Wednesday, August 19, 2009

That's Not What I Saw On TV, Damn It!


We’ve all been victims of this new television trend. We see these new products pop up everywhere, and somehow they’re remarkable. You know the ones, the backwards robe that supposedly can do what a sweatshirt can’t do, a sponge towel that cleans up messes that, god forbid, a towel can’t pick up, and magic glue that is stickier than normal glue. Welcome to the wonderful world of infomercials, a world that kicks our every day products that we take for granted to the curb, and replaces our prized possessions into crap. Seriously, the Snuggie? For forty bucks, I think I’d rather pay more money for a coat at Burlington that I could actually wear out in public without getting beat up. If it still doesn’t have that “Snuggie feel”, I could just put it on backwards when I’m prancing around the house. There, problem solved!

Unfortunately, my boyfriend and I too have been blinded by the light of the deceptive infomercial. No, we didn’t pay for forty dollar Snuggies (we were tempted to though… ) Nonetheless, the products we bought were similar in the way that they were pointless, a waste of money, and could have been replaced with less hassle by normal products laying around the house.

OxiClean

This seems like a gift sent by God himself. Wow, are you telling me that the strange two-year old stain on my favorite shirt will go away with a little help from this stuff? Geez, let me at it! With this new army of OxiClean, ketchup, grass, and wine stains don’t stand a chance (so the commercial had us believe).

I’m not exactly the cleanest eater or drinker. If I eat a pizza by the couch, there’s bound to be crumbs everywhere. As much as I try to hide the evidence, my Mr. Magoo vision misses a heap, if not all of the crumbs. Well, one night my boyfriend and I were laying on the couch together and he noticed tiny drops of wine stains on his blue rug. Automatically, I was the prime suspect of this crime (I still think I should have a lawyer present). Anyway, the drops were really small, probably the size of half a pea. As we were laying there, we see the OxiClean commercial! It was settled, the next day we would try the stuff out.

Excited of his new purchase, my boyfriend read the instructions on the OxiClean container, and automatically went to work trying to eliminate the stains. The two of us waited in suspense, crouched on the floor like a pair of cave people discovering fire for the first time. To our dismay, we notice the wine stains disappearing, but instead of a maroon color, it started turning a light brown. We waited for a little bit to see if the brown would fade lighter, but all of a sudden, a huge brown ring the size of a tennis ball started to form around the drops of wine. In horror I gasped: “Take it off! Take it off!” But it was too late.

My boyfriend washed the remaining OxiClean off with water, attempted to dry it with a hair dryer, vacuumed the rug, all in hopes of diminishing the huge brown patches. Nothing worked. We looked at the aftermath of the OxiClean trial. His once perfect blue rug with tiny drops of wine stains, now looked as if a drunken frat boy had barged into his apartment and vomited all over the rug. We were standing in a battle ground of faded brown patches. In the end, at least I could say: “Well, at least I didn’t do that!”

Smooth Away

One day I gave my boyfriend a simple kiss on the cheek and he kept giggling, nonstop. A brief giggle is normal, but a continuous giggle, I knew something was on his mind. “What?” I asked him. He looked at me and couldn’t keep a straight face. “Don’t take this the wrong way… But you have little pricklies.” Being self- conscious about the way I look, I automatically cupped my hands around my face and stared at him wide-eyed. “What do you mean pricklies? Is there something on my face? A beard? What?!” He started laughing and responded with: “It’s nothing! It’s just your upper lip… You have little hairs. But every girl has that! It’s no big deal.

I’m glad that he found my little Chaplin moustache amusing, but I wasn’t having it. I admit it, I wasn’t thinking at the time, and I made a drastic decision to… shave… a little. Maybe that wasn’t the brightest idea? When I told my boyfriend what I did, he scolded me for days about shaving my little friend. He kept telling me that it would grow back thicker; I kept telling him it was an old wives tale, and this went back and forth for days.

Anyway, I wasn’t paying 20 bucks to have a little fuzz on my lips removed by waxing. I tried plucking it out and that was a painful process, so then I discovered this box of Smooth Away in my house. I’ve seen the commercial of this product several times on TV and it seemed like a miracle! Wow, a scrubber that scrubs away hair without the fuss of shaving and nicking yourself with a razor… Brilliant!

I set up the product, and automatically started circling the area of mild fuzz clockwise, just like the instructions said. Now, keep in mind, I have thin hair and maybe three or four hairs sticking out of my upper lip. I kept on circling… Nothing. Two minutes later and my lip started getting red. Five minutes into the process, and voila! The hairs were gone. It took me five minutes to remove five hairs from my lip and rub my face raw in the process. Thanks but no thanks, I’ll just have to be Chaplin’s twin for a little longer until I can afford laser hair removal to remove the pesky pricklies for life.