Is it just me, or are the people pitching gadgets on infomercials the most annoying people on the planet?
Just watch anything with Billy Mays in it - but be warned, you might want to cut the volume by HALF before he starts talking. He has VOICE IMMODULATION DISORDER. HE TALKS IN ALL CAPS. HE CANNOT SPEAK AT A NORMAL VOLUME. EVERYTHING IS LOUD LOUD LOUD. He also, regrettably, seems to have either a speech impediment or a Pittsburghese accent. (The two are sometimes indistinguishable). You'll know it when you hear it...they can't pronounce the letter "l" properly, at least not without tacking an extra "w" to it. Ok, I just googled him, and Wikipedia tells me he's from McKees Rocks, PA. Holy crap, I'm good. I spent the first 5 years of my life there, so that accent is embedded deeply in my subconscious (and in certain parts of my family, unfortunately).
And that ShamWow guy, Vince...don't even get me started. I'm already irritated anytime anybody thinks "chamois" is spelled "Shammy" (which 99% of the world does), so to use the phonetic misspelling of an object as part of it's name (a BAD name at that) is just hella-annoying. And we haven't even talked about the freakshow they have pitching this thing. He's like the creepy carnie bastard child of Willem Dafoe with one crazy eye and a fauxhauk wearing a Gap headset (what is he, on the phone? It's a TV COMMERCIAL! We all know they use boom mikes, so you can take your 1992 Plantronics model A60 off now.) because he's on a break from his day job greeting shoppers and folding button-downs at the Trenton mall. He is SO SLIMY. He just screams "snake oil salesman". I see him on the tv, and I'm instantly in a fetal position in my chair, holding my knees and rocking back and forth with my eyes closed looking for my 'happy place'. He just totally skeeves me out.
The first time I saw that commercial, it was so cheesy that I thought for sure it was like a mock commercial on a tv show, like making fun of informercials. But no! It's a real infomercial!
I particularly love it when, at the end of a particularly crappy informercial for a particularly crappy product, say, non-circulating currency from Guam with a 24-carat engraving of the twin towers on it, they say, "strict limit of 5 per caller!"
Yeah, right. Let me know how many takers you get on that offer. I got a bridge to sell them.
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(chuckle) right after I read this blog entry, guess who came on TV? You guessed it - Mr. "Shammy" himself.
ReplyDeleteI think the microphone is supposed to be a Britney Spears type of thing so he can talk into the microphone while creepily doing his demonstration. I guess those overhead boom microphones are too expensive for low-budget informercials.
Note: I was amazed that the word "creepily" was actually in the dictionary.
Also in the dictionary...believe it or not, "shammy" is also acceptable for "chamois." It surprised the heck out of me!
But remember...it's made in Germany. That's supposed to somehow impress you because, as we all know, Germany is well-known for making the best chamois. Hahaha...