"I'll never forget the first time..."

If you watch as much lousy TV at weird hours as I do, you're probably familiar with Klee Irwin and his Dual Action Cleanse.

Dual Action Cleanse might be the most horrifying infomercial of all time. The product claims to improve the quality, frequency and comfort of your bowel movements. The host, Klee Irwin, doesn't skimp on details.

Here's Klee's memoir of his daughter's doo-doo:

"I'll never forget the first time I saw my four-year-old daughter's bowel movement in the toilet. It literally scared me. She wasn't more than 45 pounds, but her bowel movement was about as thick as my wrist and about as long as her arm. And I thought, 'Oh my God.' I got scared. I was going to call my wife. I thought, 'How could something that big come of something—a little child—that small. And I thought, I'm six feet tall and I weigh 190 pounds and by proportion to my size compared to hers my bowel movements were very inadequate to say the least."

Yeah, we're all literally scared over here, too. It's literally twice as scary to watch Klee himself talk about this... shit. He looks like Eric Roberts after his "I was burnt in my lab while I spliced my own genes with those of an insect" incident. He makes an uncomfortable subject exponentially more uncomfortable, like a revolting 7th grade health teacher (I really had one of those!).

The testimonials are the best part. Aside from the infamous "John Wayne had 44 pounds of fecal matter in his colon after he died" crock of shit, there are a few spooky stories for sure. One guy in an older incarnation of the program talked about removing a 12-foot worm from his intestine (was it swimming around in his toilet? was it dangerous? can i use it as big fish bait?) after feeling the benefits of the product. Another woman assures us with a smirk that "you wouldn't want to see" the 10 or 15 pounds of fecal load she shed after using DAC.

Even worse is the building caseload against Irwin & Co.-- literally hundreds of complaints have been filed for overcharges, failure to deliver product, and various unauthorized charges to customers' credit cards. And this is assuming that the stuff even works!

Watch the show. I guarantee you'll have no problem eliminating some sort of waste-like substance from your body when it's over.

The $4.5 Billion Man

Forgive me Blogger, for I have sinned... it's been five weeks since my last Knicks entry.

Not that I haven't been paying attention, or that nothing's happened. After a promising start (thank G_d nobody took me up on my Knicks "bet"), the Knicks are back at dysfunction-junction. They simply can't do anything right.

I've been begging the Knicks to get rid of everyone except Crawford and Nate for a while now. They almost did it! Except that they forgot about seven guys (including a few of the biggest salary lodestones on Earth), and got rid of Jamal by accident. You could say they screwed up a little bit.

So who'd they get??!! Al Harrington's finally a Knick, even though he showed up completely out of shape (how?!). Oh yeah, they got Tim Thomas back (???) and Cuttino Mobley (who's already trying to cut Eddy Curry in line for a heart transplant up at Columbia/Presbyterian).

As if that's not enough of a mess, Stephon Marbury is now an extra from Salem's Lot, scratching at the Knicks' bedroom window. There was no doubt in anyone's mind (that is, anyone with a mind) that Steph would be as gone as Coney Island by season opener, but here he is. But just a few days ago, he sat and watched his team stagger through a nightmare in Detroit with only seven guys able to play (sounds like an old tour of mine).

Want more? Our top draft pick ("the Italian Scallion") is hurt, after failing to score a single basket this season. Neither "J.J." has played a single minute this year, which some would say is a good thing. My connection for free Knicks box seats is on the rocks, and we don't have cable.

At least King James is on the way, right? We certainly gave him a royal welcome last Tuesday, which was a bit like trying to show your old friend from out of town a good time for the night and watching him screw the daylights out of your wife.

Oh, the profanity:
Stephon Marbury, $20.8M
Eddy Curry, $9.7M
Malik Rose, $7.6M
Jerome James, $6.2M
Jared Jeffries, $6M
Danilo Gallinari, $2.9M

The players above have combined for a total of 26 points this year, with only Malik Rose actually scoring a field goal. That's roughly $53,200,000 (just this year!) for 26 pts, or just over $2 million per point.

TWO MILLION DOLLARS PER POINT.

So, if LeBron is worth as much as the schmucks above, he would earn $4.5 billion as a Knick when he gets here.

That's without inflation.

Mascott's the Artist of the Day!

Spin on-line made Mascott their Artist of the Day today.

Looks like the press days of "features a guest appearance by..." are over for yours truly (who is this Rainy Orteca, anyway?!). So it goes.

Either way, Art Project is a great record. It's plain fun to listen to.

Drives Like a Dream...

I don't like this trend.

A rich guy crashes his Land Rover into some other rich people out in the Hamptons. The guy was legally drunk, and an open container of alcohol was found in his vehicle.

Hardly newsworthy, except that the jerk's "blaming" his accident on the two Ambiens he took that night. Most coverage of this and other similar incidents mention Ambien's "bizarre sedative effects" such as "sleep driving".

Are they fucking serious?! IT'S A SLEEPING PILL!!! Who in their right mind thinks they should be driving on sleeping pills?! Not to mention the guy's tanked and balancing a gin & tonic between his legs (and look at that sweater!).

These are the assholes that give perfectly legal drugs a bad name in this country (and specifically that county). What did he think-- his Land Rover would peacefully float away to safety on a light blue and yellow powder-cloud?

Driving around on even one Ambien is a hell of a lot worse than getting behind the wheel with a .05 or .06. Let's put the rolling pillheads in jail and cut the poor saps driving home on two glasses of wine a break for once.

Diaper Genie II

The Diaper Genie II might be the best baby gadget we own, with the possible exception of LJ's fake cell phone. No home should be without one.

The DGII is a masterpiece of design. I won't get into details, but let's just say that it works. Got something better? I don't care-- this thing works.

The only sticky situations so far have been entirely my fault. The first time I tied off a blue bag for disposal, I forgot to "pre-tie" the new bag. We were dumping dirty diapers and wipes into an open plastic bag-tube, or "in one ear and out the other". I never made that mistake again.

I also made the mistake early on of trying to compact a full and finished bag before I tied it off, as if I were squeezing the air out of a sleeping bag. I was whopped in the face with a stink-wind comparable to an Eqyptian tomb excavation. I never made that mistake again.

My most recent screw-up was completely fascinating. When I replaced the DGII refill cartridge, I somehow fed both the beginning and end of the bag-tube through the system. The result was a confounding diaper bag with no beginning and no end, with two distinct outer surfaces. I created a Mobius strip! Either that or some sort of deviated torus... either way, the dimensional poop-paradox was tragically thrown in the garbage, like a dead coelacanth washed up on some god-forsaken shore.

Who knew diaper changing could be so fun??!

Shop Til U Drop

Somebody asked me the other day, "Hey Lee, you ever do anything except watch TV & baseball and listen to music? Like, hang out with your family?!"

Of course I don't just watch TV & baseball and listen to music! I just don't write about other stuff-- it's usually a little boring. But since you asked...

Me, Mizz and LJ headed out to P-Wash LI for the annual Brisket party on Sunday. We're usually among the four or five deadbeats without kids at the event-- now we've been upgraded to the "deadbeats with only one kid" group.

Anyway, Mz Mazz set us up with a Zipcar for the day. I've always insisted we rent strictly from the Hicksville Hertz, which is the cheapest major chain rental within 50 miles. I guess it's a tad impractical at times, but we all pinch pennies somewhere, right?

Zipcar is pretty good. You get free gas, an EZ Pass (which you pay for), and you pick up your car within blocks of your apartment. As we corralled LJ for the epic journey Sunday morning, I stumbled outside to find our car. I'm not even sure that "car" accurately describes our vehicle-- it looked like a prop from Logan's Run. It had enough pickup to get me across the Whitestone Bridge, so good enough.

We decided to take the boy to Babies R Us and Target in Queens on our way out to Nassau Co. There were more babies in the Babies R Us store than there were baby products-- everything was either sold out or damaged. We almost purchased a bathtub stool with no feet. All I found was an Eli Manning mesh onesie that was big enough for Eli himself to wear (calm down, ladies!). I guess we found a few things, but it felt like a bust.

I nearly forgot one of the immutable laws of New York travel:
Nobody in Queens knows how to drive. This includes those of us that are not from Queens and actually know how to drive, because we instantly forget how to drive upon crossing the county border.

It didn't help that our second stop was a Starbucks/McDonalds hybrid-location situated inside a triangular traffic circle. LJ was nearly crushed by several drivers mere feet from the entrance. I used the last of my energy to crawl over to Mac's for a giant Diet Coke.

I actually like the CDs for sale at Starbucks. They do a pretty good job (I'm currently negotiating a one-off for my "Krautrock 1972-77" to be released on their label) most of the time. Their new James Taylor album (Covers) is barely a "grande", however. One is immediately and fairly warned by the cardboard display at the counter, which says something about being recorded over "ten blissful days in a Berkshires barn..." Hmmm.
Things start off on the right foot, with a nice version of "Wichita Lineman" done the JT way. The Berkshires barn musta had Espresso spigots in the back, 'cause James revs up an absurd Vegas-style horn-schtick for most of the record's remainder (awful covers of "Hound Dog" & "Summertime Blues", for example). I hope paramedics were on call.

No amount of caffiene could prepare us for the horror known as the College Point Target store. Narrow aisles + giant carts + 10,000 people + nobody working the floor = mass confusion. I was stuck in the clock department for at least ten minutes at one point. Eleven minutes, to be exact.

The College Point Target is almost indistinguishable from Shea Stadium, except that the thousands of kids at Target start crying after only 30 minutes instead of the end of the 7th inning.

The fact that we weren't then going to Ikea to buy bedside tables didn't need to be said out loud. Not sure we would have made it anyway, as I missed two exits and almost trapped us in long-term parking at JFK on our way out east (!). Who needs bedside tables when you don't sleep, anyway!

The Staircase

This 8-part series is absolutely amazing. I guarantee it's the most riveting 6 1/2 hours of TV since the last AL Championship game you actually watched.

Seriously, folks-- this is A+ stuff. Can't say much more without spoiling it... shoot this sucker to the top of yer queue! Yes, even past Mad Men!