The Shlomimeister

Believe it or not, it’s only $19.95. And if you pick up that phone now, we’ll add two Sham Wow towels plus the Slap Chop, for no extra charge! Can you say, “Holy hellsapoppin!?”

 

How many times when you’ve bitten your tongue, have you thought, wow, what a shmuck I am?

Better yet, have you ever had your tongue bitten by someone else and when you struggled to pull your mouth away, the tongue-biter held on for dear life and would not let go? No, don’t go getting ice cubes from the freezer. Instead, get your Shlomimeister today. Just suck on one of our Shlomimeisters and your pain will instantly disappear.

How do we do it? Call it instant Novocaine, the stick that has the trick. No, not that trick. Instead, we use a secret anesthetic ingredient in our lollipop that takes your pain away instantly, 12 times as much as the nearest pain reliever. And it’s even made in Germany. You know the Germans make good stuff. Just think Mercedes and Hindenburg. And better yet, the Shlomimeister doesn’t drip and doesn’t make a mess. You’ll say, “Wow, Shlomi, every time.”

Believe it or not, it’s only $19.95. And if you pick up that phone now, we’ll add two Sham Wow towels plus the Slap Chop, for no extra charge! Can you say, “Holy hellsapoppin!?”

I can only imagine the commercial above when I think of the Sham Wow pitchman, also known for his food choppers, arrested last month. Who knew his real name was Vince Shlomi? I just think of him as Sham Wow, and now can more comfortably see him as Scam Now. Shlomi, 44, was arrested last month on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room. According to an arrest affidavit, (“The Smoking Gun,” March 27, 2009) Shlomi met Sasha Harris, 26, at a Miami Beach nightclub on February 7 and subsequently retired with her to his $750 room at the lavish Setai hotel. Shlomi told cops he paid Harris about $1000 in cash after she “propositioned him for straight sex.” Shlomi said that when he kissed Harris, she suddenly “bit his tongue and would not let go.” Shlomi then punched Harris several times until she released his tongue. The affidavit noted that during the 4 AM fight Harris sustained facial fractures and lacerations all over her face. After freeing his tongue, a bleeding Shlomi ran to the Setai lobby, where security summoned cops.

So say it with me, “KEBLAM POW!” (just like on the old TV Batman series.) I wonder if Shlomi used one of his Sham Wow towels to wipe up the blood from his tongue.

You know, it sometimes feels good to give one of these famous celebrity hucksters (think Madoff, Kwame, Spitzer) some good old American shame. Okay, what should I have against Shlomi besides him being too darn slick and effective in selling some German-made overpriced crap? About two months ago, I walked into Bed, Bath, and Beyond and they were unloading two pallets of Sham Wow. I was so happy I didn’t fall for the con and give them $19.95 for some towels.

I knew if I bought them that I would never use them. When I want to clean up dirty liquid spilled on the floor, I like to throw out the paper towels, not twist them in the sink and save them for later.

Paper doesn’t last forever in the environment. I’ll be Sham Wow does.

Now, can we get this Shlomi face off the TV once and for all? His 15 minutes of fame have long ago expired.

Opening Day

Yes, it may be a crappy time to live and work in Detroit, but we have as much hope as anyone in any city has.

 

It was the best of days; it was the worst of days.

Well, let’s forget for a moment about the worst of days, which involves a Detroit reality check: a lousy, disappointing season last year for the Detroit Tigers, a record win-loss ratio 0-16 for the Detroit Lions, a nearly cataclysmic last few months for GM and Chrysler and major auto suppliers in deep debt and near extinction, and the Detroit City Council, led by the belligerent President Monica Conyers bringing almost as much infamy to the city as ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick did.

When a judge allowed the city council’s rejection of the Cobo Hall compromise legislation that took five years of negotiations between the state of Michigan and the Detroit regional authority, Conyers was ecstatic. She slapped the courtroom table and yelled, “Yes! We won!” Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson had a slightly different reaction. “In-friggin’-credible,” he sighed. “What City Council has done is overturn five years of hard negotiation that was Detroit’s last best chance to secure long term funding for Cobo Hall and frankly the North American International Auto Show.”

The auto show and the Detroit auto industry loses but Detroit is the winner, in Conyers’ eyes. I say, let her try to sell the lowest priced houses in America (many selling for the same price as a McDonald’s Medium Fries) to the same citizens from the city with the highest unemployment rate in the country. That’s what I call a win/win.

But close your eyes on Opening Day and smell the newly cut grass at Comerica Park. When Opening Day comes, allow the citizens of the Detroit Metro area to be hopeful. And that’s just what we were when we scampered downtown on a partly cloudy, partly sunny day that thankfully had no rain.

Anything is possible on Opening Day. My son, Kyle and I, parked at the parking lot of the legendary Leland Hotel on Bagley which was built in the glory days of 1927. When we got to Comerica Park, we searched the stones outside the stadium ground but couldn’t find the memorial stones that I ordered in 1999 before Comerica Park was finished. We searched for the three stones: “BLESS YOU, BOYS—SID G & HARRY G,” in memory of my Uncle Sid and in honor of my cousin Harry, “KYLE GOLDMAN—BAR MITZVAH ‘99”, and “KENNY GOLDMAN—A TIGER FOREVER.”

When we sat down amidst the sold-out crowd, we waited to see if they were going to honor my cousin, Harry, as we had heard, as one of 25 who had been to the last 25 Opening Days. That never happened but instead, we honored legendary Tiger player and announcer George Kell who had recently died. We viewed the new logos on both sides of the General Motors logo on the tribute wall under the water fountain which owner Mike Ilitch paid for himself. We stood for a moment of silence for LA rookie pitcher, 22-year-old Nick Adenhart, who was killed along with two others the night before after a drunk driver ran a red light and broadsided their car. Then, three long-time employees of Chrysler, Ford, and GM threw out the first pitches and were hugged by Detroit rock star Kid Rock. And the game finally started.

The Detroit Tigers made it a memorable Opening Day by walloping the Texas Rangers, who had just swept the Cleveland Indians in their opening series. There was great pitching and even better hitting, led by superstar Miguel Cabrera who kept up his torrid hitting pace with a grand slam hit over the left center field wall and another shot that was a few inches short of a second home run. It was one of those games with lots of cheering and smiling under the 54 degree sunshine and very little tension, as we took the lead and kept building on it until the 15-2 final score. My son, Kyle, got a little sunburn on his face but he didn’t care. He was thrilled to be at another Opening Day, his third already by age 22, and I was happy to share it with him. I felt like Ferris Bueller without any guilt. I had taken a personal day to enjoy the hope that a good spring baseball game can bring. The Tigers may not win the World Series but wouldn’t be nice if they did? After the riots of 1967, Al Kaline, Willie Horton, and Denny McLain led the city to an unbelievable come-from-behind World Series win. Why can’t Verlander, Cabrera, Granderson, and Gallaraga lead us this year? If they did, Monica Conyers could once again scream out, “Yes, We Won!” And the rest of the city and Detroit area would join in with her.

            Yes, it may be a crappy time to live and work in Detroit, but we have as much hope as anyone in any city has. We just have to turn back the clock to 1927, the Roaring Twenties, when the Leland was built, and imagine when the city was young, the auto industry was the fastest growing industry in the world, and the Tigers had just let go Hall of Famer Ty Cobb. Yeah, they trailed the league-leading New York Yankees by 27 ½ games at the end of the season, but so what? The world was ours.

            Today, the movie industry is making movies in Detroit. So if Motown can go to LA, Hollywood can come to Detroit. If we don’t become the next movie-making mecca, we still have Mike Ilitch’s Detroit Tigers to root for and if not them, we still have Ilitch’s Red Wings.

            Let’s forget cynicism. It’s been a very hard winter and now it’s Opening Day. Today, in this birthplace of renewal and hope, we can take the time to dream, just dream….