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HOW TO BE THE COOLEST EARLY ONSET ADULT DIABETES AND MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION SUFFERER ON THE BLOCK..
I was licking brownie batter off the floor yesterday and, once I cleared most of it away, I realized there was a copy of Newsweek beneath it. The magazine was opened to an article about the American mainstreaming of those 3-wheel scooters traditionally used to mobilize the elderly, or help morbidly obese Wal-Mart customers make that long commute between the Snackwells to the sweatpants and comfort socks. The article featured a large photograph of Missy Elliott performing onstage, in a bedazzled Rascal, fucking shit up fat camp style. and next to that a small sidebar image of a middle-aged man popping a wheelie on his SCOOTER DESIGNED TO PROVIDE MEDICAL ASSISTANCE TO PEOPLE UNFIT FOR PARAMBULATION. As I read more and more, I started to think this article was pulling the wool over my eyes. This had to be a joke. Evel Knievel as the spokesperson for one of these scooter companies? Not possible. People who actually believe (contrary to any evidence, either researched or plainly obvious) riding a scooter is a form of exercise. Businesses are anticipating a continuing skyrocket of American obesity and, thoughtfully, have addressed the problem not by removing "Fudge Vinagrette" from their dinner salad menus, but rather normalizing the use of mobile assistance scooters. The Newsweek article claims that scooter manufacturers are now pushing advertising suggesting that medical scooter users are "active, fun, and maybe a little bit mischievous." (E.g. the wheelie-popping customer, or another print ad featuring a morbidly obese woman at a Mudvayne concert, riding her scooter off the stage, and into a mosh pit. OK, I made that one up.) One of the leading manufacturers of scooters, deliciously named "Pride Mobility Products", is promoting a new line of scooters all designed and named with a new emphasis on Awesometude!™, perhaps to offset the traditional emphasis on Sadfat™. The scooters are painted in pimped-out candy finishes like Cherry Bomb Red and Blue Razzleberry. But this is the best part. Here's a list of their scooter models, by name: - Celebrity X and my personal favorite model, "Victory." Come on! I think even the most delusional scooter customer—meaning, of course, the scooter customer tooling around town on his scooter, dressed in a tracksuit and "Pride Gear" baseball cap—would have a hard time fooling himself into thinking, "You mean to tell me I can't travel from my front door to my mailbox without the assistance of a cumbersome electric scooter? Yay, I win!! " and might even see this action as a kind of cruel joke perpetrated by Pride Mobility on their own customers. It would be like eSpecial, an apparel company for adults with Down's Syndrome, promoting catalog items like "The Thinking Cap", "Yale Club Overalls" and "Professor Diapers," or computer company coming out with productivity software called Microsoft Retard. (It pains me that my mind still drifts to all things retarded when I'm trying to make a point. I suppose the point could have just as easily been made by saying how Pride Mobility's marketing cruelties are analogous to a fedora manufacturer naming one of its fedoras "The De-Virginizer." There we go. And yes, in a sensible world this would have been edited and all the retardologue excised and replaced with the fedora example, but I can't help it; I like reading the words "Professor Diapers" and "Microsoft Retard" on my screen.) I look forward to the 2006 line of Pride Mobility scooters, including these models: - TurboBlaster 6000 *does not climb stairs.  |
