believe me?  Look at that coffee you just got from your local CafeBucks.  There is a warning on your coffee that (please…  Sit down…  We at the ICRVN don’t have legal counsel if this upsets you) your coffee is hot!  Do you remember why?  Yep some dipnugget spilled coffee on herself, and sued the restaurant for serving her…  Hot coffee!

Warnings like that and devices like the EZ Cracker exist because someone is going to need one.

However, I have to say that even if you simply cannot handle cracking an egg without some sort of aid, the EZ Cracker may not be right for you.  Search YouTube and a video comes up reviewing the EZ Cracker, revealing that it works, but only begrudgingly at best, and it really doesn’t do much of what is advertised (no!).

Pay attention, for example, to the part where it cracks a hard-boiled egg, and you might just notice that editing is slickly performed to not actually show them peeling the same egg they cracked.  Not only that, but when they actually remove the egg from the two shell halves, you might notice the fact that they are removing a medium hard boiled egg from a large egg shell.

Kinda makes a difference, you know.

(By the way…  How do the makers of the EGGstractor feel about the EZ Cracker?  Just wondering…)

The EZ Cracker is also not dishwasher safe, making cleaning a bother, and therefore the device becomes a bacterial breeding ground.  Fun for the whole family!

Every facet of life has been targeted by these silly products and commercials.  From the “Perfect Brownie” pan to the “EmoryCat” de-clawer, any activity on any level of difficulty will inevitably earn its own infomercial product.  Don’t believe me?  Google “butter dispenser,” and see how someone managed to think pushing butter through a playdoh extruder was something we couldn’t live without.

Try “chillow” to see just what wonders science have done to remove us from the stress of flipping a pillow over!

Or, for that one thing you simply cannot live without, search “presidential knife set,” and thank me later.

But do it quick, this is a limited time commentary, and operators are napping.

Part two begins…

JULY

The Republican party got a sense of deja vu when the courts awarded the vacant senate seat in Minnesota to Al Franken.  India outlawed their ban on homosexuality, going against the cold-weather trend.  Citing a lack of “VP Candidate level perks and an inability to see much financial future in politics,” Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska to better help herself.  44 people, including three New Jersey mayors, were arrested for corruption and money laundering after no one told them the Sopranos was just a TV show.  South Carolina’s charge to infamy burst out of the gates in July when a Conway man was arrested for violating his probation.  He had been on probation for having sex with a horse.  He violated his probation by having sex with the same horse!  Sadly, this means that criminals practicing beastiality are more faithful than the state’s governor.

AUGUST

Figuring Bill was better than the other option, North Korea released the two jailed US journalists at the request of the more masculine (well, visually at least) Clinton.  Canadians everywhere rejoiced as Jeremy Roenick finally retired from the NHL, and moved on to annoy the TV and film industry.  “No Politician Left Behind” poster girl Sarah Palin protested death panels that did not exist and were also not in any form or draft of any legislation whatsoever.  Handlers suggested that no matter how dreamy she thought Heston was, she should stop watching Soylent Green constantly for ideas.  Cited for everything BUT job performance, Ben Bernanke was nominated for another term as head of the Federal Reserve.  A man from South Carolina (of course) died after he robbed a store having spray-painted his face to conceal his identity.  Edward Kennedy, longtime lion of the Senate, and the last politician to say that he cared about “regular folk” and actually do so, succumbed to cancer.  He will be missed.

SEPTEMBER

Kate Gosselin filmed a talk show pilot with Paula Deen, calling into question both the nature of fame and the need for talk shows.  The mayor of Willford in (say it with me) South Carolina issued an order preventing police from chasing certain suspects in order to save the town money.  President Obama gave an address via CCTV to students all over the country, stressing that they work hard and stay in school.  Republicans immediately adopted a “stay lazy and skirt through” policy, modelled after the successful plan of the previous president.  In an emotional and unplanned outburst, Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina yells out “You Lie!” at the president during his joint session speech about health care.  Wilson would be rebuked by Congress a week later not for his outburst, but for being from South Carolina.  YO! YO! I’M GONNA LET YOU FINISH, YO, BUT I GOTTA SAY THAT CALIFORNIA HAD A WORSE YEAR, YO! Moving on…  Mackenzie Phillips released a book about why we all prefer Valeri Bertinelli.  Glenn Beck announced on Fox and Friends that he believed Obama to be a racist with deep-seeded hatred towards whites.  Obama refuted these claims, saying that he loved “all people.  Well, except for the batshit insane white folks on teevee with no link to reality or sense of decency.”

OCTOBER

Rio De Janiero won the 2016 Olympics over Chicago with a simple proposal of “it’s the summer games.  Whose citizens do you really want to see in bathing suits?”  President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his July Beer Summit at the White House.  Tiger Woods led the US team to victory in the President’s Cup despite claims he still needed help with his putter.  Ballooning for Children becomes a nationwide rage, quickly replaced by attic hiding.  Roman Polanski is arrested in Switzerland for his 1977 charge of molestation, after he was told to come to Zurich to accept his Publishers Clearing House prize.  The Assistant Attorney General of South (wait for it…) Carolina, Roland Corning, was arrested when he was discovered in a cemetery with various “aids” and an 18-year-old stripper.

NOVEMBER

A heat wave swept through Maine, so the state repealed the new same-sex marriage law.  Analysts pointed to the new 10% unemployment rate as a clear indicator that the recession was over.  It was revealed that there was in fact water on the moon.  It was in a Deer Park dispenser left there from 1969.  The government changed the insurance regulations and standards to change the standard age for mammograms for women to 50, while changing the standard age for free viagra to “whenever a man damn well pleases.”  A 600 pound cow fell from the sky and landed in a swimming pool in…  South Carolina.  Oprah, clearly defying the Mayans, announced her show would end on September 11, 2011.  In response, Jon and Kate ended their television show, and a nation shrugged its shoulders.  Tiger Woods, again having driving problems, ran into the ultimate sand trap.

DECEMBER

President Obama announced on national television that there was a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan, but that immediately, troop increases would take place.  The mayor of Arlington Texas, Russell Wiseman, claimed that our “muslim president” strategically timed his announcement to deliberately block the broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Obama responded that a real Christian would own the DVD.  GE was able to sell NBC Universal to Comcast by convincing the company that Seinfeld and Cosby were just on a temporary holiday.  The divorce of Jon and Kate Gosselin was finalized, thereby confirming the Republican’s drive to save the sanctity of marriage.  South Carolina almost made it a month, were it not for the announcement by state First Lady Jenny Sanford that she was divorcing her husband, once he got back from the Appalachian Trail.

*Sigh.*

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!

(Well – not you, South Carolina…  TRY to stay clean for 2010, okay?)