Love my nuts…

Ssh! It’s supposed to be a secret, but I’m loving my time off as a formerly employed Advertiser copy editor. You never realize how many things you let fall by the wayside when you’re a full-time worker. Clothes that need to be ironed pile up. That closet reorganization never happens. Creative stacks of magazines form around the house, narrowing your pathway each week.

And while I have yet to go through those packages of odds and ends items I had to take home from the work desk about a month ago, I’ve also been trying to enjoy the time off. I revel in the fact that I don’t need to set an alarm each day and my biggest decisions are whether I should meet a friend for lunch or clear out months worth of my favorite TV shows on the DVR.

But my mind is still slightly in a working mode when it comes to this blog. As usual, I try to keep an eye out for ODD things. And as it happened, about a few weeks back I happened to see an infomercial in the middle of the day that immediately caught my attention.

A very entertaining salesman named Vince was promoting an item called the Slap Chop. It reminded me of that Magic Bullet food blender that I’ve always found appealing but never did buy. Don’t know if it was the amazing ease at which this Slap Chop diced, minced and chopped food items of all sizes in seconds or if it was the sales pitch itself. Here’s the beat-bopping version:

Slap Chop rap

Other YouTube videos highlight the “love my nuts” version in a variety of parodies.

I was so tempted to pick up the phone right away to place an order. But then another informercial on the same channel caught my eye. In the meantime I was getting slightly worried that this whole unemployment deal was affecting my ability to discern between products of actual value versus just those with commercial appeal.

But the Shake Weight claims to help women tone their flabby arms and lose weight by shaking this 2.5-pound weight just six minutes a day! I thought I could do this several times a day while watching TV, etc. So even though I didn’t buy it through a phone order, I did manage to find it at the As Seen on TV store in Ala Moana. The verdict? I can’t tell you. I didn’t even test it out since buying it a couple of weeks ago. Sigh…

So who has bought an item, preferably ODD, as seen on TV recently? What are some of your favorite infomercials? What is it about these sales pitches that make a product seem like the greatest thing since sliced bread?

—–

And we’re back with our O&E ODD image of the day. These next two come from this past weekend’s Korean Festival at Kapiolani Park.

It’s not shave ice, nor is it ice cream nor frozen yogurt! It literally tastes like snow. This was a passion fruit flavor. Its dry flakes sort of melt in your mouth like cotton candy and it has a half cold taste. The only thing I could think of was that it was just so ODD. The shop is in McCully Shopping Center and they supposedly have dozens of flavors.

Don’t ask what compelled me to take a photo being practically enveloped by my least-favorite creature! But for the record, I couldn’t find a lifesize cutout of some K-drama hunk to pose with as I did several years back…