Category: suggestible girl

Such a Suggestible Girl

Sometimes it really worries me that the things I can most easily remember, can get to most quickly in the old brain bucket, are commercials.

Especially those commercials from the formative years.

I can whip out a jingle or a tagline from commercials dating way back, and repeat ’em like Rainman in a phone booth (yikes, no more phone booths!).

What makes these commercials so sticky in the brain? I don’t know, but obviously this is the intended effect, eh?

So here in this Christmas season, I’ve been thinking about all of those old Ronco commercials. No, not the new Ron Popeil ads. Those are lame.

The old Ronco ads. Let’s talk 1970’s.

Remember when Ronco ads used to repeat, ad nauseum, at every commercial break?

Here’s a few I was able to find on the web:

Smokeless Ashtray

Boogie Nights Record Album (Click to play)

Ice Cream Machine(Click to play)

Look at this!! The early Bedazzler!!

Rhinestone and stud setter(Click to play)

Oh yes. Good times.

There are a few of my faves I wasn’t able to find. For example, the Egg Scrambler. A funny little machine that with a pinprick to the egg and the revs of a small motor would scramble it up inside the shell.

Or the Record Vacuum. I found a couple of those ads, but not the one I remember. In the one I recall, they ran the vinyl through the vacuum then tossed a handful of confetti at it (to prove the static was gone, I think?).

Ah yes.

But then, there will always be the gold standard of Ronco commercials.

Found on the web and brought to you.

“Hey good looking! I’ll be back to pick you up later!”

Enjoy

Mr. Microphone! (Click to play)

Tis the Season

Yesterday was a weird day.

Sure, mid-December always gets a little bit dicey when going out to run errands, but yesterday was especially odd.

I had a list of things to procure and not a lot of time, so over lunchtime I started at the top of the list. First stop, Home Depot.

Oh Home Depot, I know so many people love you, but I rarely visit your orangey evil warehouse.

I needed some tools (I have a fun Christmas project for The Good Man’s little sister in progress). Since Home Depot is the Wal-Mart of hardware stores, and I wanted to spend only a little green, I decided to give it a try.

Wow, did you know there is some sort of force field going on in Home Depot? As soon as I set foot in the lumber aisle, I became invisible! It was really instant and rather startling!

The U.S. military should look into this!

The secret to a true complete invisibility shield!

A girl in the lumber aisle.

I found that on the tools aisle, I was only partly invisible. If I said, “hey, I need help!” then they could sort of see me. It wasn’t just me either, there was another woman trying to get help regarding a door knob she was considering.

She got the attention of one male employee who condescendingly answered her question then walked away…though she wasn’t done asking questions.

Oh, I did discover that in the gardening section, by the small pink canvas pruning gloves? They could see me fine.

Something about hardware and lumber.

Weird, huh?

My next errand was to go to the post office. A gift ordered online had arrived. Yay!

Well, it being mid-December and at lunch, the post office was crazy busy. We use a very small postal annex with only two employees, so that makes things an even bigger holdup.

It was a very, very long line.

Well, you know, this is to be expected this time of year.

Except for the cranky old man and the horribly cranky old woman in line behind me.

The old man kept cranking about how he can’t believe the lines and he had been there and hour before and the line was this long so he went and had lunch to wait it out and wouldn’t you know it the line is still long and how can this be!

You get my drift.

Then the lady chimed in.

“There are just too many people these days. Too. Many. People. You know why it is so crowded don’t you? Because of all the immigrants. Obama keeps letting all of those immigrants in. They all want the free stuff so those damn people keep coming in and it is just too crowded!”

Uh. WHAT!?!?!?

Crazy old bat continued on that line of rant for a bit longer, then went back to complaining about the line. She said, “Why is there only one person working, where is that [racial epithet redacted] who works here?”

I was horrified. Absolutely stunned into a horrified shock.

Evidently the “spirit of the season” is discrimination, racism and anger.

Once I picked up my package, I got in my car and made my way out of the parking lot. As I waited to turn out into traffic, I had the audacity to wait for a group of six kids from the nearby high school walking by on lunch break.

Audacity because the evidently impatient man behind me felt I shouldn’t have paused. So he laid on the horn and yelled “GOOOO!”

Well, clearly the spirit of the season has infected me as well, because I unrolled my window and shouted “WHAT THE F–K IS YOUR PROBLEM!?!?”

Tis the season to be assholish, fa la la la, la la la la……

Look at me pass on the season’s cheer….

I think I’ll hunker down at the house for the remainder of the year. It seems better that way.

I am owned by a man named Joe

Oh man.

Lemme just say it again, oooooh man.

I have become such a little b*tch for Trader Joe’s.

Gad, I love that place.

I never thought I’d become one of those people who are all about Trader Joe’s…but I am.

Well, it all started about last year when the ol’ economic climate got a little weird.

And The Good Man and I started looking for all sorts of ways to save a buck here and there.

We’ve cancelled our cable (buh bye Comcast! I giggled when I made that call!), reduced our home phone services, got discounts on the cell phones, turn off lights at every turn, keep the heat low, and then started taking a look at grocery bills.

Well, we knew we could improve our food costs and not sacrifice quality.

So I agreed to start cooking more. It helps stoke my creative fires, saves us a couple bucks, and is awfully nice to have a home cooked meal at the end of the day.

But if I was going to do this, it needed to be easy.

So The Good Man got a cookbook from the Library called “Cooking with all Things Trader Joe’s.”

The authors, Wona Miniati and Deana Gunn say they use Trader Joe’s as their sous chef, since there are so many prepared items ready to incorporate into dinner plans.

So I picked a couple recipes from that book and found them both easy to make and tasty to eat. We read labels carefully to be sure we’re getting good quality stuff (we try to keep both corn syrup and wheat to a minimum due to food sensitivities for both of us.)

And *then* we found out that Wona and Deana had yet a NEW book coming out!

It’s called “The Trader Joe’s Companion and Wona was coming to a local bookstore for an instore event.

Oh man…this got me hooked.

Wona whipped up a couple easy cold dishes right there in the bookstore, threw out a couple other tasty ideas and when we spoke with her, we found her so kind and generous with her time.

She just basically fully convinced me to embrace Trader Joe’s.

What sealed the deal is when I went in with a list to support six dinners, breakfasts for a week, snacks and lunches for me.

I walked out with five full bags of groceries, good quality stuff, and I’d spent just $120.

Wow. For about sixteen or seventeen meals plus snacks. Not bad.

Now, I’m ALL ABOUT Trader Joe’s. Yup. I don’t do things halfway.

If you are curious, last night for dinner I made Shepard’s Pie with turkey left from Thanksgiving, a bag of veggies from TJ’s, made gravy from their chicken stock packets, and frozen mashed taters.

It was *delicious*!

Other greatest hits?

Almond crusted pork loin
Herb crusted Tilapia
And my own lime chicken green chile enchilada recipe

Oh little bit of heaven, each one!

I’m happy making the food, The Good Man is happy eating ’em and it’s all good all the way around.

Thanks Joe!