A Little Awesome: The Ab Lounge

Tony Little can sell anything. Part of the reason we have delayed this post is just the mere fact that we think the Ab Lounge is pretty cool. Hey! It’s a lounge and an ab machine! How cool is that? Too cool, we had to admit, despite the cynical voice inside our mind desperately trying to refute our initial impression. Day after day we returned to YouTube to watch the video, looking for that fatal flaw, that one piece of evidence where Tony Little slips and we could pounce on him. Day after day we were unsuccessful.

Well, we could always make fun of his hair.


Really, though, this is a tough one. It is tough because we have a video from HSN up instead of the usual infomercial. There are no gimmicks or tricks or anything else we usually roll our eyes at and murmur “Not this again” to. It’s Tony Little being honest. He even tells us the reason why the cost of the machine will go up! (Something about 20 percent and steel—sounds true, at least.) Of course, we could deny the veracity of everything he does, but one must genuinely wonder: is everything on television fake?

Our minds then switched to that inane talking head next to the venerable Tony Little. She is worthy of our scorn, what with her stupid catch phrases and unnecessary repetition of Tony Little’s statements. With a vengeance undeserved we strove to rip her apart: her clichéd mottos (“Today’s the day!” is one of her favorite sayings) and her false smile (one can smile and smile and be a villain) and her red shirt were all out of place and superfluous. We jotted everything down. She was our ticket. We would unleash our wrath on her because we could not genuinely hate this machine.


But we couldn’t pick on her. It was not for any moral reason we stopped short of releasing our dogs on her. It was simply because we would be off topic if we had just used this post to poke fun at her. That woman is only connected to the Ab Lounge insofar as it is on HSN. She would prattle on unaware of the inanity she exudes for any product that happened to be showcased while she was on television. This time it was the Ab Lounge, but it could equally be for Snuggies, Encyclopedia World Book, or a box of Q-Tips. We would no longer be making fun of the machine if we devoted this post to her; we would be attacking the straw (wo)man and making it look like we were attacking the machine. No. That would not suffice. We had to find something about the machine to deride for this post.


Our obsession grew. The same three minutes and fifty seconds on repeat. We did not shave. We did not shower. Our loathing turned inward. Were we beaten? Did we finally find an ab machine that actually makes sense? No! How could it? Why would paying $150 to get the same workout you could get for free make sense? Still, we reasoned that $150 seems to be pretty standard in the ab machine world. Why not spend a little bit to get a pretty cool machine that has multiple uses? It’s better than spending $150 and getting Sean T.’s dance videos or the Ab Circle Pro or any of the other machines we have rent asunder with our biting critique.

We slapped ourself in the face.


No.


This isn’t it. We were not going to write a post lauding an ab machine with the abpocalypse looming nigh. We have precedent we must follow; we have a reputation to maintain.

“Think!” we thought. So we thought and thought and thought. We tried really hard. We redoubled our efforts and watched the video several more times. All we came up with is that girl using the Ab Lounge is pretty cute.


And then today, on the verge of accepting defeat, we watched the video one last time, wondering if it would be wrong on some ethical plane to actually purchase this gizmo. Then, as if some muse had finally communicated to us the hamartia of the Ab Lounge, the answer came to us as we watched Tony Little for the final time. Everything was golden for a minute. Silence reigned supreme as a benign smile curled our face. Our critique was here. It was simple and, like Occam’s razor, therefore true. This is what the muse sent down to us:

It’s a freakin’ chair!

Rock This: The Ab Rocket.

We don’t have a video this week; YouTube can only take us so far. You could watch this video in what appears to be either Russian or Turkish, but if you are not fluent in Eastern European languages, it may not help. The best we can do for you lazy bums is post a link to the website: https://www.tryabrocket.com/flare/next?tag=ossmgo. There’s a video there, but it’s microscopic. There’s also this 1:37 video of Ashley Marriott (the only woman I have ever seen with a concave stomach) explaining why she likes the Ab Rocket… like we care.


So click on any video you like, but know that we will be discussing the microscopic video on the Ab Rocket website.


The lesson for this week, kiddies, is how to use puns and metaphors appropriately. We have already seen how ab machines tend to use plays on words to sell their products (see The AbPony and Ab Scissor Ultra posts), but this is the first time where playing with the name of the machine has actually gotten out of hand.




The first pun is fairly obvious—creative even. It’s the Ab “Rocket”! Get it? Because you rock back and forth on it. You rock it, that rocket, and it makes your abs rock hard (and concave somehow). Fine. We get it. There’s a connection between a back-and-forth motion, space travel, and the firmness of stones. The makers of the Ab Rocket could have left it at that like the makers of the AbPony (all that was really said was “Get on and ride”) or the Ab Scissor (where it was just “cutting the fat”), but they refused. Now we must (our master's degree compels us) expose the misuse of language in order to stamp out such nonsensical errors in the populace.




The first line of the itsy-bitsy video is already baffling: “Want sizzling hot abs?”




What? Really? What does “sizzling hot” have to do with the original pun? Nothing, unless the script writers thought of the tremendous heat generated by rockets as they are shot off into space. But, let us say, for the purpose of argument, we didn’t already know this was a commercial advertisement for the Ab Rocket. It’s 3 a.m. and you can’t sleep and so you watch television to get your mind off the eerie similarity between sleep and death and your utter conviction that the apocalypse is nigh. Still, even with that mindset, you might think this machine is called the Ab Fire or something like that, but we’ll let it go for now.




We then are introduced to the name of this legless chair with rollers, and the puns begin to flow: “Just sit and rock” (with the word “rock” tilting up and down as if on a see-saw), “easy lift off,” etc. Then, amidst these appropriate (although still bad) puns, we get: “Turn that spare tire into rocket hard abs.” There are so many things wrong with that mixed metaphor that we are aghast. We know that the “spare tire” refers to the excess fat on your stomach, but how exactly does a spare tire turn into rocket hard abs? In other words, if you’re going to call excess fat a spare tire, then why not call the abs something else that relates to tires? Can’t think of a tire-related metaphor for toned abs? Then call the excess fat what it is! We must also concede that rockets generally are nonporous, but “rocket hard” does not strike us as an apt (or even a desirable) description of a fit midsection. (I highly doubt they are intentionally referring to anything phallic here, but if they are, then there are problems with that pun as well.) The writers sound like they are high school sophomores (with the stress on the “mores”) trying to write a short story. This is highlighted by the fact that the announcer is nearly falling off his rocker in his enthusiasm over this defilement of words and their referents. It just doesn't make any sense to say you could turn that spare tire into rocket hard abs. It just doesn’t.




Like its ab machine brethren, we get a meal plan with the Ab Rocket. The meal plan is called “Blast Away the Calories.” Heh. Good one. We also get a dance video (apparently Sean T. is a threat to the world of ab machines); guess what the dance video is called! Surprise, surprise, it’s the “Fun Rockin’ Cardio Dance Party.” For now, don’t mind the excessive use of adjectives. What’s important is that we are introduced to another pun on “rock”: rock music (or rocking out), but the pun comes out vapid. It also acts as a slightly mixed metaphor because rock music is a separate genre from dance. With certain exceptions, you do not dance to rock music. If the writers had intended “rockin’” to be a slang term for “good” then this works, we suppose, but it is still inane. This whole shebang is called “The Ab Rocket and the Ab Rocket Fat Blasting System”—all right! We’re finally over it.




You may think that it’s now over. How can a video of a few minutes have so many bad puns and mixed metaphors? You may also think that, no matter how much we harp, at least the video ended with a consistent pun to the original one. We regret to inform you that they do not end the video with anything that makes the least bit of sense.




Just when we thought we could stop paying attention because it was boilerplate blue screen credit card ordering procedure time, we heard the dumbest thing said on any ab machine infomercial to date:




“Hold everything! Don’t wait…”




What?!




Did the announcer hear what he was saying? In a single breath he told us (in the same excited tone he was using throughout the commercial, mind you) to stop and go. We imagine this was supposed to be some “stop the presses” moment, but it came out all wrong. He literally said “Hold everything!” which means he wants us to wait. Then immediately following that he said “Don’t wait.” What was supposed to be encouragement for ordering turned out to be an existential crisis (like the “being and not being” of Doctor Faustus). We cannot imagine how anyone would not be sitting like a rock and completely befuddled after those commands. Granted, this last example has nothing to do with puns or metaphors, but the contradiction is so obvious and puzzling that it had to be mentioned.




So let us review, shall we? First, if you us a pun, don’t overdo it. If it’s a good pun, it gets tiresome after the fifth time, and if it’s bad, it just makes everything worse. Next, do not mix metaphors. They sound stupid, they don’t make any sense, and no one will be impressed with them. No one. Also, please begin your ab machine video (or whatever you are doing that involves words) with at least a little foreshadowing, and please do not end it with a contradiction (or contradictory commands). If you follow these basic rules, then we will have time to make fun of something else about you besides your language.