Way back in the archives of Brainpan Leakage – and I do mean way back, because the entry I am about to reference was originally written when BL was still hosted over on my Myspank page – I had myself one of those Andy Rooney moments about “catch phrases” on the FoodNetwork shows.  You know, Emeril’s “Bam”, Tyler Florence’s “Flavorful”, and Guy Fieri’s “Off The Hook”… Not that “branding” is a bad thing. Truth is, branding is important. E K does it to all of her possessions, which is why I am sitting on a pillow right now.

Okay, okay… So, E K doesn’t really do that. (She uses a Sharpie)… But, what would a Brainpan Leakage blog entry be without an E K reference, correct?

So, back to this branding thing. I get it. I understand it. Hell, the RGI series even has a catch phrase – “Sometimes it takes more than a cop to stop a killer. It takes a Witch.”

My dear friend Dorothy Morrison and I have toured together so much and done so many workshops together that we have been branded with the tag, “Wingnuts” all because of a story we tell about a crazy person who hi-jacked one of my seminars at the RWB many years ago.

So yes… I definitely get it. However, another Andy Rooney moment happened upon me very recently, and it had everything to do with the proverbial “catch phrase”.

Ahemm…hmmm…ahem… So, did’jya ever notice…

Okay, so I won’t kype Andy’s catch phrase this time. However, I will tell you about the latest “phrase craze” that is making my brain hurt –

“Pitch Me”

Now, I don’t know how many of you out there have heard this one. All I can say is that I hear it constantly. Because of my profession I do quite a few interviews, podcasts, etc. It’s all part of the game. Truth is, the saying among authors is that once you finish the manuscript, that’s when the real work begins.

Fortunately, I like doing podcasts, radio, print interviews, and chats. I think it’s fun. I get to meet new people and talk about all kinds of cool stuff, myself included – not that I think I’m all that cool, but on occasion other folks think I am and that’s a nice boost when my ego sags, which it can tend to do at times. We all have those moments, except E K, of course. (Two E K refs! WooHoo, I’m on a roll!)

So anyway, this “Pitch Me” thing. I receive email on a fairly regular basis from magazines, newspapers, podcasts, etc, which are asking me if I’d be willing to do an interview. Sometimes I, or one of my publicists, will contact a particular venue and wave my flag to let them know I’m available and would love to do their show or what have you. Lately, however, the response from these folks – whether they are making first contact or I am – is, “Pitch Me”…

Now, I want to point out, not ALL of them are doing this, but the vast majority seem to be…

Honestly, I know exactly what they mean. They want me, or my publicists, to tell them why I would be a good interview for their show or publication. That makes perfect sense, so I’m not complaining there – although, if they are soliciting me I would think they would already know whether or not I fit their format, but that’s just a personal observation.

And, to be sure, the first couple of times I heard “Pitch Me” it wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t fazed at all. However, much like “bam”, “flavorful”, “off the hook”, “roast off”, and all the FoodNetwork overused catch phrases, “Pitch Me” has become so overused that it is painful to both my eyes and ears.

So, for all of the “Pitch Me’s” out there, I have decided I need an appropriate catch phrase response as well:

“Catch Me”

I guess it’s a good thing I have publicists to handle that stuff, eh? Hell,  for all I know they probably say “Pitch Me” too…

😉

More to come…

Murv

Continued from: Enhanced Husband Torture Techniques…

Part 2 of 2…

Return with us now to the thrilling days of a Christmas past – When last we left our intrepid blogger, he had asked his wife – the evilest of all evil redheads, Queen Eebil Kat – what manner of offering she demanded be left beneath the sacred scratching post tree on Eebil Katsmas Eve. Her  demand was, of course, for nothing less than “Cool Socks”. Unbeknown to our lovable curmudgeon, Queen Eebil Kat was hatching a sinister plan which would place him in serious peril – a peril she would use for her personal amusement while she laughed and filed her nails…

Okay… Everyone all caught up? Good. Let’s get on with this, because it’s painful for me to even think about.

So, I was feeling pretty good with this. “Cool Socks”. Definitely couldn’t be that hard. I’d been in the sock room before, so I knew what generally constituted cool in her eyes. I also knew her shoe size, so if the socks were for some reason classified by actual sizes, I could cross reference it somewhere.

I was all good. I’d already ordered up another gift she had made noises about throughout the year, so the socks were going to be the perfect distraction. Truth is, I was more than good. I was flat out golden.

Then, as they say, the hangin’ day came round… (Who is they? Mason Proffit, of course…)

At any rate, I cleared a bit of my schedule one day so that I could run to the store. Now, I didn’t imagine it would take long for me to obtain the sacred socks, but just to be on the safe side, since it WAS the Christmas (aka Katsmas) season after all, I scheduled myself the whole late morning and early afternoon to accomplish said task.

Now, something you need to understand about me is this: I absolutely hate shopping. Despise it. Seriously. I am one of those folks who knows exactly what he is after, goes to get it at the least busy time of day he can find, then zips in and right back out of the store, avoiding all unnecessary contact with insane shoppers that he can. The only – and I mean ONLY time I enjoy shopping is when I take E K to a nice store and do the whole “Pretty Woman” thing with her.

1. Because she is, in point of fact, pretty. EXTREMELY pretty. (Wayyyyyy prettier than Julia Roberts if you ask me.)
2. Because I get to sit in one place and watch. Not much crowd dodging involved. Life is good. E K gets new pretty clothes, I get to relax and watch a hottie trying on said clothes. The only thing that would make it better is a cooler full of beer.

Unfortunately this particular spree did not fall into the “E K / Pretty Woman” category. It did, however, fall into the “must obtain offering for the Eebil Queen” category. And, I’m all about making sure The Evil One is placated, lest I end up whimpering in the back of a closet with a variety of size 7 woman’s shoe prints all up and down my torso.

So, with my schedule cleared, off to the mall I went.

Not being a regular shopper for women’s wear, I wandered aimlessly through a couple of the stores at Northwest Plaza. Up the escalator I went. Down the escalator I went. Wander, wander, wander… Dodge, dodge, dodge… Up, down… Down, up… Wander some more.

Then I frowned really hard. Why? Because I found no cool socks. In fact, the only socks I managed to find were mens tube socks, six in a bag, your choice, black or white.

Definitely not cool.

So, with my shoulders starting to slump, I started again through the mall and decided to bite the bullet. I would go into one of the high dollar department stores. I don’t want to name it here, but let’s just say the first half of the name is a kind of pickle and the second half rhymes with “cards”.

We had played pretty woman here before, so surely they, of all stores, would have “cool socks” befitting of Queen Eebil Kat.

I did the up, down, wander around thing a bit more. Then, like the point of a shovel striking a buried chest, I rounded a corner and found, yes, you guessed it, socks. But, that wasn’t all. As I made a beeline toward this treasure trove of offerings for my Evil Queen, I met what you might call resistance. You see, just as pirates buried dead dudes with their treasure chests, apparently big, fancy stores bury dead, angry salesladies with their socks. Before I had made it two steps into the department, the departed souls of one of them popped right up in my face. With the path to my prize blocked, I immediately took evasive action and tried to sidestep her. Well, apparently the angry spirits of dead old salesladies are pretty nimble, because I didn’t make it an inch before she was right there barring my way. I tried feinting to one side and then shifting to the other, but it was like she could read my mind. I simply wasn’t getting in.

I stopped and stood there for a moment, while the sales zombie looked me over, then she opened her mouth. I started to back up, fearing that she was going to try to eat my brain, but instead she simply barked with unmistakable disdain, “Can I help you?!”

You could just tell by the way she said it that she had to have been a redhead before all the color drained out of her.

“Socks,” I said. “I need to by some socks.”

“Mens apparel is downstairs,” she growled.

“They aren’t for me,” I replied.

She eyed me with suspicion then demanded, “Who are they for?”

“My wife.”

“Your wife?” She didn’t sound as though she believed me.

I couldn’t help myself. I was starting to get a bit impatient so I blurted, “Did I stutter?”

“Don’t be a smartass or I’ll eat your face!” she hissed in return.

“Yes ma’am.”

Continuing with her interrogation she spat, “Why are you buying socks for your wife?”

“A Katsma… I mean Christmas present.”

“Present? Socks?” There was absolutely no mistaking the fact that she didn’t believe me at all this time.

“Yeah, she said she wanted some cool socks.”

“Cool socks? What do you mean, cool socks?”

“You know. Socks with interesting patterns. Argyle. That sort of thing.”

“Yeah, right,” she mumbled, standing there working her jaw and smacking her lips. I imagine she was trying to get an errant bit of brains from the last poor schmuck dislodged from her false teeth. She looked me over in silence twice more, then stepped aside. “These are all the socks we have.”

“Thank you,” I said, slipping past her to inspect the rows of polka dotted, striped, argyled, fuzzy, and otherwise “cool” feminine foot coverings.

Now, not having an absolute inventory of the sock room floating around in my head, it took me a bit to make a decision on a few pairs of the sacred socks. Obviously I wanted my offering to the Evil Queen to be perfect, especially with it being Katsmas and all. My task, however, was not made any easier by the fact that the Zombie Sales Lady Jackal didn’t stray from my side. She just kept following me up and down the aisles, never less than a half dozen inches away as she shuffled along, grunting and wheezing. I have to admit, not only was it psychologically disconcerting, but I almost succumbed to the Ben Gay and Polygrip fumes that were wafting around me in thick clouds.

Finally, I chose some especially cool socks for my dear and lovely. Before I could even start toward the register, Zombie lady snatched them out of my hands and demanded, “Cash or charge?”

“Visa…” I mumbled, extracting the plastic money from my wallet.

“You want these gift wrapped?” she spat, wobbling off to the register stand.

“No. I can handle that,” I replied.

“Uh-huh,” she grunted. “I thought so, you pervert.”

By the time I arrived at my truck, mall security, the local police, and a SWAT team had surrounded it. I was taken into to custody and spent several grueling hours trying to answer questions about sock fetishism.

But, that wasn’t the scary part. When they finally turned on the overhead lights in the interview room, who do you think I saw? Yeah… E K sitting in the corner, giggling to herself in a very satisfied way, all the while painting her nails.

I’m no longer allowed within 100 feet of the women’s sock aisle in any department store in the United States. I can hang out in the lingerie all I want, but if I go near the socks I end up getting tackled by security. These days I have to shop for my offerings to Queen Eebil Kat online. Even so, my guess is all those sites are tracking my IP address just to be sure I don’t do anything perverted.

More to come…

Murv