Saturday, July 28, 2007

Cashcall, Gary Coleman and the Tiny Print

Look, the last thing I want to do is give Gary Coleman a hard time. He's been handed enough of that on his own with the kidneys and the hormones, the money with the parents thing and the not so great job placement stint as a security officer on the edge. I was a big fan as a child. I emulated him in every way on Diff'rent Strokes. I even tested out my own catch phrase for a while: "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?" My Mom hated it. Turns out that precociousness is much less precious when you're not pulling in $80,000 per episode. I voted for him for Governor of California. I cried when his blind date went bad at the end of Star Dates. I even pulled for him to win The Surreal Life Fame Game until I realized that it was Emmanuel Lewis and that his heart wasn't really into winning, he was a compromiser, and his attempted manipulations were obvious and weak. Then the SR Fame Game for me became all about Andrea Lowell for diff'rent strokes altogether.

But all kidneys aside, Gary Coleman is best known for being the victim of birth circumstance with the apparent parental squandering of his fortune. He'd earned over $7 million while starring on the show and made over $17 million from all his work during that period (1978-1986). Yet somehow, some way, every penny of that got recirculated into society, and Gary never got to enjoy it for the years beyond when he was enjoying it at least a little bit.

So his story became one of the former child star seeking out his rebound, still loved and adored in his adult years, but not paid back for the joy that he gives. He's taken seemingly every job that has come along: music videos, cameos in TV movies and low rent TV commercials. In walks Cashcall.

Actually, it was the other way around. Gary walked into the Cashcall offices. As the story goes, when he went to their offices to close the loan he had taken out with them, he was introduced to the company's boss who encouraged Gary to pay off his loan by appearing in Cashcall ads.

What he should have said was, "What'chu talkin' 'bout, Cashcall?" But instead he took the deal, and now in the spots he proudly proclaims, "Cashcall helped me. They can help you too... Pay your bills on time and everyone will love you." Alas, it's all about being loved, especially by Cashcall.

One of the best things about DVR technology is that you can pause the TV screen at any time. I started doing this during shows like the FBI Files and Forensic Files. Whenever they show someone's suicide note, hand written or signed confession on screen with just some parts highlighted, I pause it and read the entire thing for myself. It's great for the History channel, too, civil war letters, Stalinist propoganda articles, secret Nazi documents and such. Then I started doing it with commercials, things like car leases that seem too good to be true. You pause it, and you can read how high the initial down payments are supposed to be. (Plymouth has gone one step ahead of me. They have an extremely suspicious lease offer of $99/month on their PT Cruiser. Not that I'd ever lease one because I'm not 20 years old, a woman, and a big fan of Trading Spaces reruns. But I paused it, and it says, "See our website for details." Hmmm. That should be against the law - a sales two-stepper.)

And so to the DVR pause on the Coleman Cashcall ads. I'd never seen a screen so filled with such tiny print. Nothing good ever needs to written on such nanoscale.

Here's what Cashcall and Coleman are offering via tiny text: "The APR for a typical loan of $2,600 is 99.25% with 42 monthly payments of $216.55..." Those payments add up $9,095.10 to pay back a loan of $2,600. Over three and a half years, that's paying back three and a half times the amount you borrowed. 99.25%!!!!! These rates are even brazenly published right on their website. > See for yourself.

I have damned many a bank that offers credit cards at a mere 22.9% APR. Now I recognize their magnanimous generosity and good will.

I know the story. Anyone who ends up at the Cashcall window is not just simply trying to pay off their one, single, small debt. They are people who've been overwhelmed with debt, cannot get assistance from any reputable banking institution anymore, and are just trying to get the worst of the creditors (like the IRS) off of their backs. So they borrow from Bealzebob to pay Paul. Still have that twinge of sympathy for the adorable Gary Coleman? It's sympathy for the devil's pudgy cheeked surrogate.

If you've ever been majorly in debt, as I have, then you know how difficult it is. You start to juggle the creditors with a Worst-First List. You look for the quick fix wherever you can get it. The difficult but appropriate thing to do is to make a long term plan and face the facts that a lot will have to be sacrificed until you can climb all the way out. A lot. I suffered through four years of the worst M-F job (M-F not necessarily meaning Monday thru Friday) of my life to get myself out debt a few years back. Many of you know, I had to resist quitting several times a day, every single day. It was a harrowing, dark period of my life which scarred me with bitterness and lack of pity. But I got out of debt. The hardest thing about it is that to make the large payments on a realistic payoff plan, you have to pre-calculate, plan it out and then pay over almost every penny that you earn all the way until you are through, which means no spending money ever, and certainly no savings or safety.

Then I got back to zero and an all new struggle against the great costs of living began. But it's better than signing any paper that has a 99.25% APR. Those people and their spokespersons are not out there to help you. In fact, the reality is, no one is - especially not people on TV. I just wish you hadn't done it, Gary.

p.s. Don't call me for help, people. I have no money.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Joseph Finder Discovers his Genius

"The funniest smart guy in Hollywood... Really, really funny: I'm a huge fan." - Joseph Finder, New York Times best selling author
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Many of you know that my favorite book last year was, hands down, Joseph Finder's "Company Man." I've passed it around amongst some friends all of whom loved it and left me with a paperback as torn and tattered as the last 18 months of the Bush presidency. His books are fiction, action thrillers. Recently they've been set in the corporate world. His protagonists always have a great sense of humor, wry and real, about themselves and the people around them. Feeling so moved, I'd penned similar words of admiration on my MySpace page and, apparently, Mr. Finder spends as much time Googling himself as the rest of us do, and he found it, and lo and behold, one day I had a Friend Request from the respected Mr. Joseph Finder himself.

Upon receipt, I found myself skeptical (though you know of my deep distrust of skeptics). Is Joseph Finder really on MySpace, or is this a "fan page?" Is this some sort of hidden porn spam trying to branch out their final frontier - the fiction reading, quasi-intelligentsia set? I took a chance and wrote him saying that, if it is really him, I think he's brilliant, and I've enjoyed his books immensely, and if it is not him, then you really have a lot of time on your hands as a fan.

In response to that, Mr. Finder checked out my comedy website and wrote me a very wonderful email about my stand-up work. He is now, in his words, "a fan." And by extension, you, by being here, are in the same club with that Yale/Harvard educated, world traveled best-selling author. Doesn't that make you feel better about yourself?

Plus, he's allowing me to use some of his kind words for my publicity. I offered him the same in return, but how much can I help him?: "Finder's novels are real good." - Richard Lucas, petulant nobody. I don't think so. He is a gentleman and a scholar. And on top of that, he said that he's send me an autographed hard copy of "Company Man" to replace my worn out paperback.

I received the book in just a few days, as you see in the above photo. It goes right up on the shelf of treasured signed books which now numbers two, the other being Adam West's "Back to the Batcave." Adam West's book is tainted though because he hit on my date while he signed it. That's what you get for buying an Adam West book at a comic book store and then standing in line for an autograph - even he resents you as a pasty faced dork. My date was a graphic artist in package design. West, boldly (in my judgement impolitely) ignoring me, asked her what she did for a living, and she giddily replied, "Oh me? I'm a package designer..." Without skipping a beat, an actor's breath already drawn for retort, West came back in an instant through his warm, smooth smile saying, "Well, you're quite a package yourself." Quite a package yourself. Brilliant... and humiliating. Sexy... and emasculating.

And On top of it, his book wasn't very good. Who really cares about the back story of the Batman TV show? Well, ok it's interesting. Did you know that Adam West thought that the hood of the Batman costume was making his hair thin out? True. Fascinating... But believe me, you'd care less if he hit on your date. I do. Did. Do.

More to the point. Joseph Finder is great. He knows brilliance when he hears it - as do you, my good friends. If it's been a while, go to my website and check out the audio clips. Lots of fun there. And for Joseph Finder, get his books. Read 'em. I just finished "Killer Instinct," and it's a blast.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Kool-Aid Drinkers Unite!


This week the maker of Kool-Aid announced that it would stop advertising its product to children during children's television programming, effectively banishing itself to the Island of Elba to while away with the likes of Marlboro, Jack Daniel's and Girls Gone Wild dvd's. They say that this is to encourage better nutrition. A curious, tacit admission of guilt in aiding the current child obesity and diabetes crisis for a product that has been on the market for over 80 years, long before the childhood obesity was cool. The product comes unsweetened. It's just a powdered soft drink concentrate. It's the consumer that adds the sugar. Sugar substitutes and have been around since 1879, and the ones that don't cause cancer since 1979. Is it the children who are doing themselves harm?

Kool-Aid is not going to make itself disappear. What I'm not sure about is where Kool-Aid will advertise now? With the state of television today, what programming is not aimed at kids? Maybe The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer?: "Major funding for this program has been provided by The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Kool-Aid, and viewers like you." Maybe there could be some smart product placement in Showtime's "Weeds." That adult market would certainly loves a nice sip of Kool-Aid along with a good snack. This era's prolonged presidential election cycle offers a good opportunity, too because kids under 18 can't even vote. They certainly won't be watching all the debates. And Kool-Aid would be a perfect political sponsor since "Drinking the Kool-Aid" has become the political cliché of the millennium. People who voted for Bill Clinton's re-election in the face of all the scandals were called "Clinton Kool-Aid Drinkers" because they were willing to sacrifice themselves (their votes) for the greater cause. Today, Bush-ies are considered "Kool-Aid Drinkers" because they will believe anything that the the administration coughs out about the War on Terror. Actually, anyone who believes in anything strongly is considered a "Kool-Aid Drinker" by the opposition.

"Kool-Aid drinkers" a bad thing? But it's sweet, fun and refreshing? It's all Jim Jones's fault. Now, cause of him, it's synonymous with poison. You gonna advertise that to kids? If Jones had just left well enough alone, kept his Peoples Temple cult in the Bay Area and not moved them to Guyana and talked them into group suicide by drinking cyanide laced Koo-Aid with his pscychological manipulation, his mesmerizing speeches and his slick sunglasses, everything would be fine. He not only ruined Kool-Aid, but now no one trusts a preacher who wears gradient sunglasses at the pulpit anymore either. (I'll address the loss of gradient sunglasses in an upcoming blog.)

Who here believes that Kool-Aid is going to stop advertising to kids? But more importantly, why should they? Kool-Aid is a powdered mix that has to be purchased, then mixed in a 2 quart pitcher with one or two cups of sugar, water added and chilled. Is that what kids are doing with their money and their time? Kids are getting fatter, younger, but it's not from stirring Kool-Aid. We had it as kids. We loved it. It gave us instant heartburn and brain punch of adrenaline, it took too long to chill, and we loved it. I was a grape man. I was also in charge of sugar, and I was known to be quite generous. It could even be eaten straight from the packet. On the swim team, kids would bring several packs and eat the powder as an "energy boost" right before a race as if any 8 year old needs that - a precursor of steroid abuse, I suppose, but few of us ended up obese or in rehab. Of course, we were all swimming, which is exercise, which is the basic difference between kids of then and kids of now.

In general Kool-Aid has about 21 grams of sugar per serving. A lot, yes, but no more than most soft drinks, chocolate milk, even orange juice. We didn't have nearly the soft drink options that kids have today. We just had a bit more body motion involvement in our daily lives. Everything in moderation, except good parenting.

As if we didn't know that Kool-Aid wasn't "good for us." Look at the original Kool-Aid man. He's not exactly slim. He's so fat that he couldn't get through a normal doorway, he had to smash through the walls, menacing unsuspecting children with his elephant walk, his sweaty bodice and the tragi-clown permanent smile, all the while yelling, "Oh yeah!!" One wonders if some day Dateline's Chris Hanson won't step out from the pantry saying, "I'd like you to take a seat, oc-koolio-aid69. May I ask you what you're doing here, sir?" I don't trust people who smile all the time. Just once I want to see the Kool-Aid man sitting on a park bench, elbow on his knee, chin resting on a hand, pondering life's limitations.
The new image is a bit slimmed down with slightly longer, thinner legs. The only signs of excess might be the triple chin. And thank goodness he's finally wearing clothes/pants to cover up what now must be supposed as genitalia (though the Hawaiian shirt is pushing the good times a little hard for me). Are we really looking to the Kool-Aid cartoon guy as a role model for body image? The walking, talking, pouring pitcher on TV for a few seconds every Saturday morning? If he has that much influence, then the Jim Jones of the future is going to have a much easier time getting a lot more than 900 people to join his cult.

What you may not know is that Kool-Aid has other uses as well. That may be their new angle. According to fans, you can dye clothes with it, dye yard for knitting, dye your hair - especially blondes. You can tint wooden frames, remove rust and chlorine stains, even remove hard water stains and gunk by running it through your dishwasher. Bad for kids? Unless you love having hard water stains and plain looking wooden frames around your pictures it is.

Below: dwb, a rabid Kool-Aid fan, a "Kool-Aid Kool-Aid Drinker" if you will, offers Kool-Aid keyboard art that looks like an old fashioned telephone. Also, a passionate girl with something to say that no one understands:

I don't know why I opened your Kool-Aid, and I don't know how I possibly couldn't have known the flava unless I was blind, olfactory-challenged and my taste buds had been fried from years of licking the spoon.