Make Gibbons Laugh #44
I was recently scanning the internet for deodorant, as one does with a talent for sweaty pits, during the hottest and sweatiest week of the year, in a desert experiencing a spike in humidity and record temps. My typical ALL-NATURAL Tom’s antiperspirant simply wasn’t getting the job done, a helpless middle-reliever responsible for mop-up duty, so to speak, already down 12-1 in the third inning. Applying my unscented stick of Tom’s seemed about as helpful in assuaging my clammy crevices as when Trump threw a few paper towel rolls into a crowd in Puerto Rico in response to a hurricane.
I needed something with more OOMPH, ideally not a chemical nightmare but a roll-on that kept my pits sevicably NOT-stinky. Which is how I found myself spending longer than I’d ever expected reading customer reviews online for different deodorants.
Let me ask you this: is there anything funnier than a customer review that jarringly goes into someone’s personal life? Is there anything funnier than a review that’s not actually a review for the product but just a look into the inner workings of an unhinged person who’s happened to use the product?
I’m only kind of exaggerating when I say these were the sort of reviews I read:
“My handsome hubby needed just the right scent for us to get in the ~mood~, and let me tell you….this was NOT it. SO not arousing. The antithesis of arousing. And I KNOW arousing. Trust me on that one… and you’re probably wondering: why couldn’t you just decorate your Love Palace with a few candles? WE TRIED KINKY CANDLE STUFF ONCE IN FORT LAUDERDALE AFTER A KENNY CHESNEY CONCERT. NO MORE. NO MORE. AND IF I WANTED TO SMELL PINE TREES, WHICH THIS DEODORANT REEKED OF, I WOULD JUST GO CAMPING IN MAINE. 1 STAR.” (which, among many things, begs the question: why isn’t there a 0-star option on customer reviews?!)
“I needed to get a new deodorant to impress a coworker who I had a crush on. The next week at work, I went into my performance review meeting thinking my new hunky smell might entice my crush in the office and also help with a possible promotion. Instead, my manager only noted how ‘insider trading from your cubicle AND a Ponzi Scheme ripping off naive senior citizens was not a good look.’ But a decent SMELL, am I right?! Four stars.”
I was reminded of Colin Jost’s joke about one-star reviews:
“I think the worst review you can give something is two stars. If you give something one star, that’s about you. Look at any one-star review. It’s unrelated to the business they’re reviewing. It’s, like, ‘I was eating at Cafe Honduras, and that’s where I found out my cat had committed suicide. ONE STAR.’”
Cafe Honduras, Kinky Candles, and Insider Trading Inside The Pits reminded me of something else, that the great TV/movie podcaster Chris Ryan said recently:
“I need a lot less detail in people’s reasons for not doing things. Like, I was in the mood to get pad thai. You go to their Instagram, and they’re just, like, ‘we’re holding a lot of TRAUMA in our BONES today. And we will be holding all the space for ourselves and will not be serving pad thai.’ And I’m, like, ‘Ok. You could just say: CLOSED.’ I think across the board: your Uber driver’s late, and he’s, like, ‘sorry I’m late. I had to put my cat down today.’ I think we could just go back to a more transactional relationship where people aren’t sharing the reasons why they’re late, why they’re closed, why they’re not in a good mood.”
I largely agree with this Swansonian approach for in-person, transactional relationships. With online, transactional relationships, though, I want all the unnecessary backstory. When a crazed stranger on Yelp veers off the rails, I want to go with them.
Like with most things, I was incredibly indecisive buying deodorant. I ended up going to Target to sniff around in person. I must have sniffed 20 varieties, all of which had names that sounded like knock-off Gatorade flavors and ominous weather patterns: ARCTIC BREEZE BLAST. GLACIAL HURRICANE RAMPAGE. INCOMING ICE DELUGE.
I found a deodorant that smelled like how I imagine Guy Fieri’s car smells. SOLD.
I left Target. And in what felt and continues to feel like a heavy-handed stunt pulled by a Truman Show executive, the temperature had dropped. Quickly. Precipitously. 10 degrees! While I was in the store! For all of 14 minutes! The sky was dark. It started to rain for the first time in months.
Before I got to my car to drive home to go online to write my own review, I wondered: is this the Incoming Ice Deluge? Or more of an Arctic Breeze Blast?
BEGINNING OF FALL/END OF HEAT WAVES: Five Stars.
GLACIAL HURRICANE RAMPAGE: So there I was, at a Target on Santa Monica Boulevard in West LA, sweating my ass off, and my upstairs neighbor sometimes has these LOUD and INSUFFERABLE phone conversations in the middle of night about his fantasy football team, of all things, and don’t even get me started. Well I guess you can get me started, so…
...(3500 words about the nature of apartment living, white noise, and sleep hygiene)....
…so I’d say it’s a solid-but-not-excellent product. Your classic 3 stars.
P.S. While we’re here on funny, aggrieved people, Larry David’s statement when it was announced Curb would be renewed for another season: