I still remember the first of these horrible “shows” I ever saw. ([Homer]Urge to kill…rising…[/Homer]) It was for some miracle substance called “ORI” or something, hosted by an English-accented guy so annoying I actually recall advocating laying waste to the UK using thermonuclear wepons. I also recall that it was a SPACE-AGE POLYMER!!! There must have been someting else those neurons could have used for, like another friend’s phone number, but NO!, now I know that goddamn ORI is a SPACE-AGE-FKING-POLYMER!!!**
I remember one infomercial whose pitch was, AFAIK, typical. It was a machine that sealed up plastic bags. Whoo-ee. The voiceover shrieked that the machine had “A thousand uses! You can seal up your sweaters for storage! You can seal up Christmas cookies! You can seal up beads and sequins for your sewing kit!” Meanwhile, I’m sitting there saying, “No, dingus, it has ONE use! It…seals…bagszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!” Who in the hell is going to use such a thing often enough to justify the purchase?
But a lot of infomercials are like that. The Perfect Pancake, for instance. They sell you on it, claiming that you can cook everything from a pancake to an entire steer in the damn thing. Wrong: you can make one pancake in two minutes. If there are five people in your family, you will either have to eat in shifts, or all have cold pancakes.
When I was 20, my dad bought something for me that he’d seen on an infomercial. He knew I liked to sew, so he got me a hand-held sewing machine. Don’t ask. But it turned out to be a good thing, because for the first time, I looked him in the eye and said, “I know you meant well, but this thing just doesn’t work.” Instead of letting my mom hide it and then say privately, “Rilch really doesn’t like that dumb thing you got her.” As it was, he took it like a man.
Oh, and this past weekend, I had the TV on while I was cleaning house. A rerun of SNL was on, with Heather Locklear. In one sketch, she was hosting an infomercial and saying stuff like, “Manufacturer’s claims are just a lie! Like the Holocaust!” [switchboard goes crazy] “You couldn’t get a better deal from a drunken Indian!” [switchboard jams up] “See, the orders are flying in!”
My mom ordered one of those after we watched the infomercial. (“Don’t tell anyone I ordered something off the TV!”) That thing is fun. Several motivational tapes came along with the machine, too, so there’s hours and hours of the Gazelle guy. He’s just as perky and hyper on the tapes, if not more so. Almost scary, really.