You Can Quote Me

Hello there. I am your friendly neighborhood blurb whore.

Perhaps you have seen some of my work. It’s visible in newspaper, magazine, television, radio and billboard ads for bad movies, television shows, plays, and books. Coast-to-coast, nationwide, my name is everywhere. They all love me. The publishing houses, the television, movie, and Broadway producers flock to my door and beg me to see their work and write up a review. Of course, those are just the amateurs. The real pros just ask me to write the review, and I am happy to oblige…for a consideration, of course. It’s a living.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me first ask you this: You do know what a blurb is, don’t you? For the unenlightened, “blurbs” are those little quotes from reviews that you see plastered all over entertainment advertisements. You know, like “The Action Smash of The Summer!” or “An Inventive and Original Series,” or my personal favorite “A Real Page-Turner! I Couldn’t Put It Down!” I wrote that last one about a book, Florence Henderson: My Story. The reason I couldn’t put it down was because if I had, my bedroom window would have slammed shut and I wouldn’t get any cross-breeze which, by the way, was what actually turned the pages. Did you buy it? Sorry.

I’m also the one quoted as calling Animal, a horrendously bad comedy starring the equally horrendous Rob Schneider, as “My Sides Ached…A Non-Stop Romp…Of A Comedy” In my defense, the actual review read, “MY SIDES ACHED after I was run over by A NON-STOP ROMP of viewers who stampeded out of the theater in horror after trying to watch this pathetic excuse OF A COMEDY.” Of course, the reason for that was because I actually saw that movie. I had a free press pass. Did you pay to see it? Sorry.

I called The New Love Boat “Even Funnier and More Romantic Than The Original,” which I had never watched. I didn’t watch the new one either, but from what I had heard about the first I figured the new one couldn’t be any worse. As it turned out, that wasn’t the case, but what could I do? The check had already cleared. Sorry.

What I’m trying to tell you good folks out there is that if you are depending on ad blurbs to decide which movie to see or book to read, you would do just as well to flip a coin or throw darts at a board. Just because it’s in print doesn’t mean it’s legitimate. I mean, if you really did plunk down two hundred bucks to see In Cold Blood: The Musical on Broadway or cancelled a hot date to stay home and catch the premiere of Bob Saget’s Faces of Death, you can’t really blame me for your stupidity, can you?

Especially since they both starred Rob Schneider.

Sorry.

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