Okay, yes, the SHAMWOW!! infomercials have been all the rage for a while now.
At first I rolled my eyes and tuned out VINCE. Another annoying pitchman, another 'not sold in stores' item nobody needs that they do carry in stores. I have astonished my husband with my inability to hear or notice something on TV right in front of my face if I'm not interested, so it was easy enough to Not Pay Attention to VINCE.
Then one day I actually watched some of it. And again. And suddenly it was hilarious! I couldn't believe such a shady-looking, shyster-type huckster (thanks for the word idea, shannon!) was LEGIT. Who would buy anything from this guy?? My favorite bits are when he says "I'm gonna do this in real time!" As though one can do something NOT in real time - what is he, a time traveler? EVIDENTLY NOT. Plus "You know the Germans always make good stuff!" and just the pace of the whole thing. Cut it in half, use it on your dog, olympic divers use these, and incessant use of the word COLA.
Suddenly I LOVE it!
Then my husband said he thought he saw VINCE in another infomercial pitching some OTHER product. NO NO VINCE would not two-time his beloved SHAMWOW!!, I thought.
Then on metafilter the other day someone posted some links! all about VINCE!
First of all, of course, there's VINCE's wikipedia entry. Imagine my surprise when I learned that VINCE apparently OWNS SHAMWOW!! and the other thing, which is THE SLAPCHOP!!
Coincidentally, just a day or two later friend Shannon sent me the youtube link to VINCE'S commercial for THE SLAPCHOP!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUbWjIKxrrs
I will not even ruin it for you by quoting my very favorite line of the whole thing. But my other favorite thing is when VINCE offers to throw in a second gadget for free if you buy THE SLAPCHOP!! When I saw the name of this second gadget, I had to pause the video while I laughed for a while. HYSTERICAL.
Going back to the metafilter links, I was surprised to see two very different takes on VINCE and his life and career:
This person portrays VINCE as 1. maker of one of the worst movies ever and 2. a loser who deals with failure by blaming others via lawsuit.
Whereas this person offers a VERY DIFFERENT TAKE on VINCE and portrays him as a budding filmmaker and entrepreneur STRUCK DOWN IN HIS PRIME by a prudish CULT!
The hell of it is that I now feel the overwhelming need for both the SHAMWOW!! and THE SLAPCHOP!! based on VINCE's superior pitchman skills. Not to mention the Second Gadget referenced above!!!
Showing posts with label youtube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label youtube. Show all posts
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Drive By Truckers, STL, feb 29, 2008
Our fourth Drive By Truckers show was as wonderful as ever (okay, technically it probably tied for second, but the feelings I'm left with are as wonderful as ever).
We were early enough to run by a hotel we used to like; it used to be a Pear Tree (is that ramada?) but we couldn't find it online this time. Explanation: it's now a Motel 6. well, it was cheap, but ... they offered me a choice and I made the mistake of asking for a smoking room, because a lingering aroma of cigarette smoke doesn't bother me. Ugh, this room seriously reeked. Also dig this crazy bedspread.
OUCH MY EYES IT BURNS ME
Well, now we know. It's too bad; we liked that place. I was also quite unimpressed by the lobby staff and their creepiness and general lack of teeth.
Anyhoo, the Pageant has a floor that's oddly slow to fill (I think we go to geezer shows) and GA seating behind that. We were hoping to get decent seats. We've been up close and personal with the truckers twice now and, honestly, we wanted to get to hear them; it's a tradeoff, but up close you can't make out the vocals because you're getting all stage sound and no mains. But I digress. The parking lot wasn't very full yet, and we hadn't walked far when J decided to leave his coat in the car. He took my keys and handed me the tickets; I tore the pair of them apart and tucked them away. We walked past a scalper or two and around the corner and to the door, where I found that I'd managed to lose the tickets. In less than a block. Well. We backtracked and found one of them, and the scalpers were still there, and the tickets were only $20 anyway, so all was not lost, but ... *FACEPALM*. I mean, really. We all learned a valuable lesson: I learned that I can't be trusted with tickets, and J learned why I always make him be in charge of the tickets!
Anyway, the seats were fairly full, but we managed to find a great little area with unobstructed view and right at the edge of the section instead of the middle. The opening act - no pun intended - the Felice Brothers were interesting. I would really like to hear more of them. They were a five-piece, three of whom I think were actual brothers: drummer, bass, singer/guitarist, big John Popper-like party who played accordian and keyboard, and auxiliary singer who played washboard and stomp board (although you couldn't really hear the stomp board well). They were kind of hard-driving like the Avett Brothers or Old Crow Medicine Show.
Truckers set list:
1. The Man I Shot
2. Three Dimes Down
3. Putting People on the Moon
4. Carl Perkins' Cadillac
5. Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife
6. Daddy Needs a Drink
7. A Ghost to Most
8. I'm Sorry Huston
9. Sinkhole
10. Ronnie & Neil
11. Self Destructive Zones
12. Home Field Advantage
13. Road Cases
14. Checkout Time in Vegas
15. The Righteous Path
16. Lisa's Birthday
17. The Living Bubba
18. Shut Up & Get On the Plane
19. Lookout Mountain
20. Let There Be Rock
-encore-
1. Marry Me
2. 18 Wheels of Love
3. Women Without Whiskey
4. Eighteen (Alice Cooper cover)
5. Buttholeville/State Trooper
6. People Who Died
I always like the classics: People on the Moon, Carl Perkins, Sinkhole, Ronnie & Neil, Living Bubba, Shut Up & Get on the Plane, Lookout Mountain, and Let There Be Rock. I LOVE Sinkhole and Lookout Mountain. Among the new stuff, 3 Dimes worked really well, and I love Ghost To Most, it's one of my favorite of the newer ones. I'm Sorry Huston went well too.
The encore was exciting and very traditional Truckers. I had never gotten to see '18 Wheels of Love' before. Actually I filmed it, but it was pretty dark, and, well, we have dialup, so it would take forever to load, and it's like 12 minutes long, and youtube has a ten-minute limit, so we'll see. (I also filmed The Living Bubba, but I'm having trouble getting it to load despite leaving it to do so overnight and again this morning while I was at work.) Patterson added a whole section before the 'song' kicked in about Chester and a health crisis he'd had and recovered from. It was awesome. They were really smoking. I could live without Buttholeville/State Trooper, but they were really into it, Patterson passing the bottle of Jack out to the crowd (and getting it back), Shonna on her knees at one point, Brad kicked a cymbal and drum off the riser, and just when you thought they'd left it all on the stage Patterson whipped into People Who Died in a speedy frenzy. I mean, I couldn't really understand a word except DIED! DIED! It seemed really unplanned, and it was great.
Man, I love the Truckers.
Here are a few pictures and a (dark, but it lightens up toward the end) film of Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife.
Cooley
Patterson, showing the backdrop
Two Daughters
We were early enough to run by a hotel we used to like; it used to be a Pear Tree (is that ramada?) but we couldn't find it online this time. Explanation: it's now a Motel 6. well, it was cheap, but ... they offered me a choice and I made the mistake of asking for a smoking room, because a lingering aroma of cigarette smoke doesn't bother me. Ugh, this room seriously reeked. Also dig this crazy bedspread.
OUCH MY EYES IT BURNS ME
Well, now we know. It's too bad; we liked that place. I was also quite unimpressed by the lobby staff and their creepiness and general lack of teeth.
Anyhoo, the Pageant has a floor that's oddly slow to fill (I think we go to geezer shows) and GA seating behind that. We were hoping to get decent seats. We've been up close and personal with the truckers twice now and, honestly, we wanted to get to hear them; it's a tradeoff, but up close you can't make out the vocals because you're getting all stage sound and no mains. But I digress. The parking lot wasn't very full yet, and we hadn't walked far when J decided to leave his coat in the car. He took my keys and handed me the tickets; I tore the pair of them apart and tucked them away. We walked past a scalper or two and around the corner and to the door, where I found that I'd managed to lose the tickets. In less than a block. Well. We backtracked and found one of them, and the scalpers were still there, and the tickets were only $20 anyway, so all was not lost, but ... *FACEPALM*. I mean, really. We all learned a valuable lesson: I learned that I can't be trusted with tickets, and J learned why I always make him be in charge of the tickets!
Anyway, the seats were fairly full, but we managed to find a great little area with unobstructed view and right at the edge of the section instead of the middle. The opening act - no pun intended - the Felice Brothers were interesting. I would really like to hear more of them. They were a five-piece, three of whom I think were actual brothers: drummer, bass, singer/guitarist, big John Popper-like party who played accordian and keyboard, and auxiliary singer who played washboard and stomp board (although you couldn't really hear the stomp board well). They were kind of hard-driving like the Avett Brothers or Old Crow Medicine Show.
Truckers set list:
1. The Man I Shot
2. Three Dimes Down
3. Putting People on the Moon
4. Carl Perkins' Cadillac
5. Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife
6. Daddy Needs a Drink
7. A Ghost to Most
8. I'm Sorry Huston
9. Sinkhole
10. Ronnie & Neil
11. Self Destructive Zones
12. Home Field Advantage
13. Road Cases
14. Checkout Time in Vegas
15. The Righteous Path
16. Lisa's Birthday
17. The Living Bubba
18. Shut Up & Get On the Plane
19. Lookout Mountain
20. Let There Be Rock
-encore-
1. Marry Me
2. 18 Wheels of Love
3. Women Without Whiskey
4. Eighteen (Alice Cooper cover)
5. Buttholeville/State Trooper
6. People Who Died
I always like the classics: People on the Moon, Carl Perkins, Sinkhole, Ronnie & Neil, Living Bubba, Shut Up & Get on the Plane, Lookout Mountain, and Let There Be Rock. I LOVE Sinkhole and Lookout Mountain. Among the new stuff, 3 Dimes worked really well, and I love Ghost To Most, it's one of my favorite of the newer ones. I'm Sorry Huston went well too.
The encore was exciting and very traditional Truckers. I had never gotten to see '18 Wheels of Love' before. Actually I filmed it, but it was pretty dark, and, well, we have dialup, so it would take forever to load, and it's like 12 minutes long, and youtube has a ten-minute limit, so we'll see. (I also filmed The Living Bubba, but I'm having trouble getting it to load despite leaving it to do so overnight and again this morning while I was at work.) Patterson added a whole section before the 'song' kicked in about Chester and a health crisis he'd had and recovered from. It was awesome. They were really smoking. I could live without Buttholeville/State Trooper, but they were really into it, Patterson passing the bottle of Jack out to the crowd (and getting it back), Shonna on her knees at one point, Brad kicked a cymbal and drum off the riser, and just when you thought they'd left it all on the stage Patterson whipped into People Who Died in a speedy frenzy. I mean, I couldn't really understand a word except DIED! DIED! It seemed really unplanned, and it was great.
Man, I love the Truckers.
Here are a few pictures and a (dark, but it lightens up toward the end) film of Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife.
Cooley
Patterson, showing the backdrop
Two Daughters
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Marty Robbins/Steve Martin mashup
Our conversation over dinner last night: Los Straightjackets led to Freddy Fender, Freddy Fender led to Marty Robbins, and a vague-but-hilarious childhood memory led me to the wikipedia and the imdb and, eventually, to the google and this video from Steve Martin's 1980 TV special. How I can possibly remember it I don't know, and truthfully I'd always envisioned Galapagos tortoises instead of a much larger animal, but here it is! I'm just glad to have its existence confirmed.
As when I was 12, I'm still not sure whether it's the most hilarious thing ever or not. But it's, well, different.
(also my first attempt to embed a youtube video, so good luck to us all.)
As when I was 12, I'm still not sure whether it's the most hilarious thing ever or not. But it's, well, different.
(also my first attempt to embed a youtube video, so good luck to us all.)
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