Sky Captain and the Mall of Tomorrow

SkyMall: the perfect catalog for lazy and/or tacky people with huge amounts of disposable income. Let's make fun of it yet again, shall we?



This is - absolutely without question - the ugliest fucking thing I have ever seen in my life. The ugliest watch, anyway. "Most unique?" Unique in how terrible it is, sure. Polymer clay beads with faces painted on? Who the fuck thought of this? This is like the sort of thing where your kid makes you a horrible clay bead bracelet in art class and brings it home for you to wear. And you go, "Oh, sweetie, it's wonderful!" And then you wear it in front of them once, and then you hide it in a drawer for the rest of eternity. Because it's fucking horrible. And now they want you to pay $59 for it. This might be the biggest insult to the intelligence ever to appear in SkyMall.



"Five simple rules for living." And the first one is: "Live." If it went on to be like, "Breathe," "Eat," and "Drink Enough Water," maybe I'd buy it. Also, the fifth rule is: "Life." What the hell? First of all, that's not a verb; second of all, even if it were, it implies the same thing as "Live." I almost feel like this wasn't supposed to be five rules and the copywriter just fucked it up. Either way, I can't imagine that anyone who actually needed to be reminded of these little truisms would ever hang this kitschy piece of shit in their house at all, much less for $120.



Learn how to play the guitar... by not learning how to play the guitar. I'm not one of those guys who gets all whiny about "Guitar Hero" and complains that if you're going to spend all that time you should learn how to play a real guitar. But you know what? If you're going to spend all that time with a real guitar, maybe you should learn how to play it. Instead, this turns a real guitar into "Guitar Hero," except without the benefit of having thousands of screaming CGI fans. Who are you going to impress with this? If there was someone walking around at a party with this thing, I'd give them "just one finger." See if you can guess which.



Even more unabashed laziness. "Too tired to shake a glass back and forth? Do we have the product for you!" If you're not capable of shaking your own martini, you probably shouldn't be drinking one.



"It's D.I.Y. for D.U.I.?" I don't think those are quite the abbreviations you wanted. "Help yourself drive drunk using this classy device, which merely tells you if you're likely to be arrested if pulled over!" It's worth noting that there's probably very little difference between a "legal" BAC of, say, .072, and the United States limit of .08 when it comes to slowed reactions behind the wheel. So I can't say I'm really okay with this thing giving you a sanction to drive under the influence. Oh, but it says at the bottom: "Remember: Never drink and drive." Of course! Because there are... other reasons I would need to know my BAC? "Just curious, man, you know."

I also love that the device records up to 0.40, which in addition to being five times the legal limit is considered to be the median lethal dose for alcohol. If that number is appearing on the screen, there's almost no chance you're going to be able to read it; you probably wouldn't even have been able to blow into the device without passing out.



Yes, help keep your bags from being stolen by making them too embarrassing for anyone else to take!

Airport Guard: Sir, is that your bag?
Man: Of course.
Airport Guard: The one that says "Who are you calling an old bag?" on the side?
Man: Oh. Oh FUCK. No. That is not my bag.
Airport Guard: You just said...
Man: I was trying to steal it, okay? Look, just arrest me. I'd rather go to jail than have you think I bought and used that piece of shit.