And you want to be my latex salesman...

It's a smoky room with a big screen TV, leather couches, and a poker table. It's where I spend one night a week with a collection of salesmen, developers, engineers, retirees, and dentists. It is where, if only for a few hours a week, we are men. It is a place where we can tell dirty jokes, sling some cards, and talk about the one guy at the table who once hired a hooker and ended up giving her a massage.

Deep down, though, we are romantics. The married among us talk about our kids, our wives, and how we do our bests to be good husbands. Take for instance the one man who bought his wife a laundry list of Christmas presents that ended with, in his words, "A new set of tits."

You know, romance.

"Quite a gift," I said, "I only bought my wife new eyes." Then I made a self-deprecating comment about how my wife can now see how inadequate I really am in the bedroom.

The host sought to comfort me. "She already knew," he said.

I am happy with the more intimate side of life with my wife and can't ask for anything more. She doesn't need any plastic surgery help and she is as forgiving as any woman can be when it comes to having to spend the rest of her life with my mess of a body. Still, I often wonder how long a woman in her thirties will put up with my aging, wrecked form.

That's my way of explaining how I--out of sheer, morbid curiosity and nothing more, I assure you--I ended up clicking through a web ad and running into Dr. Al Sears. I'm not even 100% sure what he has to offer, because I barely got past his header graphic.



Dr. Al Sears has his own website and seeks to instruct men over 40 how to reclaim their manhood. Whoever is behind it, whether it be Al himself or some other ad genius, is spending no small amount of money to pimp this plan online.

I ask this: If Dr. Al had spent $10 more on his ad campaign, would somebody have told him that the first step in selling his product is taking his picture off the web page. Or, at the very least, shave the damned 'stache.

Now, I'm no Adonis. I'm barely good looking enough to get my kid to give me a goodnight hug. The dog only licks my face if I've shaved. I'm brazen enough to put my picture on the top of this web page, but I'm not going to tell you I can help you make your sex life better. Even if you put M.D. behind my name, people are not going to buy into my inverted pile driver experiments. And yet, Dr. Al is spending untold amounts of money to put his face on a web page that promises to allow you to "have enough stamina to play golf in the morning, go for a jog in the afternoon... and still make love to your wife or lover at night!"

I wouldn't trust the guy to change my oil, let alone talk to me about my dipstick.

Dr. Al should take a page from the Oprah-iffic success of the guy in the picture below, self-reported badboy Steve Santagati. Even if he is full of mincemeat, he's going to sell his book because he is attractive enough to make my wife shift around under her laptop.



Mind-blowing as it is, there are people who will get past Dr. Al's face, scroll down through his page, and eventually buy his books and self-improvement plan. Still, I can't get over the belief that the last time Dr. Al had sex was the early 80s blockbuster, "White Bun Busters."

Regardless, I'll have something to talk about at the next poker game--as long as my copy of "12 Secrets to Virility" gets here in time for Christmas.

What the Huck?

Let's forget for a moment that one of the most important elections in our lifetime is eleven months away. Let's forget that the amount of money being spent on the campaigns could feed the homeless for untold months. Let's even forget whether we are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, or from Bob Jones University. Let's just ask ourselves for one moment, "What the Huck is going on?"

I'm no expert on the subject of media manipulation, but I have some history in its analysis. As you might know, the biggest television honor I ever received during my time in the business was a Best of Show at the National Headliner Awards. During that time, I spent more than a few hours talking with the people who make it their jobs to manipulate what you see and hear on television during campaign seasons. These people are exceedingly smart when it comes to understanding how to twist the common mind into believing something that either isn't necessarily true or needs a lot of reaffirmation. I usually started my analysis with the belief that the people behind the campaigns were full of hooey and worked up from there.

The most fun of the entire gig was not the wide recognition or appreciation for the work, but the daily battles with the people in campaigns that you never see--the producers, the fixers, the managers. They are professional manipulators and watching them work is a thing of sick beauty. They know how to manipulate the public. They know how to manipulate reporters. They even know how to manipulate other campaigns. It's game theory, politics, and war wrapped into one overwrought mind.

That is a very long way of saying that what you see on the web, on TV, and--if you still actually read one--in newspapers is more often than not the product of someone with an agenda sitting in the war room of a campaign office. While I don't pretend to know much of anything of substance about this current election, I do know what to watch out for in terms of plants, misinformation, and trickery. At times it makes me feel like a fruitcake conspiracy theorist. Thing is, that's all campaigns really are. They are one big conspiracy designed to get their candidate in office.

Here are a few fun things to munch on.

E.F Hutton and the Clinton campaign response--When Bill Shaheen speaks, he doesn't do it lightly. When he speaks to the Washington Post and makes comments about Barak Obama's drug use, it is no accident. Shaheen has been a major player in this business longer than most reporters have known what a Democrat is. Most people would have us believe Shaheen's comments were offered without the full knowledge that he would soon be removed from the Clinton campaign, that they were remarks made unilaterally. If it had been a twenty-something campaign staffer who said it, I might be inclined to believe it was a simple mistake. Bill Shaheen, however? No way. Here's the fun part: Because it was Shaheen and because he is no longer with the campaign, the story has twice the legs it did before. What might have been an up and down story is now more than a week old, and nearly every account includes mention of Obama's teenage drug use. Even this one. Well played, folks.

Huckabee? Really?--In one month, the former Arkansas Governor came back from a nearly 20-point deficit in national Republican polls to tie Rudy Giuliani for the horse race lead. From this we can learn two things. First, polls are, by and large, worthless. John Edwards could announce today that he cured cancer in his basement and not make up an 18 point deficit in the polls. For Huckabee to rise that fast means something is going on and it ain't Huckabee on his own. Second, Huckabee is capital P perfect for both the Democrats and Republicans. He is an evangelical Christian who once hinted that AIDS patients should be quarantined. Democrats are banking on the hopes that America won't elect another evangelical to the Presidency. Republicans--especially the ones like Divorced Rudy Giuliani and Mormon Mitt Romney--need a "hey, look over there!" guy. Enter Huckabee. When people refer to a meteoric rise, they often forget to mention that the end of a meteor's rise is a quick descent. Thanks for playing your part, Huck. I'm sure there will be a good ambassadorship available to you in a year or so.

It was a book shelf!-- My goodness, I love this Huckabee campaign ad. It is everything and nothing in one ad buy. It gives Huck a chance to talk about how he's not like the other guys and how he loves God. Further, it gives the libs a chance to laugh what looks like a floating cross in the background. Huckabee half-heartedly protests that the cross is actually a book shelf. Even better, that's the truth. But please. Please. Unless you are John Edwards and buying ads in South Carolina, you are spending massive amounts of money to produce and distribute campaign ads. Like I mentioned above, there are no mistakes. Now, with demo-pundits making asses of themselves for insulting religion and Huckabee putting it all out there, nobody gets to win, except maybe the people who are getting paid to produce the ads in the first place.

Edwards' love monkey-- I've spent the past 12 hours or so trying to figure out the motivation for the hit piece in the Enquirer about John Edwards' alleged love child. His candidacy doesn't pose much of a threat to anybody as far as I can determine. Maybe it is just The Enquirer being the Enquirer. Any thoughts?

Getting off the bottle

I'm not sure exactly how it happened. One day, the tap in the kitchen was working just fine. The next, there was a case of bottled water in my garage. It was like some marketing genius sneaked into our house before we got the Middle Finger to the Bad Guys alarm system and whispered into our ears, "You really should be drinking water out of bottles."

Actually, I know exactly how it happened. One day I didn't stop our dog from drinking out of my Shakespeare's cup and the next day the dog thought she could drink out of any glass she wanted. The next day, my wife was buying bottled water by the case.

"Scoop eats her own feces," was the wife's argument and it was one I couldn't readily debate. Frankly, debating makes me tired. I'd rather have sex.

So began to slow parade of Aquafina, Dasani, and Fruit2O marketing wizardry from the local Publix to my garage to my fridge. The kitchen tap was relegated to soaking pots and pans and filling up the flower watering can.

Over time I began to notice bottles of water around the house. They would be 3/4 consumed and serving little to no purpose. Our recycle bin--already full of my Diet Coke and beer cans--was no overflowing with clear plastic bottles. One day I noticed my wife grabbing the nearly empty bottles and using the backwash to water her flowers. That just about did it for me.

I started drinking from the tap again.

And why not? I live in a pristine area of the country where water flows down out of the Blue Ridge Mountains and into local lakes and reservoirs, most of which are clean enough to bathe a newborn baby. The water, if I may say so my damned self, tastes fantastic and in most cases as good or better than any bottled water. You've actually seen my water. Remember the movie Deliverance? That's my water. Once we got rid of the anal-raping rednecks, there wasn't much to worry about.

There are other places that aren't as lucky. Warrensburg, Missouri likely has the worst water I ever tasted. Las Vegas ain't much better. Still, a cheap charcoal filter on the tap in those places will make the water halfway decent, just like it will anywhere else.

I didn't say much to my wife about her bottle water fetish. I didn't have to listen to her scream at the dog and there were fewer spills at the hands of the Toddler Monster in the house. What's more, my parents had become bottled water drinkers and far be it for me to deny them water when they came to the house.

Before I go on, let me make one thing clear. I love Mama Earth, but I'm not an environmentalist turned Global Warming freak turned Eco-Terrorist. I don't litter, I recycle whatever I can, and I don't go outside and spray aerosol in the air every morning. Still, I'm far from preachy about it. After all, I drive an SUV, my wife drives an SUV, and my kid wore disposable diapers for the first two and half years of his life. To get all high and mighty about the environment would be a little two-faced. What's more, we are grand wasters of this precious natural resource. During the summer months, our vanity takes over and we water our lawn three or four nights a week. You know, keeping up with the Joneses and all.


Damn, this stuff is wet!

Still, within a couple of weeks, I saw two different reports that moved me to act. First, I saw a report about the amount of oil used to transport the bottled water from Fiji and other locales. That same report went on to talk about the amount of landfill space taken up by the plastic bottles that most people were throwing in the trash. The second report was not necessarily news to me, but it drove home the message. See, Aquafina and Dasani...well, they are tap water, people. You're drinking tap water. Out of a $2 bottle.

So, finally, a few days ago, I geared myself up for the fight with the wife. I put on my athletic cup, grabbed L'il Otis' bike helmet and a large stick from the back yard. I stood in front of her and said, "We have to stop buying bottled water."

I braced myself for the gutshot--an area I'd forgotten to protect. My eyes firmly closed, I waited for just two seconds before it came.

"Okay," she said. It wasn't a resigned "Okay." It was like, "You want me breathe? Okay."

Well, that was easy.

As it turned out, my wife wasn't as much of a fetishist as I thought. She didn't really give a damn about her bottled water. She was buying it out of convenience and, likely, some subliminally inculcated marketing magic.

And so that is how the Otis Clan gave up bottled water. The wife is now drinking out of a cup with a lid the dog can't open and I'm still on the Shake's cup. We will get no medals from Al Gore. We will not wake up to lower gas prices in the morning. We will simply save $20 or so a week and reserve our bottled water drinking for the times we go places that don't have a ready and clean tap.

As long as the dog doesn't start taking a dump in the kitchen sink, I think we're going to survive.

Swim with the shark

I have placed maybe a grand total of five sports bets in my life. I usually bet on one Kansas City Chiefs game each December when I'm in Vegas. I bet one ten game parlay a couple summers ago. Oh, and I bet on a horse named Mr. Otis in Vegas last year. Half the people in the sports book cheered for the horse to fall. Twice a week, a sports tout service calls my cell phone to tell me what NBA game to bet. I curse at the phone every time I see the number. I'm still trying to figure out how I got on the call list. I spend about 20 hours a week around frequent sports bettors and bookies. If that kind of exposure doesn't turn me into a sports bettor, nothing will.

That said, I'm being paid to look at SharkHandicapping.com, a site that I feel sure can provide as good of sports betting advice as any other out there. So, if you're a sports bettor and are looking for a tout service that, according to its website, has "had eight straight winning seasons, finishing every year up an average of 110 games," give the site a look.

Me, I'm going to see how Mr. Otis finished.



This post was part of a paid advertisement. Regular silliness will resume shortly.

Linkworth

For a long time, I struggled with whether advertising was right for this blog. I didn't start it to make money and I'm not going to get rich off of it. However, as you'll see on the right, I've had some requests over the past six months and have chosen to accept money for space. Left untouched to this point has been this section--the content. The blogging community has been up in arms in the past about selling content space and I usually come down on the side of not selling content. On the Up For Poker Blog, we refused any content advertising requests out of hand. While it hasn't helped the bottom line, it has allowed us to be able to say, "We're honest here."

Well, I'm honest here, too, but that's not going to stop me from taking some walking-around money from people for a link or two. When I set my prices for this version of advertising, I set them high enough that I didn't really think anyone would pay for it. They still may not. However, the company that runs the service, Linkworth has decided to give me some money to mention its business of selling various services related to Search Engine Marketing, Text Link Advertising, and how we can all Make Money Online.

Do I feel dirtier for having done this? Yes. Do I do things for money that make me feel dirty on a regular basis. Yes. Do I wish I could win Powerball so I could pay other people to feel dirty for me? Yes. So, this may be the last one of these you see, or you may see the occasional paid post here. Such paid advertisements will always be identified as such. Cuz, you know, baby's gotta eat. And if comment spammers are going to try to steal it for free anyway, I'm going to find a way to get paid for it.




This post was part of a paid advertisement. Regular silliness will resume shortly.

Friday Mental Massage: Tax this

Of life's two certainties, I faced one head-on this week.

"You had a good year," Billie said to me from across her desk.

"I'm not going to complain," I said. "Of course, this year likely won't be nearly so good."

She looked at me with a look akin to how a dog looks at a squirrel wearing a marching band outfit. The look said, unequivocally, "Huh?"

I started trying to explain the ups and downs of life and finances in my world. About two sentences in, I could see she drifted off to how much work she had to do before the March 15 corporate filing deadline. I shut up and wondered if I had time to get my hair cut.

As we finished up, I asked her about a couple of itemized places on my personal return.

"That's the child tax credit," she said. "I wonder why it's only $50?"

I wondered the same. Fifty bucks? I feed, clothe, pre-school, and provide healthy play experiences for my son, and the government is only crediting me fifty dollars for my efforts and money spent? Has the IRS ever purchased diapers? Better yet, has the IRS ever changed a diaper? I should get a $1000 credit just for that.

"Ah, yes," she said. "You don't qualify for the full amount."

She pointed in eight different directions, at some flow charts, pictographs, and some sort of Nordic runes to explain how I wasn't eligible for the $1,000 child tax credit.

"Well," I said. I composed myself. "Well, at least I'll have the deduction for my health insurance."

A little more than a year ago, when the wife came home to play police woman to my kid's Babyface Nelson, we lost our Big Time Corporate Health Insurance. While never great insurance, it was always there.

"Well, sure," Billie said. She sounded like I did the other night when I tried to convince my son that one green blanket was as good as the other and that he could go to sleep while his favorite was in the dryer. [Note to Cincinnati Sara: Your gift to my boy is one of his most prized possessions.]

A few clicks on the keyboard and Billie looked at me and shook her head. Despite the fact I spend $600 a month on health insurance for my family, I don't meet the minimum threshold for deducting the cost.

So, I'm not allowed to take the tax credit for my kid and I don't get the deduction for having insurance to keep my him in doctor's visits and cough medicine.

Remind me to find a candidate who is in favor of tax reform.

***

In other news, I got my hair cut on the same day. As I sat under the scissors, I occupied myself by looking at the posters on the wall (anything to avoid looking in the mirror at the stylist's bulging crotch on my shoulder). One of the marketing posters was of a blonde woman in what was surely anticipatory glee. You could see behind her, out of focus, a man with a sly look on his face. My eyes were drawn to the woman's unique belt. It was orange and didn't go through the belt loops of her tight jeans. I looked closer. Then I looked at her hands. She was holding two large alligator clamps.

Jumper cables. The woman was tied up in jumper cables.

"That woman is tied up in jumper cables," I said, eyes in line with the crotch.

"Hmmm," my stylist said. "Most people just say they like her hair."

I come from the Midwest, where the vernacular usually calls for a person with a dead battery to inquire, "Can you give me a jump?" Growing up, that never seemed dirty. However, when I moved to the South ten years ago, I started hearing a new phrase.

"Can you jump me off?"

Now, sitting in a franchise hair cuttery populated by crotch-shoulder massagers, I felt like this message was less than subliminal. And I swear on all that's holy, the caption on the jumper cable S&M poster read: Lifestyles.

***

I was up late last night. From 8pm until around 3am, I had one of those periods in which everything...just...worked. Every decision I made was the right one. Every risk I took paid off. I didn't use luck when I didn't need it. In return, luck rewarded me by showing up when I was, indeed, in need. The result was being able to go to bed with a foreign sense of calm and accomplishment. I feel asleep much faster than normal.

***

Finally, some pimping:

My wife is on a roll over at her blog.

A good friend of mine recently started blogging. One of his recent posts touched me. Check it out.

Absinthe, my boy in the 'wood (did I just type that?), is in the final stages of baby-waiting. He's also enduring one of the ugliest realities of baby-prep. Check him out at Absinthetics.

Pauly publishes a monthly online literary mag based largely on people's travels, either around the world or around life. The March issue of Truckin' features some hella writers.

The Friday Mental Massage is a brain dump. Herein, you'll find no attempt at what some people call "writing." Of course, some people would say they don't normally find capital "W" writing here, anyway.

Jimmy Crack Corn and Cingular is forced to care

As it happens, I'm currently sitting at #1 in the Google search rankings for "jimmy crack corn commercial." It's all based on a comment from a wandering and lost post I wrote some time ago.

In the comments, TripJax mentioned he was a big fan of the Cingular Wireless commercial that at one time featured the old song, "Jimmy Crack Corn." Tripjax wrote:

I love that "Earl" phone commercial. I also love the one where the soon to be son-in-law is talking to the soon to be father-in law"...

FIL - You're about to be my SIL, just call me Jim.

SIL - Okay...Jim-Bo...Jimmy-Boy...Jimmy Crack Corn And I Don't Care.

That commercial still airs in my market and I had noticed that the "Jimmy Crack Corn" reference had been deleted from the ad. I mentioned to my wife that I wondered whether the song's slave-oriented history had anything to do with the deletion. Later, I figured Cingular had cut a couple seconds off the ad to make room for a new promotional announcement.

I thought about it again yesterday after watching part of a Reno 911 re-run in which Deputy S. Jones, played by Cedric Yarbrough, sings the song and messes up the last lyric. In response, his parter looks at him and deadpans, "My massa's gone away."

While that is the end of the scene and the joke is likely lost on most people, the punchline is pretty clear. "Jimmy Crack Corn" (aka "Blue Tail Fly") is such a part of our popular culture that few people know the songs roots. That is, even a black guy might not know the last lyric but his likely latently-racist white buddy does. No word on whether Bugs Bunny had any idea, but methinks he did.

What's really interesting about the whole thing is the the lyrics, their origins, and their meanings are lost to time. Check out this thread in which the debate sits as just one of a dozen or so arguments on the site about a song that is widely considered just a silly kids tune.

All of that said, Cingular Wireless apparently stepped in it when the it green-lighted the ad in question. Regardless of whether the song is racist, it at least carried a perception among some folks that it is. And thus, Cingular cut the line from future airings of the ad.

Cingular told a San Francisco TV station, "Cingular had, at most, a half dozen complaints. We took a look at the song itself. We wanted to make sure we didn't have even the appearance of offending anybody. The commercial was edited. We did the right thing."

In the long run, I don't really care. No company wants to offend people just to save one line in a commercial. On all sides, including this post, it is much ado about nothing. However, apparently people care enough to be looking for an answer. And, since I'm the first stop, I figured I'd save everybody a little clicking.

Anna Nicole Smith redux

Whether it was marketing genius or the product of some unfortunate related-term contextual advertising algorithm, this pretty much is the alpha and omega of my daily reminder that I live in a very tiresome world.

This is a screen shot from this morning's web edition of The South Flordida Sun-Sentinel. Check the ad banner at mid-page.



For some reason, this reminds me of when we caught up to double murderer Brad Sigmon in Tennessee. When we asked him why he ran to Gatlinburg, he replied, "It seemed like a great place to hide."

Gatlinburg, Tennessee: A great place to hide!

The Seminole Hard Rock Casino: A great place to die!

Sleepless and stumpy

I can't find my clever lever at this late hour, but I have to remind myself to congratulate the ad buyers for the overnight 4:30 am showing of "Scarface" on AMC. In one commercial break I saw commercials for...

ExtenZe, the natural male enhancement pill.

and...

Relacore, a product that once claimed to reduce cortisol in the blood and cut weight gain and now markets itself as an herbal sleep aid.

I mean, in the span of 90 seconds, they hit the insomniacs and the self-loathers.

Talk about knowing your audience.