TV on Christmas

338 TV On Christmas

Maybe you noticed this: everything on TV this Christmas had to do with food, except on the Food Channel which was showing a travelogue.

The Travel Channel did a food show. Pizza around the world, or some such. Want to know where the "New York Times" thinks the country's best pizza is? It's in Chicago. Chicago!

All those bone heads have to do is walk out the front door of their shiny new building and across Eighth Avenue to any number of holes in the wall, and they'll find better pizza than in Chicago. Along the avenue from maybe 37th Street to 49th, there are something like two dozen dirty, grimy pizza joints. Dirty and grimy are important (Domino's, Papa John's and Pizza Hut will never understand this.) Cheap, also. No air fare.

You know where else they have great pizza? According to the show, New Haven. Smells like a payoff. Pizza in New Haven, better than on Eighth Avenue? Nonsense.

One one of the shopping channels, there's an infomercial for some new kind of fast cooking oven. Uses regular heat, infra-red heat and convection. Schlep a roast and some asparagus out of the freezer, plop it into this thing and, bingo, you have a meal. Almost as fast as a microwave, but -- supposedly -- without the awful things that microwaves do to food while heating it.

Four easy payments of $39.99. But wait, if you order now, we'll reduce it to THREE easy payments of $39.99. But wait! You can get this whoopdie-do chopper-grinder thing free, just pay shipping.

That's where they get you. The oven's $120 bucks. But by the time you finish with the "free" stuff (including not one, but TWO whoopdie-do chopper-grinder things,) and the add-on capacity increaser for the oven (sounds like an x rated spam e-mail, no?) and three free issues of your favorite magazine, plus a "custom made" carrying case to take the oven on the road, plus the two year extended warranty, the item remains $120 bucks but the shipping has just gone up to half a gazillion dollars. And that's "regular" shipping that takes like six months. If you want the things within 10-15 "business days," (they're doing business on Christmas, so that must count as a "business day,") just pay for the whole thing at once, and they'll "express" it to you. Probably Pony Express. And just pop the pony into the oven, set it for two hours and you get a yummy, scrumptious horse meat dinner.

They don't tell you most of this stuff on the infomercial. They leave that up to "Lisa," who answers the telephone at Oven Central.

If this thing works, it'll be a great addition to the kitchen. If it doesn't, there's a 90 day money-back guarantee, but not for the shipping. All you need to do is call a special phone number for an authorization. The phone number is in Barbados and operates only alternate Wednesdays between 4 and 5:10 AM, Atlantic Time.

Meantime, the host and hostess of the program are cooking chicken and salmon and roasts and probably the pony. And they're making noises of approval that sound like the background of a 1970s John Holmes movie.

There are a dozen more food show choices on TV this Christmas. But this has to stop here. Got some gourmet frozen waffles in the toaster. Don't want to burn 'em.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.
©2007 WJR