Best Infomercial Of All Time

I’ve only posted the first 10 minutes here. You’ll have to search for the rest … and you will. It’s a cheese-TV addiction you won’t be able to quit. This is the music of AM radio in my childhood; while my mother was playing Beatles and Zeppelin LPs (and my funky grandma was indulging her Jim Croce fixation), everywhere else played this music. I hated it at the time, but I’ve grown to like it.

The sad part? I own this collection. I bought it after seeing this infomercial night after night for about a year. Something about this show just sucked me in. Let me list 10 reasons why:

1. It’s hours long. No lie. When I first moved here, I got home from work at 4 a.m., and didn’t have cable TV. The only channel I could pick up showed this for hours, until the morning news. I can recite its dialogue.
2. It’s hosted by Air Supply. Air Supply! “In the 1970s, a fresh new sound came out of Southern California.” And Air Supply ignored it!
3. One of the Air Suppliers’ first names is Russell, and the other one’s last name is Russell. That’s just funny.
4. This commercial helped me discover Chicago. I thought Chicago was a schmaltzy pop band, but seeing this helped me realize they made some progressive jazz-rock in the 1970s.
5. Canadian pop star Gino Vanelli had the Biggest Big Bad Hair of all time. He’s my hero.
6. The Doobie Brothers appeared on an episode of What’s Happening once when I was a kid. I liked how the guy with the cane used it to scare off a bad guy.
7. Steal Away by Robbie Dupree is one of the great underrated pop songs of all time.
8. Beards were cool.
9. Angela is a really bad actress. When she says “I have all your albums,” you can actually here her saying “Who are these guys?”
10. I don’t know what that sax riff is that plays during the segues, but I think it’s from the Flashdance soundtrack. Also, it played over and over again on a loop when I worked at Burger King in 1986. I hate that sax riff. It makes me want fries.

Infomercials are underrated as entertainment. I love watching the original Slap Chop ad, and I’ve just discovered Billy Mays. However, these full-length shows are the 21st century equivalent of the late-night video shows I watched as a kid.

STDVD: Firefight

Okay, as I prepared to watch the latest low-budget STDVD from the cellar of my collection, I took note of the obvious warning signs:

• Shot in Canada, but pretending to be the U.S.
• Made by a studio I’ve never heard of (Artsy Fartsy Pictures. Really.)
• Stars a non-Alec Baldwin brother, in this case Stephen. Stephen Baldwin is rapidly becoming the go-to guy for STDVDs.
• Stephen Baldwin plays a criminal named Wolf. Ooh, will he be wearing leather and riding a motorcycle? Check.
• Also stars Nick Mancuso, with his name credited in such a way that I know before I press play that he’s in the movie for about five minutes.

But then I’m pleasantly surprised. This isn’t art. It isn’t artsy fartsy. It isn’t even good enough to be a TV movie. But somebody put a lot of heart into it. Perhaps it was director Paul Ziller, or executive producer … wait, I just noticed this. The movie’s executive producer is Roger Corman. Well, okay then.

While Baldwin and Mancuso get top billing, they aren’t the stars. Baldwin is the villain, and Mancuso stops by long enough to spell his name for the person who designed the DVD label. The actual star is Steve Bacic, a Canadian actor best known for his roles in Andromeda (a Canadian series based on something Gene Roddenberry wrote down in his sleep one night), Battlestar Galactica, The Guard and X-Men 2 (he had a brief cameo as a non-furry Hank McCoy).

I wouldn’t call Bacic a great actor, but he sure looks good. In Firefight, he plays a volunteer forest firefighter who used to be a thief. He’s gone straight, but his small-town diner is bleeding money and his time is being burned up by a killer forest fire season. When he risks his life in a daring rescue of millions from a bank’s armoured car that’s trapped in a forest fire, he expects gratitude — but the bank is about to take his home and diner anyway.

This is when his ex shows up. She’s teamed with Wolf (Stephen Baldwin, who is, I’m sorry, not frightening in the least) and one of the armoured car drivers. They have a plan to steal millions. Will our hero pull a Robin Hood, stealing insured millions from a heartless bank so he can keep serving grilled cheeses to truckers?

The first half of the film works. The second becomes very, very strange, and hard to follow. I got the impression that Baldwin pushed for more screen time, because he suddenly becomes the main character, hamming it up badly. You can actually see him thinking about who he plans to vote for on American Idol in the middle of some scenes. He’s that distracted.

But the movie works, all in all, despite its cheapness. And there’s one reason for that: fire. Shooting in fire is tricky. This movie pulls it off. I found myself believing that the cast was surrounded by deadly flame, with no way out, over and over and over again. Plus there’s a kickass Sikh security guard, and that’s a character you aren’t likely to see in any mainstream movies.

I wouldn’t recommend paying money for this, unless you see it in a dollar bin. But if it comes on late at night, you won’t regret 90 stupid minutes spent watching a fun caper flick.

NOTE: This movie is so obscure the trailer isn’t online. If there even was a trailer.

Today’s Moron: Jax, aka Jack Charon

Dear Jax,

I notice that you have removed my post on the X-rated teacher from your blog. And when you removed it, all the fun comments from Weather Station 1 readers around the world went, too. That’s too bad; those comments were better than my original post, which you stole and claimed to be your own.

Luckily, Google caches everything. Not the comments, though, which is too bad.

Stealing other people’s work is pretty easy, especially in the blogosphere. The only way a writer can track down a plagiarist is by randomly googling lines of text, hoping they lead to thieves. Not this time, though. See, Jax, you were stupid; when you copied and pasted my post, you brought along an embedded link to an earlier story on my blog. And I noticed, thanks to WordPress’s excellent tracking system, that a whole bunch of people were clicking on a link at your blog to get to mine. Wait, no, I made that up just to be nice. It was one person.

Anyway, I clicked on the referrer link, and found my own work, with your name on it. I Twittered about it, and before long people were letting you know what they think.

Please don’t think I’m upset or angry. I’m not. This whole thing has been an interesting experience. People steal from me all the time, but usually it’s just an idea, or a joke, not a whole article.

And after reading your blog, I understand why you did it. We all want to sound a little smarter sometimes.

Best wishes,

Weathereye

P.S. You’re a douchebag.

Just Say No

Addiction has played a frightening role in my life. Family members have struggled with alcohol and drugs, and I was once married to a drug addict. It’s scary stuff. I like to think that I’m lucky to have avoided addiction, but that wouldn’t be the truth.

I was a smoker for a long time. It has been a few years now since I quit — it was a medical necessity, not a lifestyle choice, believe you me — and I’m now at the stage where other smokers tick me off. I noticed it Friday night at Ribfest; our friends are smokers, and there were a lot of other ciggie fiends around us, and the smoke was bothering me. I didn’t say anything about it, because that isn’t my style.

There is, however, this:

But I’m still fooling myself. I’m a caffeine junkie. Hardcore. As the latest episode of Hooked (a drugs podcast, one of the best programs in the world) points out, caffiene is indeed a drug, and a popular one. I’ve cut back on my caffeine intake since leaving night work six months ago, and I’ve eliminated my megavice, Diet Coke, altogether, but I still have at least two cups of coffee a day. Not today, though. I’m on a health kick (trying to lose a little weight and boost my endurance). I skipped the coffee and went with green tea.

It wasn’t easy. Elizabeth bought a fancy new coffee maker on the weekend, and it looks all sleek and Star Trekky with its glowing blue LED display. I’m dying to try it. But I won’t. I have to go take a nap.

Today’s Moron: Audra Shay II

The Young Republicans will vote today on whether this uninformed hate monger will become their new chairwoman. And it seems her denials of a few days ago were just camouflage … what a shocker.

I’m speechless.

Wait, no, I’m not. If the rumours are true, and Sarah Palin is launching some kind of hard-right splinter group consisting of the stupidest Republicans (with a few Klan members thrown in for good measure), it looks like she has her new protege.

If Audra Shay is elected chairwoman today, then it will be a clear signal to the world: The GOP is done hiding its true colours, and its next generation is proceeding with an agenda of exclusion, suspicion, discrimination and hate.

In related news, read this article about more racist stupidity.

UPDATE: Stupid Shay won the election.

Worst Music Video Ever Of The Week: Thor

Yeah, his name is Thor. He’s a Canadian metal “singer” of the 1980s who boasted a fantastic physique and … uh, not much else. I’ve shown this video before, so you may have seen it, but it never hurts to take another look. Witness this:

As a special treat, I offer you some modern Thor. Close to 30 years after recording Keep The Dogs Away, Thor released Devastation of Musculation, an odd title that made me stop and think for a while. I finally decided it was an autobiography.

What’s that Batman body armour all about? Look, I love metal. But this is the sort of thing that makes people think metalheads are morons.