It’s been Kayne-Westified…

Slap Chop Autotune Remix

So for shiggles, I added the Vince Offer masterpiece The Underground Comedy Movie to the Netflix queue.

I expected the movie to suck.  It was universally panned.  Everyone hated it.  But sometimes there is a perverse pleasure in watching a really bad movie.  (See MST3000)

This is not that movie.

To say it sucked wouldn’t do it justice.  I can’t even come up with a word to describe how terrible this movie is.

Even knowing that it would be terrible going in, we only made it about 30 minutes before we had to shut it off.  It just wasn’t funny.  Or watchable.

The tagline of the movie makes it clear that they are trying to be irreverent and offensive.  It wasn’t offensive.  It was just stupid.

The gags were cheap and predictable.  (They had a parody of Baywatch that they called… wait for it… Boobwatch.)

There were supermodels on the toilet for an extended fart scene.  A parody of Batman that recast the hero as a guy who walked around with a bat.  Batman.  Get it?  He knocked an old woman’s head off with the bat.  Guaranteed to offend!

There was a vignette called Virgin Hunter that had a guy who made fart noises while speaking, an orange grove, and a naked white man with an afro, for some reason.  What’s not to love?

What struck me the whole time was the knowledge that so many people had to be involved in this movie.  It was professionally shot.  They had to have a ton of camera people, sound crews, gaffers, etc.  Not to mention producers, distributors, and others on that end of the business. There were a ton of people involved, yet no one pulled the plug.

I hope everyone was paid in cash up front.

Pitchman William “Billy” D. Mays, Jr., Oxy-Clean Spokesman, and Vince from ShamWow rival, passed away on 6/28/09.

He started his career selling portable washing machines on the Atlantic City boardwalk before being hired by OrangGlo to promote their various cleaners.

He went on to pitch for the following products: OxiClean, Orange Glo, Kaboom, Engrave It, Handy Switch, iCan, Mighty Mendit, Mighty Putty (regular) & Mighty Putty Wood, Hercules Hook, AwesomeAuger, Steam Buddy ,Zorbeez, Big City Slider Station,The Ding King, ESPN 360, Energize, Impact Gel Insoles, Omni DualSaw, Jupiter Jack, What Odor?, Tool Bandit, SIMONIZ Instant Shine, SIMONIZ fix it! (regular) & fix it! PRO, Gopher, Samurai Shark, Grater Plater, Ragazzi’s Pizza, and Green Now!

He also recently got a show on Discovery, but I didn’t think it was that good.

He was on an airplane flight the day before his death where the tires blew out on landing. Though no one on board was thought to suffer severe injuries, it is unclear if this incident had anything to do with his death.

Update: Preliminary autopsy results indicate heart disease is a likely cause of death.

Source: Wiki

One thing I forgot to mention—Vince is a co-owner of ShamWow! So he makes money on every ShamWow! that is sold, regardless of where it is sold.

That’s how he had the $1000 for the hooker.

Source: Fortune Magazine

I caught an episode of PitchMen on Discovery last night… if you haven’t seen/heard of it, it’s a reality type show featuring Billy Mays and another guy (Anthony Sullivan) and shows a behind-the-scenes look at how infomercials are made.

Like most reality TV, it’s like a train wreck, so you can’t really change the channel once you’ve landed on it.

Seeing the show reminded me that was overdue with a post about Billy Mays and Vince from ShamWow! based on an article I read a few weeks ago in Fortune magazine.

It seems that the two have something of a rivalry. You see, Mays feels that Vince has violated some type of pitchman code by hawking the ShamWow! after Billy had previously hawked a similar product called Zorbeez. And, to add insult to injury, Mays feels the Slap Chop is a rip-off of Mays’ Quick Chop.

“You know what, rip me off once, shame on me. But twice? I’m coming after you and taking back what’s mine”

According to Mays, he and Vince “exchanged words” during the super bowl (they were both guests in the same suite). That lead to Mays going on the Adam Carolla show challenging Vince to a “pitch off.”

As for Vince, he says the Super Bowl altercation never happened, and accuses Billy of posturing to increase his ratings.

The totality of the Fortune article and the Discovery show did lead me to one important conclusion: Billy Mays is a world-class douchebag.

(I know – who would have thought that in an altercation with Vince from ShamWow! the other guy would come off looking like the douchebag.)

If you had any lingering doubt about Mays’ level of douchebaggery, let it be solidified by the fact that he refers to himself in third person.

“When I’m up against a wall, that’s when Billy Mays performs his best.”

But, alas, he’s a rich, Bentley driving douchebag, so more power to him, I guess.

Source: Fortune Magazine

A follow-up to The Wife^®’s post yesterday, mostly because I couldn’t resist posting the picture. So, a few things I learned:

• Vince’s real last name is Shlomi, but he goes by Vince Offer professionally. He was born in Israel, according to the notoriously accurate wikipedia.
• Vince is 44 Years Old.
• Vince apparently has enough money to pay a hooker $1000.
• Apparently a hooker costs $1000.
• Without the makeup and lights, Vince looks like this:

If you’re in the mood for some inappropriate Vince double entendre, check out the comments here. And The Smoking Gun has the police report.

Really- taking your “fame” so seriously?

That is sad.

The girl who plays “Flo” on the Progressive Insurance Commercials is named Stephanie Courtney.

She is a member of an improv comedy troupe in LA, has a recurring role in the series Mad Men, and has over 30 entries on her IMDB page.

Her “Flo” makeup takes over 2 hours to apply. In reality she looks a little more normal. You can see the real her on this YouTube video of her doing standup.

Much like Vince from ShamWow!, I can’t decide if I like or hate her. But what I do know is that I would love to see them team up on a project.

Source: This Article

The story goes that a school teacher in Ashland, OH gave his students individual squares of paper so that the single towel in the lavatory would spread their germs. Then the CEO of Scott Paper Towels heard about this, and tried to sell a load of toilet paper, that had accidentally been made too thick, as paper towels. This also lead to the invention of Sani-towels, which I believe are the predecessor to Kleenex.

Also, paper towels are called yumyum towels or ea-z rolls in the UK.

Source: Wiki while researching paper towel brands for a comment on the Vince/ShamWow! imitator post.

Vince always warned me to beware of imitators, but I’d never seen one. Until Today.

It’s called the Sham Sorb. They should be ashamed.