My little known secret – I love, like with a crazy passion, those insane infomercials you see when you’re an insomniac and there’s nothing else on at 2:30 a.m. Of course, a lot of products have gone away from the insomniac-only demographic of late-night infomercials, and have put shortened versions on every day TV. Enter my bad habit.
“Hmmm, that could be interesting.”
“I wonder if that really works. Shoot, it’s only $10, and I get two for the price of one.”
“What? There’s more? Sweet!”
When I found out there was an “As Seen on TV” store in Eastland, I had to go. But, of course, now that Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS, Kroger and any other store in between has an “As Seen on TV” section, that sort of made my trip to the Eastland ghetto moot. Believe me, it didn’t break my heart that I could feed my obsession for worthless junk for $20 without having to drive over there.
Now, I admit, I haven’t bought everything – in fact, out of respect for the late Billy Mays, I’ve slowed down a lot. And I will never, ever buy OxyClean again (or anything else Mays used to hock that Sully is now saying “his friend Billy” believed in).
But, below, a list of things I have bought and what I thought about them (and links to the item on Amazon in case you feel the need to buy it).
Before you think I’m crazy, I’ve been using these things for years. Whenever my mom made pecan pie, I always asked to chop up the pecans because this thing was just too damn fun for words. Of course hers wasn’t a “Slap Chop,” but the concept has been around forever. I gave my mom my good Pampered Chef version of this when hers bit the dust, thinking I had another one lying around. I didn’t. Scott was upset. So, for fun, I bought him the “Slap Chop” as a replacement, cause I thought he’d find it funny I bought the one endorsed by the “ShamWow” guy. And it came with a “Graty.” Woohoo. And you got a free one, and a free “Graty,” for when you decide to have a “Slap Chop” contest???
Anyway, I didn’t really want the second one, but I ordered it online. Did it give me a choice to opt out of the second one? Hell no. Believe me, I looked. Nope, had to pay the extra $14.95 shipping (or some other astronomical number that I, in no way, believed was actually the shipping costs). All said and done, my $19.95 “Slap Chop” and “Graty,” along with the second set I didn’t even want, ran me almost $50. Was not happy. Screw you “ShamWow” dude. (I know, he has a name, it’s Vince, but dammit, he’ll always be the “ShamWow” dude to me. It better be on his tombstone when he dies a horrible as-seen-on-tv-spokesperson-drug-induced death.)
Being a shoe person, this notion thrilled me. I have shoes in two different closets in my house. I have black heels, I have white heels, I have tennis shoes, I have peeptoe heels, I have boots in various forms and colors. I have flip-flops. I have canvas shoes. I have a lot of shoes. So I thought this would be perfect for those that I don’t wear a whole lot (like those that are relegated to a single season of the year – or like, my white heels, which the last time I wore them, I was wearing a wedding dress).
So, we were be-bopping around Target and Scott passed the “As Seen on TV” endcap (btw, little known fact, “As Seen on TV” is actually the name of the company and NOT an adjective for the product). He picked up a Shoes Under, which comes in a box no bigger than my fist. Okay, maybe a little bigger. But not much. It was very obviously not exactly what I expected, but I figured I’d give it a go.
Got home, pulled out the Shoes Under and it’s just a zippered pouch with 12 different “compartments” for shoes. But, unlike the pictures, the sides are completely fabric, as are the separators. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to actually resemble a box because it in no way does. Doesn’t even come with cardboard inserts to make it remotely sturdy. And are the compartments adjustable? Nope, not on your life. Which means you cannot put big heels or boots in it (both of which are the vast majority of my shoe collection). It’s still crumpled up under my bed with two pairs of shoes in it, neither of which I’ve worn since I got this monstrosity to shoe storage years ago.
In theory, this is awesome. I mean, you get perfectly cut brownies without the work, you get a display (if you like that cheap wire pan look) and – best of all – every brownie has an edge. My favorite part! It’s non-stick, so you just lift the divider out and go, right?
WRONG. The divider does not just lift right out. Of course it doesn’t. You have to use a whole can of Pam to grease the thing up before you even start. Then, after the brownies are done, you have to go around every single edge (and that’s a lot of edges) with a thin blade to loosen the brownies first. Then, if you’re lucky, the divider will come up. But odds are, if it does actually come up, you’re bringing about half the brownies with you.
They do all have edges, which is cool, but the ones in the middle still aren’t as good as the ones on the outside. If you’re going to give me an all-edges brownie pan, I’d much rather have this one from ThinkGeek, thankyouverymuch.
This was the most worthless purchase ever. I followed the directions. I even used angel-hair pasta. Yeah, it was still only half-done and so starchy. You don’t get the luxury of rinsing the excess starch off like you do using a colander. So, yeah, give me a pot of boiling water and a colander any day of the week. I actually donated this to Goodwill with my last donation. I actually feel sorry for whoever ended up buying it from Goodwill. My apologies to that poor unfortunate soul.
Oh, I was so excited about this one. This one I actually purchased (well, my mom did) from the “As Seen on TV” store in Eastland. I remember making pancakes the next day in my first apartment in the tiny-ass kitchen it had.
Why does the tiny-ass kitchen thing stand out? Because I had pancake batter EVERYWHERE in that kitchen after using this stupid thing. If you don’t flip your pancake at just the right time (which is at the point where it looks like it’s too done), you get pancake batter everywhere as you flip. Because, see, the two pieces don’t actually close together, there’s about a one-inch gap between them. That gap, coupled with flipping the pan 180 degrees in a quick motion equals huge mess.
Even worse, you only get one “perfect” pancake at a time. So, by the time you’re done making your short stack (or tall stack, depending on how hungry you are), your first ones are either cold, or saturated in syrup (and I hate that – both scenarios, actually). Yeah, so, this one sucked. I got pissed and threw it away. Before I managed to clean up all the pancake batter from my walls.
Smooth AwayI hate shaving, I really do. I don’t know any woman who will tell you otherwise. It’s a pain in the behind. So, when I saw this on sale at CVS, Walgreen’s, some place like that, I figured I’d give it a shot.
I got home, and imagine my surprise to see a little pink plastic thing with sandpaper. I am not lying, it was sandpaper. The back piece of paper you take off to reveal the adhesive even had the 3M logo. It was sandpaper. Have you ever sandpapered your legs? It’s not fun. It doesn’t smell good either. It’s one step away from the smell of singed hair. Yeah, that one didn’t get used again either.
Here’s one I bought in the attempts to make Oscar’s life easier. He hates having his nails trimmed. He whimpers and cries and tries to bite. Yeah, it’s not cool. Plus, his nails are black, so it’s hard to determine where the nail stops and the quick starts. So, I bought this thinking it might make it a little bit easier.
WRONG!
First of all, it’s a Dremmel (which I already freakin' owned!). That’s all it is, a cheap Dremmel tool. With an attachment on the head with holes of various sizes to “hold” your animal’s nail still (which doesn’t work worth a damn). The idea of Oscar (or even Booger, because he wouldn’t let me do it either) sit there while I got his nail situated in the correctly-sized hole is laughable in and of itself. But then add doing that while a noisy mini-drill is running. Hahahahahahaha.
I’ve given up on this one. It’s still around, but it really needs to just get thrown out. Oscar sees it just sitting there and runs and hides. It’s not worth the fight. Seeing as how this did not make the nail clipping any easier, we resorted to our old-school clippers, purchased from the pet department at Wal-Mart.
Well, you know what they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions … more good intention abound…
BarkOffWe all know Oscar’s a barker. We’ve tried everything, including the spray bottle to no avail. (The spray bottle does work, but the problem being it’s never where you want it when you need it, especially with a two-year-old running around the house, AND she thinks she needs to spray him, and we don’t really want that.) So, I saw BarkOff in a catalog for $8 so I opted to try it out. (Only after I ordered it from the site, but because it was backordered, I was able to cancel that order and get it way cheaper.)
I’m so glad I only paid $8 for it because it doesn’t work worth a damn. It didn’t stop Oscar from barking. On top of that, the ultrasonic sound it emits is audible to humans. So I heard it too. Between that and the barking, I wanted to jump out a window.
Turns out I should have waited for that experiment, my mother-in-law, who had great intentions, bought us one for Christmas. So I could have learned it was a waste of money without wasting my own had I been patient. But, if you have known me for any length of time, you know I am far from patient.
Potty PatchOscar (you see a pattern here?) hates going outside in the snow/cold/rain/anything other than 70+ degree sunny days, actually. I bought him a custom-made water-proof jacket once – he scraped up against the side of the house trying to get it off. We bought puppy training pads, but only put them out in the case of inclement weather, and that wasn’t enough for him. So the minute I saw the infomercial for the potty patch, I signed up. I didn’t care how much it was, how much the shipping was, I figured this was the solution. (Turns out, it ran me over $50.) Didn’t care. Was so excited about the notion of finally saving my carpet!
Turns out I was wrong, oh so wrong. He hated the thing. Wanted nothing to do with it. I’d put him on it, he’d look at me like I was even more crazy than when I put his jacket on him. “WTF lady?” I tried putting a puppy pad underneath it, so he’d smell that and associate the two. Didn’t work. I tried taking the grass part off, and putting the puppy pad on the bottom tray for a few days. Nope. Nothing. Back to disposable puppy pads it was, thanks Oscar.
Shake WeightEveryone I know has made fun of Scott and I for buying these. We both have one, actually. Do I buy into the whole “getting a substantial workout in six minutes” thing? No, I know better. But I thought it might be an easy one to fit into my daily routine (since that’s my biggest obstacle to exercise). Believe it or not, after a few minutes with the Shake Weight, you really do feel it. Though, believe it or not, the hardest part of the workout is doing the exercises without cracking up laughing at how stupid you look with this thing moving back and forth in front of you. (See the picture? Yeah, the picture says it so much better, it really is worth a thousand words.)
The kicker on this thing is that we thought it was battery-operated (which makes the issue mentioned above even funnier if you want to think about it). So, imagine how stupid we looked as we turned the thing over and over after we freed it from the box, looking for a battery compartment and an on-off switch. We must have looked for a good five or ten minutes – looking like monkeys doing math problems – before I got out the little pamphlet that said, “this is a manual device.” Of course it’s a manual device. We don’t want anyone to rely on battery-operated devices alone. We must always remember to give our wrists a good, solid workout on a regular basis. (*cough*)
Yoga Booty Ballet
This one Scott saw the infomercial for and told me about it. He knew I liked yoga, so he thought this would be a good fit. I agreed.
The first DVD I did wasn’t too bad. The second one was a little bit harder. But when I got to the “booty” part of this, which involved a cardio hip hop routine, I realized I was, in fact, too white and lacked too much rhythm to be able to do much of anything besides stand there, exasperated, watching the DVD. My workout at that point involved walking to the kitchen and getting a bowl of popcorn while I watched these skinny bitches, who have never struggled with weight a day in their lives, tell me to “get moving” and “hip hop my way to thin” or some other worthless junk like that.
I tried to sell the set on eBay after that failed attempt, but here’s a shock, no one else wanted them either.
Crunchless Abs
Yeah, this was a stupid purchase on my part. Like every other fat person in the world, I hate doing crunches. So, imagine my surprise when I saw “Crunchless Abs” on TV for the first time. “I can lose weight in my belly without doing a crunch. Score!” Um, no, not so much. In fact, I didn’t feel a damn thing. Yeah, it’s crunchless abs, but it’s also non-working abs.
I bought the Bender Ball at the same time as the Crunchless Abs – I got them in a set, woohoo, lucky me. I was thrilled with this one, I thought this would be awesome. Yeah, not so much. Oscar, who always thought when I laid down on the floor to exercise I was getting down there to play with him, was elated at the prospect of me on the floor, and a ball. Let’s just say, the fact Oscar made deflating volleyballs in less than 30 seconds into an art form, my Bender Ball posed no challenge to him, whatsoever. After a fruitless workout, and constant fighting with him, I gave up and just let him do what he wanted to that ball. Figured at least that way someone derived some sort of pleasure and the money was not all lost.
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