On infomercials and insomnia freewrite

On the TV, a late night panacea offers infomercials on everything imaginable. You’d think they would play movies to lull us back to sleep, but no, it’s how to roast a chicken with a bottle up its ass. the poor thing looks like a conductor with wings outstretched, post rigor-mortis. 

Or perhaps you need a knife so sharp that it will cut through the bottle. The chicken is spinning around like a Venus of Willendorf taking ballet lessons in the oven. No matter that our ovens aren’t tall enough to host a chicken with a bottle up its ass. No matter, they’ll sell you a tall chicken oven to boot. 

Then there’s the ab guy—it’s too much of a shock to see his naked torso on 70 channels in the middle of the night, so I keep looking for the chicken on a bottle and then it becomes a meme, weaving together disparate commercials. Nads, I know it sounds obscene, but it’s a hair remover with a personal groomer, tiny sheep clippers for Lilliputian sheep—or women’s mustaches. 

I am so enthralled by all this bizarre celluloid snakeoil I hardly notice that the dawn has slipped in unnoticed, except now all the yoga ladies are strutting their stuff on sea cliffs, or by the poolside. It’s hard to distinguish them from the real estate tycoons.

Onto motivation with Tony Robbins, I’m mesmerized by his large mouth. I can’t look away. All those teeth. How does he manage them all, not like the Wife of Bath with her gap-tooth smile. A hefty come on for all the world to see. Each time she smiled, men revolved around her like the sun or satellites, for that promise of her smile, she, who buried four husbands and was still game. But I’ll be dragging my ass forward all this day long.

11/7/2003 Writers’ Group