Here’s a pet peeve of mine: Those personal-salesman-type of marketing gigs. You know all about them — Avon, Longaburger, Pampered Chef, Moaning Woman, Burning Wombat. They’re all the same — “Get your friends to buy shit and you get cheaper shit, too!” It’s all the rage with the ladies in the office, I guess, because every soccer mom is trying to get every other person to come to their party, eat crappy food prepared by a pretentious, over-makeuped pseudohostess (which is just a salesperson in the disguise of a warm-blooded human), and be pressured to buy the various products and gadgets that were used to make the crappy food, package the crappy food, decorate the crappy food, or heat the crappy food. All the while they get to make uncomfortable, panty-wringing small talk with the other ladies that showed up because they are either friends of this person, coworkers of this person, or random acquaintences of this person and felt they should make an appearance to maintain the status quo.

Is there ANYTHING more vile than trying to pressure your friends into buying shit so you benefit from it? I mean, it’s one thing if you are a business owner and are offering widgets for sale and your friend comes in to buy a widget. The friend WANTED to buy a widget, otherwise they wouldn’t have come to your quaint little store, walked in ringing that irritating bell, and chatting you up about the latest gossip in the family. However, with selling things like Longaboinker, you are actively trying to get your friends to buy shoddy, over-priced baskets by letting them know, subtley, that they would be a Really Good Friend(tm) if they’d just help you out by placing an order — and look how much you’d save! People, you are not saving jack-freakin’-squat if you are buying something you wouldn’t have normally had your so-called friend not cornered you at the door to the restroom just as you were about to go have a good read.

Some of the products that these companies sell are, I’ll admit, good. Lord knows I like the Pampered Chef products (except, really, the cute little flippers? Yeah, they’re nice, but you don’t need to buy them from PC.) Their stoneware kicks ass and who hasn’t played with one of the whack-whack chopper things? You just know you’re DYING to see how long it would take you to mince a highball glass. And Avon? Hell — I never had smooth elbows until that stuff came along. Now even baby asses are jealous of my uber-smooth elbows. However, buying Longaburger is the equivalent of lighting a campfire with Franklins — it’s a wanking tool for ego masturbation. Nobody needs a $80 basket, folks. Nobody. I once spent $50 on a set of 4 plaid napkins. 4. As in, the number after three. That was my “Christmas bonus” (the $50). Lovely. Unless the cloth was spun from thread made from the syrup from Athena’s nipples herself, there is no way that those were worth 12 and a half bucks apiece.

While we’re trapsing down the path of crappy marketing ideas and ill-conceived product lines, why don’t we touch on the phone call I got last night from the Dove Foundation. NOw, thanks to the modern miracle of CallerID, I didn’t answer the phone, but I’ve heard of these nitwits before. They lobby to have more G and PG-rated movies made in Hollywood instead of more “violent” and “offensive” ones. They argue that the G/PG market area is HUGE and people really would like it better if actors just didn’t use the F-word, thank you very much.

Now, while I’m not about to condone needless gratuitous violence, cursing, or nudity, there is a PLACE for all this in modern filmmaking. If your story requires that the lead actress take her clothes off and boink the heck out of the lead actor, well, then you got some boinking to film. If the F-bomb needs to be detonated to emphasize the dialog, then off you go. It’s reality and when making a movie that is partially or entirely based within reality, your conventions should follow as such. If Grandpaw Jones is hammering on his new log cabin out in the Big Woods and drives a spike through his wrist, realistically speaking he’s not likely to say, “Durn it”, is he? I suspect a bluestreak would be quite the appropriate spice in that particular dish.

My parents (bless their misguided hearts) subscribed to a similar service when I was younger called, “Films for Families”, or some similar conservative crap. It was a company that took films (some popular, others less-so) and ‘edited’ them to remove the “offensive” parts. They were guaranteed watered down to a G level movie, despite what they were before. So, we got several tapes of these movies. Now, most of the movies were pretty decent story-wise, but you could tell there were gaps. One of the weirdest ones is Space Camp — yeah, the classic 80’s adventure about kids in the space program — much like today’s reality. ~ I still have this edited version, and in fact, to date have not seen the full version of the movie. Apparently they cut out a few swear words and shortened the makeout scene to barely a lip-lock. Now, I’ve seen the beginning and the end of this makeout scene and I can tell you with all confidence that no clothes were removed, no breasts groped, and no packages squeezed. What the deal? Were these people SO afraid of exposing their children to natural events that they had to sanitize EVERYTHING? It’s incredible.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no intentions of sitting my child down in front of An Officer and a Gentleman at the age of 7. But at the same time, I don’t intend to shelter them from the world of movies or reality in general. Life provides parents with a copious amount of “learning” moments — being a good parent, I intend to take ahold of these and use them to teach my child right from wrong, not to just stifle them and hope they don’t figure it out.

I think these companies should take on some REAL challenges. How about sanitizing Reservoir Dogs? Honestly, it’d be damned amusing. I’ll bet you’d end up with about 2 minutes of video or a lot of Steve Buscemi saying, “Frig”, in a bad replacement voice. I think I’d enjoy that.

In unrelated but partially-related news, there is now an RSS Feed for this page. You can click here to obtain it. I have recently started using RSSReader to read blogs and keep up-to-date on them and I can’t recommend it enough. Free, runs under Windows and Linux, and good love. (Yes, I’ll soon have the RSS in a link variable on the page, but give me a bit.)