The Plumber's Monkey

 Kevin Trudeau, predator.

Would anyone out there care to discuss the wilderness?

Nope, it's neither the farthest, most remote corner of the Australian outback nor an uexplored finger of the arctic...but it is desolate, and it is populated by awful predators.  

Between 3 and 5 a.m.

It is the world of very late night TV and it's a rough place to find yourself at half past three in the morning.

Aimed at the exhausted, the sleepless, the lonely and the vulnerable, the TV of which I speak represents a subculture of conscienceless opportunism. I highly recommend that you do not venture into this world alone. 

Next time you can't sleep as a result of worry, stress or that last piece of clam pizza and, dragging your cat and covers downstairs, reach for the clicker, make sure your credit card is well-hidden or wake someone to watch with you.

The really scary stuff doesn't seem to start until it's extremely late...when your defenses are totally down and you are most likely to punch in the number of the Time Life Library and numbly order that 12 volume CD anthology of The Golden Age of Barbershop Quartet...with the bonus DVD and sing-along pamphlet.

If only it were as innocent as barbershop quartet....

Just last night, that total thief and convicted scam artist, Kevin Trudeau was in fine form.

Incarcerated in the 90's for larceny and credit card fraud, his books on nutrition and natural healing have been cited as being "dangerous to human life."

Currently, he "knows for a fact" that the U.S. government has millions of dollars of undistributed "free money, there for the taking." Only his new series of books from which he swears he doesn't "make a penny" will unlock the secrets of this untapped wealth.

Presented in a format deceptively identical to that of a popular home shopping channel, he sits with a pretty hostess who expresses impressively feigned skepticism until he manages to convince even her that his ideas are legit.

Famously gullible despite my crusty exterior--as an adult, I was convinced by my mother that plumbers train and use monkeys to climb into small places to do basic jobs. Based on this, it's very possible that I might -- in a state of wakeful madness -- grab my credit card if it weren't already safely hidden, thank God, between Seth's ass cheeks as he slumbers.

After all, who doesn't want "free money?" I am outraged that the networks sell him advertising time.

We threw our money away
on this crap. You can, too!

Fast forward a half hour. I am now being told that if I strap on what looks like a weight belt with a batteries, it will work my abs, giving me the six pack I've always dreamed of.

It seems that years of medical research have been put into this amazing device that comes with a remote control and can be effectively for "guaranteed" results.

Buzzy and I were finally getting sleepy so I never learned how much this miraculous device would cost the hardworking -- but hopeful -- flabby, but the worst late night pitch came a few years ago.

It involved a reptilian pastor with black patent leather hair and a catalog of homespun tales of people whose sorry lives had been transformed by the prayers a donation to the Church of the Greedy Bastard would buy.

Waving a bible and tearfully emoting into the camera, this land shark assured sleepy viewers that he felt our pain, loved us deeply and needed our money so he could keep doing the lord's work. 

He was asking for a specific dollar amount. I can't recall the number. It wasn't huge but it was a solid chunk of change and he kept saying, and I am not making this up, "Even if you can't afford it...."



I was sickened as I sensed lonely old ladies all over America signing checks in a quavery hand, mailing the week's grocery money to this horrifying charlatan. Thankfully, he disappeared from the airwaves pretty quickly. I hope he was wearing the ab belt and was electrocuted after it short circuited.

I agree. Do not wake the cat.

The moral of the story is, if you can't sleep, leave the cat alone (after all, it's your problem not his) and do not turn on the TV.

Read a book, instead...but not the one Kevin Trudeau is hawking.

Take it from me and the Plumber's Monkey, they are not selling anything you need on late night TV.





"Mommy, I don't want to be a plumber's monkey when I grow up!"
"Don't worry, dear, they don't exist."