Written by Lars Hancock

---

Young Lars was not much of the athlete. I was younger than everyone by about a year and a half, as a result of having a late birthday and skipping a grade early on, which certainly didn’t help matters much, but fact is that I was a skinny geeky awkward kid, and, well, not much has changed to be honest.

When it came time to give the teachers an opportunity to smoke, or do Jagermeister shots, or whatever they did to relieve the pain caused by monitoring 30 or so hellions on behalf of the state for eight hours a day, they would release us to the black top with a bunch of red balls, and let nature take its course.

That meant dodgeball, the grade school embodiment of the theory of natural selection, and it meant young Lars would have to endure the humiliation of being the last pick (girls included) more often than not when sides were being drawn in the conflict. And since I wasn’t good at running, or throwing, or catching, it meant a lot of dodgeballs to the head (sometimes gratuitously in actions that would lead to $20,000 fines in the NFL today), a lot of pain, and a healthy dose of humiliation.

But you know what I did every day on that black top? I tried my ass off. I ran hard, I threw hard, I tried to get better. I tried to run, to dodge, to catch, and to do anything to survive, hoping that I would improve to a mid-round selection in the daily draft, and vindicate my presence on that black top, in the school, and in society in general. Did that happen? Nope, but I did learn a valuable lesson: I sucked at dodgeball.

I did take moral victories off the court. Once, I caught a laser from Darren McDaniels, who eventually became captain of the high school football team. Once I was the last survivor on my team. And occasionally I was part of a winning team. But every moral victory was usually followed quickly by a big red ball to my head, smacking me with reality while that all too familiar thwang of the ball rang in my ears. Make no mistake about it – dodgeball sucked for me, and I knew that I would have to make my mark in society in a non-athletic manner.

That’s the thing about moral victories – they don’t get you anywhere. In sales, first place gets the Cadillac, second the steak knives, and third place, well, third place you’re fired. And in reality, there are no steak knives in real life, it’s either the Cadillac or you’re fired. You make a great sales call, make some great relationships, but lose the deal on some “fluke”, your family doesn’t eat, and you get fired. That’s real life, and that’s what dodgeball taught me.

Kids these days don’t get the red rubber ball of reality to help to knock some sense into them. No, we wouldn’t want to hurt precious Timmy’s feelings by reinforcing that he sucks at athletics, let’s give him a trophy and delude him into thinking he’s good enough. The self-entitled culture we’ve developed from this no consequence rearing is destroying society, and turning us into a nation of whiners and apathetic loafers who think any effort is good enough, when in fact their best effort will be woefully insufficient. And it’s why people all throughout Cleveland didn’t throw their TV out their windows last night.

Yes, the Browns had another moral victory. They’re 3-1 morally! They should have beat the Eagles, could have beat the Bengals, and would have beat the Ravens if… and well, there’s that “if” word, isn’t there?

In reality, moral victories on the football field suck. Feeling good about the fact we came close to beating our arch-rival (one of them at least) is horseshit. We should all be angry and demand more. I don’t care who if anyone on the team looked good last night, because WE LOST, and I’m mad about it. We’re 0-4, that’s reality, we suck, and we’re due for another of those rebuilding – regime change things which will set us back again. Thwang, red ball to the skull. Nothing positive to take away from last night.

We shouldn’t feel good about anything happening in Berea these days. Don’t excuse Greg Little for making a few nice catches, demand he does better for the continuing drops or replace him. No steak knives, no Caddy, it’s the other option. Pat Shurmur, you certainly don’t get the Cadillac, and I seem to be fresh out of steak knives. And Weeden, you’re sunk cost. Learn to aim the football accurately or we’re drafting another QB next year. None of you are good enough, and none of your crap is acceptable. I’m tired of the ball to the head, and I welcome the new ownership making wholesale changes to end it.

So those of you who got to hug and sing kumbaya during recess, go ahead and enjoy your moral victory. I’ll be stealing your clients and getting myself a Caddy.

Anyway, off to the questions.

What is the best As Seen On TV product, ever?

That depends on whether you’re going for quality of product, or quality of entertainment.

Let’s go for the latter first. The short list here is OxyClean, the ShamWow, the Thighmaster, the Flowbee, and Chia Pet are the big five in this category. OxyClean makes the list because it gave us Billy Mays, who the world (and a dodgeball sized wad of cocaine) took away far too early. Billy redefined the obnoxiously loud TV pitchman, which was something because that’s what TV pitchmen were known for: being loud and obnoxious. Billy was the gift that kept on giving, and with each commercial he became more of a farcical caricature of the farcical caricature he created. If the volume on your TV was set to 10, Billy spoke at 15. But that wasn’t enough to carry OxyClean across the finish line here.

The ShamWow gave us whatever that smarmy weasely dude’s name was. It took no great soothsayer to see that he would someday get arrested after a physical altercation with a hooker. He was everything about a salesman you hated, and you loved it, because somehow this vile eel of a man got you convinced that this ShamWow thing was the GREATEST INVENTION EVER. You needed a ShamWow because this loathsome untrustworthy ugly boil of a human somehow charmed you into thinking it was a necessity. You would hate yourself in the morning, but loved yourself that night. But he didn’t have the entertainment value we craved.

The Thighmaster was a pornographic sideshow, a guilty pleasure, and a source of hope for women everywhere. It isn’t the pints of Ben and Jerry’s I devour like Skittles that make my legs look like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow man. No, it’s the lack of a targeted toning device, like the $10 piece of shit this crazy woman is trying to sell me. And that’s no ordinary woman – that used to be Susanne Somers, famous for being an airhead who didn’t wear a bra in the 70s! She must have the secret to great thighs! And the women in 80s pink spandex bodysuits working those babies… mesmerizing. The best? No.

Confession time here: I cut my own hair. I can drag a #3 clipper across my scalp just as well as a $10 or even a $50 barber could, and I can do it when I have free time in mere minutes without ever leaving the home. I don’t have much hair left, so “styling” isn’t much of a concern. And I vacuum the floor and my head, yes, I vacuum my head, when done to pick up all the loose hair. What if there was a product that combined all that into one easy step? The Flowbee! Problem with the Flowbee was people didn’t use the #3 clipper, they used the #40, which made your head look like a giant dandelion. This was fine if you were a Canadian woman, but hideous otherwise. It did make for some great jokes.

But the single most entertaining infomercial of all time was the Chia Pet, and it is the Dimaggio streak of infomercials. Some absolute marketing genius – and for once I use that word non-sarcastically – took a worthless crop, combined it with some hideous pottery, and created a system that doesn’t really work all that well and sold about 100 trillion of the things. Watching the infomercial made you want this monstrosity, it turned the Elephant Man of products into a Tickle Me Elmo. Look at the seeds grow! It created a meme that survives to this day, and added the word “chia” to the global vocabulary. It’s the penultimate gag gift, and a secret desire, all in one sheep-shaped ceramic package.

Now if you mean quality of product, this list starts and ends with Mighty Mendit. That stuff is legitimately awesome. If your bird’s head falls off, you could smack a dab of Mighty Mendit on his abdomen and pop the cranium back on and, poof, good as new. Just magical stuff. Everything else is pure crap.

Is there thing more toxic or foul on this planet than the chili they put on hot dogs at 7th grade football game concession stands? -pods uncle

Yes, that same chili the next morning.

Chili is a religion, and that chili is Scientology. Even the Islamic fundamentalist chili in the airport has high ground over that chili. Proper chili is a process that takes a flavorful cut of meat and breaks it down over long periods of time until it shreds. Ground beef chili Is acceptable in a pinch, and turkey or chicken chili can be prepared to be tasty even though it is sacrilegious to do such. And then there’s the meat in that chili.

What is in that meat? I have no idea, but did you see the news where they think they know where Jimmy Hoffa’s body is? Seriously, that chili could be Soylent green, the industrialized disposal means of mob hits. It could be pest control, rats, or smaller with more legs. It could be the offal that isn’t normally fit for human consumption – the hooves, eyes, and asshole of the cow. Whatever it is, it is vile and indigestible, which is why it is so far worse the next morning after marinating in warm Bud Light and nacho cheese overnight.

That actually brings to mind a great fundraising idea. Have the PTA sell those hot dogs for $5, or $7 without the chili. You want your room not to smell like a goat died in it tomorrow? Cough up the extra $2.

What is this fascination with people rushing to stores to get the "hottest" new items in tech like the iPhone 5? I'm happily three generations behind everything when it comes to phones/computers and I get by just fine. I also save a lot of money. Do these tech junkies know something I don't, or are they just degenerates in need of therapy?  Confession: I did used to be an obsessive collector of books/DVDs and card games. Moving five times in four years cured me of that. –justmebd

People are fundamentally insecure. A lot of this comes from being picked in the late rounds in dodgeball, or taking a dodgeball or two to the head, but regardless of origin, people just want to be loved, and they never think they’re good enough.

Enter the iPhone 5. Here is this wonderous piece of technology people crave like Rosie O’Donnell craves pudding. It’s new, it’s exciting, it’s an iPhone, and if you’re the first guy to have it, your street cred goes up like eleventy million points. Nobody will ever realize what a boring douche you are if you carry the latest cool product, because you can hide behind it like hipsters hide behind their glasses. It’s your sword, your shield, and your armor as you do battle on the social ladder.

You don’t need one, I speculate, because you’re just fine with who you are, and instead choose to use your cash on things that are actually functionally valuable.  You probably married a smart, confident, and conversational woman instead of needing to validate by marrying some vapid Barbie-doll trophy of a bimbo. The guys in line for the iPhone? Not so much. They may also have incredibly small penises, but I have not done nor will I do sufficient research to validate this. Call it a “working hypothesis”.

 Some government top-secret bio-radiological experiment went wrong. You appear and disappear....flux. Luckily, the doctors have determined all will go back to normal soon, but you will be  totally INVISIBLE for 7 straight days. So take the week off. Where do you go and what do you do? Please note you would still trigger motion & heat sensors etc. -pod

You’d think I’d go straight for the women’s locker room at the gym, and you may not be entirely wrong, but there are so many better uses for this newfound super power.

First thing I do is go to war against my mortal enemy: the velvet rope. Places too fancy for the likes of me, or that I’m not rich, important, beautiful, or connected well enough to get into are my oyster, and I can enjoy them 24x7 (in this case, literally 24x7 or 168 hours). I’m going to Congress to private committee meetings and behind closed doors meetings with lobbyists, to see how corrupt they really are. I’m going to board meetings and trading on the information I get. I’m getting on an airplane without paying and without taking my damn shoes off to go through security!

I also need to correct some wrongs in society. That C I got in my history class in college where I really earned a B? Going to fix that. I’m also going all Robin Hood on bad people – you steal money (like most of the 2012 Indians), I steal your password, wipe out your accounts, and give it to the poor. And I can do it because you won’t even know I’m there when you type “Bosco” into the ATM.

There’s a list of people I’m going to slap too. Just slapping you, nothing worse. Personal enemies and hopeless windbags, SLAP. Chris Berman – “back back back back“ SLAP. Stuart Scott – “as cool as the other side…” OF MY PALM. SLAP! Hawk Harrelson. Donald Trump. Any Kardashian. Kanye. So many people to slap, so little time. I may even just go slapping for a week, and forego everything else on the list.

 

Please email questions to lars.hancock@yahoo.com, tweet them @ReasonsImADrunk, or DM them to me in the forae to LarsHancock. And remember, vote Lars for President in 2012.