4539 Your Updated Shopping Channel Guide

Would you buy a mail order mattress from this guy?

The TV shopping channels are slipping.  Time was most of them gave you a decent product at a decent price.  They are marvels of speed shipping, second only to Amazon and Zappos. And masters of fat “shipping and handling” charges. 

We are not going to name names.  But you probably know that the biggest player has acquired the second biggest player, that the third biggest player has changed its name for the fourth time in ten years.

And you probably know that the two biggest players now have three channels each on your TV provider.  Company number three is working toward adding to this glut.

Let’s start with the basic premise that the main point of these huge and complex virtual stores is to make you want stuff that you might not have thought of without their help.  Kindly, no? The targets are mostly women.

Hair goo, skin goo, a thousand varieties of cosmetics.  Eye stuff. Hair removal stuff, moisturizers, wrinkle creams, all things that key into the Great Secret of the American Woman.

What is that secret?  Deep in her heart of hearts, many believe her appearance is somehow flawed.  This starts pre-teen and often lasts right through to old age -- and old ain’t our grandparents’ old. We live way longer.

In her three o’clock in the morning self evaluation, many women believe “My this is too big.  My that is too small. I’m only (fill in the age) and my eyes have big bags, my neck looks like a turkey and my skin is turning to crepe paper.”

Wrong, ladies.

There’s nothing wrong about putting your best face (and other things) forward. Even if you don’t… you’re fine just the way you are.  But as long as you think you aren’t, you’re going to buy lifting creams and hair thickeners and the electrical appliances that go with them, like curlers or straighteners or blow dryers, each the supposed be-all and end-all of beautyworld.  Once home, you’ll find the appliance is too heavy or to loud or the cord is too short or too long. But you’ll keep it anyway.

There are channels that specialize in jewelry, though they all sell at least some.  A lot of them brag about gemstones you never heard of. Tanzanite, Morganite, Russian Diopside. Often the stones are pretty nice and well priced. But the settings of rings and the clasps of chains are pure junk. You get what you pay for.

Who will pay to fix that nice sweater you had when your Herkimer Diamond Quartz ring’s setting rips a hole in the sleeve?

Shoes: A thousand brands. Some you’ve heard of and trust but shouldn’t. Some make promises they can’t keep and don’t.  EZ returns (at a price.) Slow refunds.

Usually, they have nerdy men to sell you electronics to scare you.  Video cams, video doorbells. Brand-X telephones and tablets and the occasional bloatware-larded computer with trial programs and actual programs you’ll never use.

Decorations:  battery operated candles. Lawn gnomes. Water hoses that “can’t” kink.  Flowers both real and fake. The mechanical stuff lasts about as long as the warranty.

Cleaning products.  Your supermarket has everything you need and nothing you don’t.  But Dr. Whizbang’s Clean-It becomes the holy grail of stove cleaners, or clearer of clogged drains.  Until a few hours later when something else makes the same claim.  Note: You can get Formula 409, Windex or Krud Kutter for a few dollars a bottle at any supermarket.

And then there’s food. Beef and fruit at usurious prices. Cakes and cookies that tempt. Poultry.  And the machines to cook all that. Pressure cookers, toaster ovens, tableware, cookware, air fryers. A hundred different kinds and sizes of pots and pans.

In point of fact, much of the merchandise, whether a diamond ring, a steak, a cookie, a cell phone, tablet, wrinkle cream or lipstick don’t live up to your expectations.

Big stuff: Mattresses, exercise machines, recliners. Disappointments at stupendous prices with iffy guarantees you won’t read but should. Buyer beware.

How about the men? Tool kits with stuff you’ll never use. Laser measuring devices you can get at Home Despot, Ace, Lowe’s, Wal-mart and Sears if there’s still one in your town.

Ugly watches, some B-stock from famous names, others from names that you never heard of except from a shopping channel.

It’s not all bad, people.  But it’s worse than it used to be.

When you hear the carnival barker barking, or the “middle-aged lady next door” showing you shoes, either turn off the television or watch those “classic” movies.  They’re much more fun than you remember.

Who can resist a John Wayne classic or a Perry Mason re-run? Or episode 5,408 of Law and Order.

If you must leave the TV on to combat your loneliness, there’s always Lester Holt or Wolf Blitzer.

SHRAPNEL: Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. on the hard-won holiday honoring him. Normally this space doesn’t speculate on what Dr. King would say about today’s world.  But I would love to have had him moderating the Republican debate that eventually gave us the present occupant of the White House.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

With this post, we resume our thrice-weekly schedule of putting drivel on the internet since “On the Weekend” was a glint in my eye and funded by a grant from Bloomberg News.

© WJR 2020

1416 Cyber Monday

It’s Cyber Monday! Let’s all stay in our pajamas and do what real Americans do: Shop.

Guys: make sure you don’t shave. They can’t see you. They can’t see the turkey gravy stain on your undershirt or tie.  

Ladies: No makeup today. And you can wear that frumpy nightgown your mother gave you… the one she knows will make you unattractive to that scuz you married over her heartfelt objections.  And which doesn’t.

First let’s say that you’re smarter than the average Black Friday shopper.  You don’t pitch a tent at Best Buy on a perfectly lovely Thanksgiving evening, leaving the dishes for your spouse and the kids.

If you’re a stereotypical woman you KNOW they won’t wash the dishes adequately and you’ll have to re-do them when you get home from your concrete camping trip.

If you’re a stereotypical man and you actually camped out at Dick’s Sporting Goods Thursday, you are an idiot. Unless, of course, they offered on site tent rentals, which they didn’t.

Camping out the night before Amazon opens doesn’t get you very far.  First, what kind of camping trip is it if you’re camping at your dining room table? Second, Amazon doesn’t open, because it doesn’t close.

It’s kind of like camping out in front of the Sears catalog when there was one.

Of course you’ve received 1,000 holiday catalogs from places you’ve never heard of.  The Vermont Country Store?  Or from places in the witness protection program like Duluth Trading Company which is hiding in Wisconsin.

How about the Albino, Texas Fruit Cake Company, serving building blocks since 1888?  Or the Shabaaz Bakery #43721 of Chicago but which actually is in Cicero?

Ah, but we digress.  The real action is in your inbox. Drugstore.com, Zappos, Deeringbanjo, and somehow those Canadian Pharmacies -- many of which are in the witness protection program in India -- are offering Cyber Monday deals on such items as fake Viagra and fake Zoloft and other things for which mere mortal merchants require (shudder!) a prescription.

These meds may or may not work.  But at least you don’t have to listen to ten minutes of terror inducing side effects to buy them.

You can’t buy gasoline on the internet.  But the day will come.  And it probably will be delivered by drone.

At least Cyber Monday crowds don’t provoke fights.  It’s not unusual to see 15 people staking claims to the three giant TV sets that Mega-Mart sets aside for early sale in its 15,234 stores.

To get into a fight on the LL Bean site (over one of those stylish green and tan rubber boots, no doubt) you have to punch yourself in the nose.  

Most of us won’t do that.

Most, but not all.

Shrapnel:

--Unindicted murder “suspect” Darren Wilson has quit the cops -- Ferguson’s Finest.  No severance, no pension, but a hope of continuing with police work somewhere.  Right, Darr… the closest you’ll get is when they slap the cuffs on.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014

824 Going Buy the Book (store) and Book Look

824 Going Buy the Book (Store) and Book Look

We’re in the Borders on Park Avenue in the 50s with a gift card and a Latte at their coffee and pastry corner. About half way through the shared drink we find something in the cup that wasn’t on the menu: a roach.

They made nice on us after that, refunding our money (thank you,) offering a replacement drink (no, thank you) and willingly cashed out our gift card, a violating company policy. They were as happy to see us go as we were to leave.

That was one of two leading indicators that things were not going perfectly at Borders. The other was their stock. They had more strange and obscure books than any major retailer whose specialty was not strange and obscure books.

It seems their choice was either to imitate Barnes & Noble’s Wal-Martish approach (minus the censorship) or shrink to fit the obscurity market.

They did neither. Chapter Eleven bankruptcy protection is kind of like attempted suicide: If you’re caught in time, you live. Otherwise you die. As part of the filing, the company plans to close about one third of its stores of which there are something over 600. Something like six thousand jobs are going or gone. They’ve piled on $500 million in new loans from GE Capital to keep running while they figure out what else to do.

So what can they do? First, they can get with the Amazon program. The Border website is clunky, their prices are high, their e-readers are inadequate compared to what else is out there.

Amazon and B&N have turned books into a commodity. The only thing Borders can do is become the “important alternative,” the book store for book lovers.


Book Look: Heat & Light: Mike Wallace and Beth Knobel.

CBS’ Mike Wallace, 93, has built himself the best possible kind of monument. “Heat & Light” (Three Rivers Press 2010) is a guide for a future generation of journalists, most of them in great need of guidance, if not therapy.

His co-author, Beth Knobel is a former CBS producer and current professor at Fordham University with a pile of Ivy League sheepskins probably to heavy to carry all at once.

Tips on writing, on video on interview techniques, the law, a reporter-editor’s checklist, the balance between drama and information, and a gazillion good quotes from some heavy industry hitters.

“The Elements of Style” it ain’t. But close. At the end of the book, the authors thank the people who contributed, either gladly or by intimidation. C’mon. What idiot would or could turn down a question from Mike Wallace? And the seven most feared words in any politician’s vocabulary? “Mike Wallace is here to see you.”

===Readometer Key: 1 and 2 It’s already a paperback.
1 - Buy it.
2 - Wait for the paperback.
3 - Take it out of the Library.
4. Flip through it at the book store.
5. Forget it.


Shrapnel (New York Times edition):

--Bernie Madoff’s gave a jailhouse e-interview to the New York Times and said Wall Street “had to know” about his multi-zillion dollar King of the Ponzi schemes. Of course they did. But selective blindness is common on The Street.

--The Times also has reported recently that the NYSE is selling itself to the Frankfurt exchange. Technically, it’s a merger, but there ARE no mergers. Daimler Chrysler all over again.

--Gotta stop reading this paper. Something infuriating every day. Liberal-Shmiberal... The facts alone are enough to inflame.


I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011