i need an infommercial

April 17, 2006

i've been thinking a lot about this and i'm very serious. no lie, at least the last 7 minutes have been spent debating the many pros of the infommercial. look at those proactiv people! and chuck norris. good old chuck hawking the total home gym. and chrystie brinkley's got a piece now too. and remember victoria principal's infommerical "the principal factor". ka-ching. even mari winsor got herself some major pilates cash stream. i bought that winsor pilates. it sucks. i hate that woman in the front in the green leotard. she's like non-human.

anyway, as i was saying, countless minutes have gone to waste trying to conjure up my infommercial. ginsu knives are taken. and that pot with the built-in colander lid if you're really that f'ing lazy to wash another bowl. flobie and spray-on hair also off the market. george foreman and his fancy grills. so what's left for me? all the good ideas have been profited from. damn people. damn that ron popeil and his pasta maker and rotisserie. ron popeil, by the way, is like a super inventor -- in case you are so far removed from great geniuses of our time not to have known the weight of the name ron popeil.

so i'm thinking old school. i'm thinking i'll create an hour-long infommerical about something so radical that people across this vast america will stand up and take notice. i'm thinking of the hand-crank pencil sharpener. listen up, naysayers. there's something inescapably satisfying about a freshly sharpened no. 2 pencil. those electric pencils are for chumps. i remember the old steel pencil sharpeners from grade school that were bolted to the wall. god, i loved that sharpener and the smell of freshly sharpened lead. brings me right back.

now where did this stroke of brilliance come from? well, a sad place i'm afraid. i had my red hand-crank pencil sharpener made of the finest chinese plastic for nearly 10 years. you develop bonds over a decade. i carried that sharpener with me through many jobs. people laughed at first but then they asked if they could give it a whirl and their faces lit up immediately. it was a sheer delight. and then that dark day came less than a month ago. my beautiful sharpener sat idle on my desk only to be seized in the night by criminal masterminds. i noticed its absence immediately and began a furtive search to recover my treasure. to no avail. tears were shed. accusations flung. booby traps set. but nothing. they tried to appease me with an electric sharpener that is sunctioned to my desk. i hate it. my pencils are dull and my heart in a thousand pieces.

and from this great tragedy, i dare to spread a ray of light. this will be my infommercial: the great american pencil sharpener. back to our roots as real people who can do real hard labor to enjoy the fruits of a freshly pointed ticonderoga. my heart swells at the thought. you bastards out there better not steal my idea. i'm patenting that first thing tomorrow morning. maybe i'll get a big star too. if only rerun was still alive. perchance to dream.