Mourning Billy....for Spinepuncher

Spinepuncher and I are huge fans of "crap" sold via infomercials or anything labeled "As Seen on TV". You pretty much can convince us to eat our own livers for this stuff...strangely enough, we have never actually purchased any of it as it is too much of a bother to talk on the phone. Yet when we see an infrared oven that can cook a large turkey in 30 minutes, a cleanser that removes gold plating to expose the brass beneath, or a solar-charged electric toothbrush....for a moment, we know perfect happiness.

Billy Mays, beloved huckster of various products, including a cleanser that purportedly would clean sin off the devil hisself, passed away recently. Billy was the gold standard for televised pitchmen, the Michael Jackson of the "As Seen on TV" performers.

(Photograph: Chris O'Meara/AP)

The below excerpt from the film 'Run, Ronnie, Run' has nothing to do with Billy personally, but does illustrate the challenges he must have faced bravely and quietly to bring us products such as a safe toenail clipper for dogs...and cleansers. That film, by the way, is pretty much the adapted biography of BP, whom I personally consider the Princess Di of the white-trash set.



Farewell, Billy, you'll live on forever...as seen on TV.