January 2005

John Basedow Must Die!
On The Tube

For those of you living in a cave, John Basedow is a evil, fetishistic, magic elf that wants to consume your soul, and want to remind you about it every 15 minutes or so on cable television. For those of you without cable, I still don't know how you haven't seen these commercials. They've been on such an insanely heavy rotation on cable, loaded in to programming with such an incredible density that I expect these commercials to start leaking out and materializing in thin air. It's ridiculous how many times an hour these fucking things are on. All day, all channels.

Initially, a few months ago, I was happy to have an ad campaign the then seemingly ubiquitous Empire Carpet commercials with that stupid old guy with the creepy voice and the insidious jingle. But then, shortly, I realized I didn't really know the true meaning of ubiquitous. Soon I expect John Basedow to haunt our dreams like an oiled up, posing Freddy Krueger.

Oh yeah, did I mention these commercials are for a series of fitness videos? This is important. Because throughout the entire ad, "Fitness Celebrity John Basedow" is all oiled up and flexing and lifting weights and prancing around stealing souls from the innocent. Well, not really the latter, but I think it's there in the subtext of the ads.

Also, I'm pretty sure he's a child molester.

But anyhow, John Basedow is everywhere. And I don't like the way he's looking at me. And he's really making television far less enjoyable for me, knowing that during my viewing tenure for any given evening, I know that I will have to endure that preening little elf leering at me and crushing my will to live. Oh, and don't give me "just change the channels". He's on all the channels. If you encounter his commercial and turn it to another channel, you will see the same ad airing at the same time if you have at least 60 channels. It's a statistical fact.

As far as I can see, there's no escaping this gay, muscular elf. He's ruining television, and thus ruining my life. I fully expect that his goal is nothing less than world domination. I just hope that we're not too late, that he hasn't gained too much power already- somebody please, please take him out and restore my dignity.

Anyone who disagrees with me has clearly been brainwashed. You are a zombie and your opinion doesn't count. You are doomed to spend eternity doing crunches and waxing your entire body. Do not talk to me.