Sandwich Fixins #5
At almost every supermarket checkout counter, there are signs saying, “Go Green. Skip the Plastic.” If plastic bags are so bad, shouldn’t we give this advice to dog owners as well? I’m only saying this because I would love to take a walk and see people bent over, fingers spread like a catcher’s mitt, waiting to collect the steaming pile dropping from their pooch’s ass. That would be very entertaining for me.
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Years ago, I accompanied my husband to the New York Auto Show. Manufacturers pay people to lurk around taking notes about visitors’ reactions. They’re not presenters; they’re supposed to blend in. Sometimes you can tell who they are as I did when waxing rhapsodic about a Supercharger prototype that never made it into production. The poor guy was madly scribbling, trying to keep up.
So when we got to the Mercedes exhibit, I started asking, very loudly, “Where’s Hitler’s staff car?” I aimed the question at no one in particular. I saw no presenter. I repeated myself several times, hoping to flush out the secret representative. Eventually, my husband hustled me away and ended my impromptu demonstration of support for Holocaust survivors and, by extension, all Jews, many of whom drive Mercedes.
I’ve been telling this story ever since. It’s short, sweet and totally true. But some morons at this year’s show decided to heckle a Chrysler spokesmodel as if she ran the company. So now I have to give a whole backstory to show that I wasn’t harassing anyone. Thanks to those assholes, my story will never be funny again.
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Wanda Sykes caught some flak for wishing Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys would fail. She was speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the time, and the context of the joke was her reaction to Limbaugh’s wish for Obama to fail. She also said Rush might have been one of the hijackers on 9/11 but was so messed up on Oxycontin that he missed his flight. Plus she shares how she’d torture Sean Hannity. It’s pretty sweet. Watch it here. It’s over fifteen minutes long and well worth your time.
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Why use Wynonna Judd in an ad for Alli, a weight loss drug? Is it so fat people won’t feel pressured to actually lose weight? This is ingenious advertising that says, “We’re not even trying to kid you that you’ll ever be able to stop shopping in Dress Barn.” It persuades people to buy a drug while lowering their expectation of eventual success.
P.S. Alli makes you shit your pants. Now you know what Wynonna Judd is probably doing right now.
Related posts:
Sandwich Fixins #2
Sandwich Fixins #3
Sandwich Fixins #4
See, I would lie through my teeth at one of those auto shows, and come up with all kinds of crazy bullshit for one of those observers to scribble down.
If I’d been any more effusive about that prototype, I would have been humping it–it still didn’t get made. Maybe the company would be better off if it had listened.
If there was anyone listening at the Mercedes booth, they weren’t hearing anything new. Even when I said, “We like the little children because their hands are so small they fit in the parts” (spoken with requisite Hogan’s Heroes-type accent)I don’t think they were surprised. Their marketing department’s attitude to the snafu of having used prisoners as labor is, “We’re Mercedes. Get over it.” It’s worked for them.
We were shopping for a new car a few years ago and we stopped at a Chrysler dealership. This idiot sales guy told me that “Chrysler bought Daimler,” and when I laughed at him, he kept repeating “It’s a matter of public record!”
Chrysler bought Daimler like Poland bought Germany.
Diesel: I looked on Wikipedia and apparently Poland did buy Germany. It's amazing what you can learn from user-generated facts.