Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Getting to the Finish Line Fast: The Abdoer



What? Is this a serious attempt at selling a machine? Or a pornographer’s failed career transformed? In a video that is one minute and six seconds, we don’t even see the slightest inkling of an ab machine until twenty-three seconds in! That’s nearly half the video!

Never mind that the name of the machine is preposterous. Why would anyone—and we mean any one--name a machine a “doer”? Why? It was as if the machine was invented for people like us to tear apart and mock endlessly! It seems that the director of the video wants to play on the name, thus the women clad in modified “extreme” clothing with their mesmerizing movements mimicking models and the subtle pun “getting to the finish line fast,” but is it really worth all of this? We do not think so.

Still, if the machine stood by itself, then it can be argued that a sexy one minute video is just a marketing gimmick—a “beot” in the vein of Beowulf—that intends to show off the achievements of, and raise confidence (and maybe more) in, the product. We shall play along and look further into this so called Abdoer.

A cursory look at the website shows nothing new or impressive there. Instead, we get more of the same: made up names, impossibilities, and people all over the world who apparently used this tortuous machine and enjoyed it.

The made up terms are nearly as ridiculous as the name Abdoer: “Abdobics,” and “Torsion-Flex Technology.” Abdobics, which looks like a person with Dyslexia tried to spell Adobe, is a poor amalgamation of the words “abdominals” and “aerobics.” It is defined as “a routine that targets all sides of your midsection, including your abdominals, obliques and mid-to-lower back region,” which basically means that Abdobics is what you do every time you do any exercise routine that works out your abdominal area. So much for calling a spade a spade. The etymology behind “Torsion-Flex” is more difficult to ascertain: on the one hand we have the obvious reference to “torso,” but on the other hand we get lost with the suffix –ion. Does it come from “motion”? That cannot be so since we have the adjoining “-Flex” there. It could not be “Torso-Motion-Flex Technology” because that would be ridiculous beyond comprehension, even for an ab machine gimmick. There is no way to determine why –ion was added as a suffix, but it does not matter: this is all gibberish anyway.

The impossibilities are comical. We are told that with the Abdoer we are able to make 360 degree movements, an impossibility given the construction of the human spine. We are also told that, under the “Benefits and Features” section, that the inventor of the Abdoer is named “John Abdo.” Are you kidding? We do not believe this for a second until we see an official birth certificate. Granted, if that is his real name then that justifies the stupid name of the machine, but it seems more likely that, instead of trying to come up with a good name for this chair, the inventor (or representative chosen to be deemed the “inventor”) changed his name to Abdo. It does not make sense to hide idiocy with more idiocy unless you are an idiot.

While we do have a lot of time on our hands, we did not bother clicking on all of the videos that comprise the interview portion for the Abdoer website. We decided it would be best to choose one video and extrapolate from what we have seen to the rest of the videos. (We must hand it to the Abdoer: it is trying to make a lot of people famous by giving each about two minutes to show off their acting talent.) We chose to watch Harwood Gordon’s video. Harwood, hailing from England, has an Irish/Welsh/Scottish accent. He announces that he is 64, and he tries oh so very hard to conform to all the British stereotypes at once. From the use of “buggers” and other idioms like “I can go on as the day is long,” to the use of the Abdoer in front of the London Bridge and bagpipe players, Harwood is trying desperately to convince you, O Viewer, that he is indeed from England and he does indeed use the Abdoer. It does not work entirely, at least for us. We thought we heard his accent slipping a few times, but that may just have been our hyper-cynical ears. After that display of poor acting and desperation, we praised our decision to avoid the rest of the videos for fear of other racist or stereotypical attitudes or accents we might encounter. (We also noted that no one from Africa has used the Abdoer… hmmm…)

So our look at the website has left us with the conclusion that the 1:06 video above is not justified at all. Those clothed strippers may be an attempt to make the Abdoer look cool despite its name, but the only cool thing about this machine is the logo: the way “Twist” is written is pretty neat, honestly. However, one does not purchase a machine for its logo; one purchases a machine to perform a function. It is not entirely clear that this machine will get you to the finish line—whatever that is—any faster than crunches or any other ab machine for that matter. It may not even get you to the finish line at all.