Woot : One Day, One Deal (SM)

Just in time to help you kill the few remaining minutes of the work week, we’ve collected most of our superhilarious videos in one convenient place: youtube.com/wootchannel.

Now, instead of having to scour our blog for old videos, you can easily click from the one about Las Vegas to the one about the guy who launched the screaming monkey rocket to the one about the Superman Inflato-Suit to the complete three-part Mortimer & Monte series. Think how much time you’ll waste!

If this brand of tawdry entertainment is your bag, you might be glad to know we’ve got more movies on the way. Whenever we get a break between our regular responsibilities, we pop into the editing room for some privacy while we grunt and strain and try our best to move the next video down the pipeline. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and you’ll be among the first to know when we finally squeeze one out!

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So we were watching this Alaska Nanooks’ super-bitchin’ video intro for the 2010 hockey season, which you might have seen, as it’s making the rounds...

and something occurred to us...

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Now that we’ve been back in the real world for a while, we can finally start to process some of the strange and fantastic sights we saw at the Consumer Electronics Show in that arid Oz called Las Vegas. Some of them. Others of them were too horrible to ever think of again, though they’ll probably haunt our nightmares forever.

For those of you couldn’t be there, we’ve put together a short video showcase of a few of the highlights from the convention floor—set to music, for no particularly good reason. Enjoy, if possible, and see if you can’t almost smell the funk of despair!

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We knew the last day of CES was going to be slow when we got off the monorail (monoraaaaail) and saw even the “help the homeless” panhandler for charity had decided not to show. The guy wore a clerical collar when we saw him on previous days, though, so maybe on Sundays he has another engagement.

Not pictured: Panhandlin’ parson

Fortunately, there were lots of restorative therapies to sample, like these massage chairs just opposite the Woot booth...

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I wanted to show you this really cute desktop-sized grocery cart I saw at CES. I knew you’d like it. It was so cute. Can’t you imagine a homeless squirrel using it to push one beer can at a time to the redemption center? Or you could just keep rubber bands in it or something.

It was advertised as “look[ing] and feel[ing] just like the real thing,” but I don’t know if I’d go that far. All four wheels worked, for one thing. That kind of kills the verisimilitude right there.

Unfortunately, I only have one shot of it, because the lady tending the booth, when she saw me pointing my camera, told me photographs were prohibited. This is a surprisingly common policy among CES exhibitors, and I don’t understand what the deal is. Are they worried about industrial espionage or something? Are their products not at the show so people will… what’s the word? SEE them? I know pretty much nothing about business, but if I had any trade secrets, my inclination would be not to exhibit them at the country’s biggest trade show.

Besides, if I wanted to knock off this tiny shopping cart manufacturer’s idea for a tiny shopping cart, I wouldn’t need a picture of it. I could just use a picture of a regular-sized shopping cart from farther away. (An ingenious scheme!) It must be something else they’re worried about, though I don’t know what.

The lady was totally pleasant and polite about it, I hasten to add. And the way she phrased the prohibition was telling. She said “sorry, they don’t want people taking pictures.” I don’t know who “they” are, but as anyone who’s ever worked at trench level in any job knows, the people who make up boneheaded policies are almost never the same people who have to carry them out. Or they’d probably know better.

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Our time in Vegas isn’t quite finished, but I think we can say we’ve seen the nastiest breakfast of the trip. This is why it’s not always a good idea to give people choices. Our own Jason Toon makes the kind of buffet selections that an unsupervised seven-year-old child might. Observe his total irreverence for what some call the most important meal of the day:

Yeah, you saw that right. There was yogurt, fruit cocktail and scrambled eggs on offer, but Jason had a hankering, first thing in the morning, for nachos and donuts. Take a moment to swallow your gorge.

The reason they have stuff like nachos available at breakfast time is because for a lot of people the buffet line is the last stop after an all-night Vegas-style party, before they finally turn in. You’re not supposed to start your morning with them. This plate was like a squad of culinary shock troops kicking in the doors of Jason’s day. Yech.

Woot's CES 2010 coverage is the most important meal of the day... for your mind, man.

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The Buttkicker silent (but not, as far as we can tell, deadly) subwoofer is designed to vibrate your sittin’ parts while you watch videos so you can “feel the intensity” of such programs as, oh, let’s say just for example the officially licensed Buttkicker NASCAR DVD “Maximum Velocity.”

As you can see, their promotional materials claim the system will “bring the race into your home.” We challenge our readers to think of anything they’d hate worse to have in their homes than a NASCAR race. Maybe a dirty bomb? Maybe two tons of live bait? Maybe Nancy Grace?

Compounding our skepticism about the Buttkicker: We’re unaware of any studies on the long-term effects of its use on reproductive health.

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I’m pretty sure the “what happens in Vegas” slogan is supposed to refer to vice and debauchery, but the Woot team doesn’t really roll like that. Sure, one of us (I’m not saying whom) has had chocolate cake for breakfast every morning at the casino buffet, but if that makes your list of darkest secrets, you’ve led a pretty clean life.

I did check out one thing on this trip, though, that there’s no way I’m telling my wife about: The Maplock GPS anti-theft tether.

See, she’s plenty obsessed with GPS system security already. No matter where we park, it could be Philadelphia’s meanest street or inside my parents’ garage in Pleasanttown, USA, my wife is convinced the place is crawling with GPS system thieves. It’s not enough for her to just stash the unit; she also has to wipe the suction-print off the inside of the windshield. That gives it away, see!

I told my tale to George, who was manning the Maplock booth, and who, totally unsurprisingly, enthusiastically sided with my ol’ lady. “You know, she’s right,” he said, and directed my attention to a looping promotional video designed to inflame GPS system owners’ paranoia.

I suppose she probably is right. It’s usually the case. But this time, that fact’s staying in Vegas.

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What, exactly, it had to do with Xbox 360s, we don’t know. What we do know is that when a button says “Touch Me,” we touch. It made us feel just like Alice, with those instructions she got on her magic snack cakes. We didn’t shrink, though; we triggered a light show. And dope beats.

There were similar buttons all over the walls of this Xbox sound cavern, and when someone pressed another one, a different instrument would join in, like that part in “Dance to the Music” by Sly and the Family Stone, when various band members add a little guitar, organ, et cetera. The result: A sublime moment of musical collaboration.

Scott Drops Tha Funky Beats from Woot Video on Vimeo.

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If you haven’t already, come by our area at CES to say hi and snag a screaming monkey. But hurry! They’re going fast, thanks to our pals Nathan and Jay, who’ve made a game out of trying to land these screeching simians atop the electrical box on the wall opposite our booth.

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