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!
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