July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
A wacky world of home improvement (3/3/04)
Dear Reader
“Think we’ll see the water-skiing squirrel?”
My wife rolled her eyes.
For several weeks now, the second-favorite video clip from the 2004 presidential race at our house — right after Howard Dean’s primal scream — has been one in which a befuddled Joe Leiberman keeps muttering something about seeing the water-skiing squirrel while campaigning at a boat show.
Somehow, it’s been hard to imagine anything less presidential than an interest in water-skiing squirrels.
But we weren’t walking into a boat show Saturday afternoon. Instead, we were going into the Fort Wayne Coliseum to check out this year’s home show. Why? Who knows?
There probably ought to be a law on the books that homeowners shouldn’t take on a new improvement project until they finish the last one, and we should have been home painting the woodwork in our kitchen.
So, for reasons we ourselves didn’t quite understand, we were moving at bovine speed with a herd of equally aimless Midwesterners into the equivalent of a giant feedlot, where purveyors of all sorts of gimmicks and hucksters with endless wares were ready for us.
We’d sketched out a brief list of things we were interested in investigating, but within minutes it was clear that none of those things was on the agenda.
Instead, we encountered:
•At least half a dozen different ways of keeping gunk out of our gutters, none of which looked as if they’d really work. Our guess is that the snazzy gutter attachment would just make the darned things harder to clean.
•Two or more booths selling “tranquility fountains,” a product that combines the goofiness of New Age philosophy with the kitsch of a lava lamp. They did, however, produce a kind of dry ice fog which was marginally cool.
•A garden arbor the size of a small garage, complete with a waterfall down one side. It fell a little short in terms of practicality.
•A booth selling novelty cover plates for light switches. One was a smiley face, with the switch where the nose should be. Another was a rendition of Michelangelo’s “David,” with the switch where his, er, whatever, should be. If not a new low in tackiness, this one was certainly a contender.
•Enough slice-up, dice-up grinders, juicers, and choppers to fill Ron Popeil’s warehouse. As usual, it was the slicers and dicers which had the most polished pitchmen, who routinely brought the herd to a stop with their spiel. “Lookie there, Martha, that man’s actually gonna chop some celery.”
Finally, after plodding around the building futilely for an hour and a half, we stumbled back out into the light of day.
“You know,” I said as we headed for the car, “I still wish we’d seen the water-skiing squirrel.”
“I know what you mean,” said my wife.[[In-content Ad]]
My wife rolled her eyes.
For several weeks now, the second-favorite video clip from the 2004 presidential race at our house — right after Howard Dean’s primal scream — has been one in which a befuddled Joe Leiberman keeps muttering something about seeing the water-skiing squirrel while campaigning at a boat show.
Somehow, it’s been hard to imagine anything less presidential than an interest in water-skiing squirrels.
But we weren’t walking into a boat show Saturday afternoon. Instead, we were going into the Fort Wayne Coliseum to check out this year’s home show. Why? Who knows?
There probably ought to be a law on the books that homeowners shouldn’t take on a new improvement project until they finish the last one, and we should have been home painting the woodwork in our kitchen.
So, for reasons we ourselves didn’t quite understand, we were moving at bovine speed with a herd of equally aimless Midwesterners into the equivalent of a giant feedlot, where purveyors of all sorts of gimmicks and hucksters with endless wares were ready for us.
We’d sketched out a brief list of things we were interested in investigating, but within minutes it was clear that none of those things was on the agenda.
Instead, we encountered:
•At least half a dozen different ways of keeping gunk out of our gutters, none of which looked as if they’d really work. Our guess is that the snazzy gutter attachment would just make the darned things harder to clean.
•Two or more booths selling “tranquility fountains,” a product that combines the goofiness of New Age philosophy with the kitsch of a lava lamp. They did, however, produce a kind of dry ice fog which was marginally cool.
•A garden arbor the size of a small garage, complete with a waterfall down one side. It fell a little short in terms of practicality.
•A booth selling novelty cover plates for light switches. One was a smiley face, with the switch where the nose should be. Another was a rendition of Michelangelo’s “David,” with the switch where his, er, whatever, should be. If not a new low in tackiness, this one was certainly a contender.
•Enough slice-up, dice-up grinders, juicers, and choppers to fill Ron Popeil’s warehouse. As usual, it was the slicers and dicers which had the most polished pitchmen, who routinely brought the herd to a stop with their spiel. “Lookie there, Martha, that man’s actually gonna chop some celery.”
Finally, after plodding around the building futilely for an hour and a half, we stumbled back out into the light of day.
“You know,” I said as we headed for the car, “I still wish we’d seen the water-skiing squirrel.”
“I know what you mean,” said my wife.[[In-content Ad]]
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