{"id":662,"date":"2015-03-19T07:30:55","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T14:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=662"},"modified":"2015-03-19T07:30:55","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T14:30:55","slug":"in-pursuit-of-high-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=662","title":{"rendered":"In Pursuit of High Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chair\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Jack Edwards<\/p>\n

Guys like fast, exciting things.\u00a0 Astute advertisers, even non-astute advertisers, in fact, even advertisers with IQs just below that of the average tube of toothpaste know this.\u00a0 That is why they like to claim, for example, that their product can rocket from zero to 60 miles per hour in under one-tenth of a second.\u00a0 We love to buy things like this, even if we (those of us not currently in jail) never have the nerve to test whether the claim is true.\u00a0 We just want to brag to our friends about it.\u00a0 We love \u201chigh performance\u201d products.\u00a0 We don\u2019t want a car, we want a high performance car.\u00a0 Even if it\u2019s a minivan, dagnabbit, we want a high performance minivan, despite the fact that we know in our hearts that by the time we pull it out of our garage for the first time, its interior will be soaked with grape juice and coated with discarded fruit roll-ups (never mind any bodily fluids). \u00a0Nevertheless, even guys have their limits, and I hit mine last week like a gnat smacking a windshield.<\/p>\n

One of my few peculiarities is that although I do not live in Los Angeles, and I have never lived in Los Angeles, and in a good year I might visit Los Angeles once, I subscribe to Los Angeles Magazine<\/em>.\u00a0 This allows me to be a \u201chip\u201d insider when I do venture to the City of Angels.\u00a0 Anyway, this month, I\u2019m sitting in my reading room (with its distinct porcelain d\u00e9cor) flipping through the pages of this month\u2019s edition, when I see an ad depicting an attractive woman sitting in a chair looking extremely relaxed, in fact, almost comatose.\u00a0 Above her picture is the following ad copy (This is an EXACT QUOTE, you know I wouldn\u2019t lie to you.\u00a0 Well, I would, but I\u2019m not lying about this): \u201cLaunching [insert company name I don\u2019t want to get sue by], the world\u2019s first performance recliner.\u201d\u00a0 There you have it folks.\u00a0 It\u2019s a Performance Recliner.\u00a0 And, apparently, the World\u2019s First.\u00a0 So get ready for all the copycats to put their<\/em> recliners on NASA\u2019s launch pad and shoot their recliners off into the ad world.<\/p>\n

Where they found the strength not to call it a High<\/em> Performance Recliner, I\u2019ll never know.\u00a0 But I know this – they thought about it.\u00a0 They sat in their conference room sipping coffee, staring intently at one another, and seriously considered calling it a High<\/em> Performance Recliner.<\/p>\n

Further down in the paragraph, they toss in the word \u201cdynamic,\u201d as if the chair is capable of leaping up and running the 40 yard dash in under 4.5 seconds. Now to be fair, it\u2019s a beautiful chair, and as the woman reclining in it so aptly demonstrates, obviously extremely comfortable.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the use of the word \u201cperformance\u201d sends out a signal.\u00a0 And that signal is: I can\u2019t afford it.\u00a0 Not only can I not afford it, the Los Angeles City Code prohibits me from going within two blocks of the store unaccompanied by a wealthy relative.\u00a0 Short of cashing out my 401K, this performance recliner will never replace my tattered (but extremely loyal) BarcaLounger. All I can do is hope that in next month\u2019s edition of Los Angeles Magazine, some equally savvy manufacturer decides to advertise a performance product that I might be able to afford.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking something along the lines of \u201cperformance gym socks.\u201d\u00a0 Now, I\u2019m not saying I could buy more than one pair of performance gym socks, but at least the next time I visit LA, I could feel like I\u2019m in the \u201cmix\u201d with all the other hip big city shoppers casually displaying the decadent lifestyle to which I have become accustom.\u00a0 At least in regard to my one new pair of socks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jack Edwards Guys like fast, exciting things.\u00a0 Astute advertisers, even non-astute advertisers, in fact, even advertisers with IQs just below that of the average tube of toothpaste know this.\u00a0 That is why they like to claim, for example, that their product can rocket from zero to 60 miles per hour in under one-tenth of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=662 http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=662","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[18,485,532,486,487,484],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-funny","tag-high-performance","tag-humor","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angles-magazine","tag-performance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}