Let's see what Vince has to Offer!

I know Christmas ended over a week ago but I was pleasantly surprised by a wonderful, belated, holiday gift while roaming through the late night channels. My old friend Vince Offer was back making the late night infomercial rounds; and this time he was offering me and recession reeling America a means to quickly "slap our troubles away".

The commercial has all the classic Vince trademarks captivated America with the "ShamWow": the sustained sense of urgency, the quick talking, the hyper aggressive selling, the demonstrations with uncanny dexterity, the insultingly condescending tone, the constantly moving camera, the ridiculous New York accent. While I still find the "ShamWow' commercial to be more hypnotically compelling, the almost magical abilities of the product also contributed a lot. The "Slap Chop" commercial really shows Vince at the height of his powers, since it's really his pure strength of personality that's selling the product (the chopper itself is a fairly unoriginal item that doesn't really distinguish itself all that much from the other hand choppers). One can only imagine what kind of Offer-less world we'd be living in had his bizarre lawsuit against the church of Scientology actually panned out or his self financed "Underground Comedy Movie" not proved to be such a massive failure that he had to return to shilling consumer products. Billy Mays is probably hearing footsteps.

Some highlights from the commercial include:

"You love salad! You hate making it! You know you hate making salad! That's why you don't have any salad in your diet."

"Stop having a boring tuna. Stop having a boring life...You're gonna have an exciting life now."

"You're gonna love my nuts!"

"It pops open like that, like a butterfly."

"Life's hard enough as it is. You don't want to cry anymore."

"We're gonna make America skinny again, one slap at a time!"

...plus if you order now, they'll throw in the "Graty" ("Fettuccine, linguine, martini, bikini").