This was no Magic Bullet infomercial

So I know I’d try and develop a pattern with posting but lately the pattern of friends marrying has dominated my schedule. As much as I’d like to refrain from free food and drink I can’t. At a wedding reception I’m like a bear that smells strawberry jam inside a locked car. Before you know it I’m shaking waiters around and putting my entire face in a platter of tuna tartare. By the end of the evening I have a stomach ache and a Boy Scout troop has made national news by successfully fending me off and saving dozens of innocent lives.

When I got back to Knoxville I wanted to try and do something for you all and thought that with the Obama informercial coming up I’d keep a running diary of it, and with McCain going on “Larry King Live” after it, in the interest of equal-Pony I’d keep tallies of that as well.

Let’s get started.

7:59 pm — Shots of amber waves of grain and the American heartland. I automatically think of Budweiser, which gets me upset because now they’re own by the Dutch. I was kind of hoping to see some shots like “Friday Night Lights”, a little grittiness and some bleakness contrasted with Obama bringing the hope or something. And yes, I just made hope sound like French Onion dip.

8:01 — Meet Rebecca Johnston (sp?) and her snack drawers. Her husband has a torn ACL and meniscus and he is know longer owned by 95 percent of fantasy football teams.

8:03 — Rebecca tells us of rising costs, “I can remember a time when we didn’t have to worry about this.” Sounds like what I heard under sorority girls’ breath when I showed up on GW’s campus.

8:04 — We’re back to Obama in some sort of wooden room that looks like the inside of a sailboat. Every American will have a sailboat when he’s president.

8:04 — After blaming the previous eight years’ worth of failed financial policies for the current economic crisis he uses one of them — low cost loans to small businesses offered after 9/11 — in his plan. If he tells me to shop my way out I’m turning off the TV.

8:06 — Obama: “Americans aren’t looking for a handout.” Really? Have you seen the lines for the free samples at Costco?

8:08 — Message received after 72-year-old Larry puts on his WalMart name tag to earn money for pills: There’s nothing more depressing than working at WalMart. Cheap stuff though.

8:12 — “Hi, I’m Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. I might own your soul in a few years so I thought we should get acquainted. Vote Obama.”

8:14 — An Albuquerque woman peruses coupons in a grocery store because times are tough. Why not make a national coupon czar? You’ve seen people that buy $1,000 worth of groceries for $17 because they file away coupons like squirrels do nuts. America needs to become a coupon clipper. Ten billion a month for war in Iraq, yeah, we have that coupon. Got it from the New York Times. Thanks Judith Miller!

8:15 — Some more Obama old family photos. I feel like I’m in his basement after a dinner party and the wine is wearing off. We’ve seen the photos before during the DNC. Let us know when you go to Acapulco and come back with different shots.

8:19 — Obama reads Harry Potter with his daughter. The RNC will spin this into ads in battleground states depicting Obama as a “kid wizard” and “sorcerer”.

8:21 — Joe Biden tells us a story of when he needed a Trapper Keeper to hide his excitement about Obama.

8:25 — Bill Richardson, the Clinton Judas, looks like he and his facial hair just wandered in out of the desert. That could be just the mescal talking though.

8:26 — Obama hits his cue going to the live event in Florida. If it had been George W. Bush coming in live we would have been treated to 30 seconds of shifting papers and blank stares into the camera. Style is not everything but it is something.

8:29 — Perhaps the most fascinating part to me for some reason was the final Obama logo coming onto the screen. Very marketing-y. I thought we might see one of those “more bars in more places” hidden symbols by AT&T and treated to shots of an awkward man landing an impossibly hot woman.

Overall, the production was slick and came off like the convention in Denver. Lately talk has been about how most undecided voters will break toward McCain, but this infomercial could help against that break, I think, because it was very much like the convention. And after conventions candidates get bounces in the polls.

Now on to McCain sitting down with Larry King or as I liked to call it the Battle at the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.

9 pm — Larry King looks like defrosted meat only you forgot to turn it halfway through so one side is really hot and the other still frozen. Guess which side looks cold, and it’s yet another reason to do the interview in Florida.

9:02 — McCain hits Obama on not taking public campaign financing after saying he would. It’s a bit like setting up a pie under a box propped up by a stick with a string tied to it. Now McCain is eating the pie and saying, “It tastes good to me.” If only the pie were $50 million in public funds. Obama has roughly seven of those pies.

9:03 — McCain and King look like two old men who should be peeking out through their shades to catch someone letting their dog crap on their lawn. The paranoia is palpable.

9:04 — McCain wants copies of purported videos of Obama with former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and activist Rashid Khalidi, a professor at Columbia mind you, to be released to the general public. Not that the campaign could put it up on the Internets and let Joe Sixpack run wild with it. McCain is also looking for his copy of “Cocoon” if you see it.

9:07 — Larry King looks like he just fired Lane Kiffin using an overhead projector.

9:11 — The Straight Talk Express gets derailed when asked if McCain is hampered by Bush’s record. “Lots of people don’t have sitting presidents in their party campaign for them. The reason I’d cross the street if I saw him walking my way is he swings his arms and I don’t want to get hit.”

9:12 — McCain: “Every time I’m around [Sarah Palin] I’m uplifted.”

9:13 — McCain has about “5,000 top advisers” but that’s not the problem.

9:14 — McCain rubs his nose like Lindsay Lohan coming out of the bathroom and proceeds to tell us he has “total” confidence in Palin. Larry King responds, “I love Total cereal.”

9:26 — Coming out of two commercial breaks and a bit by CNN’s John King, we get some more of Joe the Plumber. Not quite sure of the narrative McCain wants to keep with this Joe the Plumber guy. Let’s look at it this way: McCain has blasted Obama for being too much of a celebrity a la Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. But if you were to guess which person, Obama or Joe the Plumber, is being considered for a recording contract who would it be? Perhaps he can bang on pipes. Just as long as he doesn’t get out of the car without any underwear on.

9:33 — A “teeny, teeny minority” will vote based on race, McCain says. The others will vote based on the color of the “itsy bitsy polka dot bikini”.

9:34 — When has Obama displayed a steady hand, McCain asks. Perhaps when you were stumbling around behind him and freaking out during the second debate. That’s one time.

9:36 — McCain finishes up saying he can’t complain about the media and that he’s a guy “with humble beginnings who only wanted to be a Navy pilot.” And then he held up a bowl full of kittens and softened for viewers the once hard edges of his persona.

Five days left…