I watch TV when I’m traveling.
Last night, I was a living, breathing road-dog cliche: I came home from a long/awesome day of work, closed the door to my hotel room, washed my hair, put on a moisturizing face mask, wrapped myself up in a towel, and got into bed with a chocolate bar and the mighty remote control. I’m glad the Tulsa Hampton Inn provides notepaper and a pen on the nightstand; as it turned out, I would need them, too.
I landed on QVC. A few years ago, this company hired genius marketing people who elevated the concept of shopping on TV from one of total lameness to one of at least partial coolness. Could it be? I remember article after article (read: press release after press release) about how HSN and QVC were attracting A-list celebrities and everyone from Fancy McPants to ChiChi McGee were doing product on television. Liza Minnelli did a line of clothes for one of the networks; I know because I bought two pieces. Off the TV! Good lord! It was an isolated event, though; my items were costume pieces for my Liza-centric one-woman show in 2011. I hadn’t looked in on the world of television shopping since then, so I thought I’d check the scene.
QVC, I salute you. I was thoroughly entertained for the duration of my face mask. I’m not being sarcastic! It was great.
I watched host Lisa Robertson present/sell a collection of Dooney & Bourke handbags. As I watched, my jaw dropped open. (Well, my lips parted; the mask was getting really hard.) I grabbed the pen and paper and wrote down some of the sentences that came out of Lisa Robertson’s mouth. She was mesmerizing; she could talk for ten minutes about absolutely nothing. Words were coming. Zero new information was being dispensed. Everything you needed to know about each handbag was learned in the first fifteen seconds of seeing it — but not if Lisa had anything to do with it. And she kept repeating the word “crossbody” over and over again, inserting it into every possible place it would fit. I’ll bet you a million bucks that the hosts/producers zero in on a single word in any presentation to use again and again, like a mantra or a password because it’s soothing, hypnotizing. The word could be “phytonutrient” or “sleek” or “soothing.” Last night, it was “crossbody.”
“Love this crossbody bag. The strap, crossbody, is amazing, this amazing crossbody bag is one you will love forever. You will have this for years. Leather, Florentine. Strap, crossbody. This beautiful leather crossbody bag — wow.”
It got better, though. She actually said these things. These are verbatim sentences.
“Are you shorter? You want a bag that won’t overwhelm you. You don’t want to be overwhelmed by your handbag. This is your bag.”
“You’re saying, ‘I don’t want to fight with my bag. I want a bag and I don’t want to fight with it.’ This is that bag.”
“Crossbody.”
“These pockets in the front, they go all the way down. Absolutely.”
“We make these zippers very easy. These zippers are not going to bite you.”
“This is Florentine leather. Very European leather.”
Glorious. And she kept spanking the bags! She’d do a little rub-n-spank, rub-n-spank and finger the front, finger the findings and the hardware. Very sexual, really, almost erotic. So it was all a lot of fun and I fell asleep watching it. When I woke up twenty minutes later, my face was a cement slab and this morning it looks AMAZING.