“Don’t change a hair on me, not if I care about you”, Your Extreme Valentine
Author’s program note. Men, it’s time for your annual Valentine’s Day update and reminder. Because, as you may recall, Valentine’s Day (along with your dog Pookie’s birthday) is the biggest event of your year. If you do it right (or as well as any man can do in this minefield), you’ll be like Flynn for another year; his right to nookie safe and secure for another 365 glorious days. But… if you fail at this, as you did last year and the year before, another prolonged hard time awaits you… and you know very well how difficult it will be. To avoid this fate worse than death, extreme measures are required, and these extreme measures must be taken RIGHT NOW! Men, do I have your full attention? Your Love Doctor is here for you…and my God, you know you need him.
The facts.
As we’ve discussed in years past (and many of you have attended this critical training year after year, with sadly mixed results), Valentine’s Day is a worldwide conspiracy. It first started out as the brainchild of a highly paid consultant who was given the task of selling a particularly noxious chocolate with a disgusting, disgusting taste… That didn’t bother the consultant at all; it was the kind of challenge he lived for.
Even the fact that the chocolatier couldn’t pay him even a token amount up front didn’t bother our intrepid consultant one iota. He still signed a contract that said he would receive 25% of the gross income from all new business spurred by his best ideas. In other words, he would forgo (in the best macho consultant tradition) a certain (albeit lower) pay in exchange for a huge chunk of gross receipts…and as long as he could move the disgusting chocolate that everyone hated… .would be a big winner.
Frankly, the people at the chocolate company (who also hated their product and banned it from the company’s candy machine) thought they had made the perfect deal. After all, they got the consultant to work for them for free…and gave away income that didn’t exist, probably never would. But before claiming a huge write-off and throwing the offensive games in the trash, they needed, their accountant said, to give the college a good try.
His name was Valentine…
Now our bold consultant got down to business and, being a very smart guy, the ideas flowed fast and furiously. So, after a few days, the consultant was ready to see the CEO and present the all-important concept. It turned out that this meeting was not only important for the chocolate company; it was a crucial turning point in all men’s relationships with their women…therefore launching a movement that created millions of jobs and huge corporate profits around the world.
The consultant’s name was Valentinos Kariotes… known as Val… and he is the man who set the high standards for Valentine’s Day…
Yes, it is because of this single man and his insight that the spousal rights and ecstasy of millions of unlucky men are put at risk every damn year, to reassert themselves by shelling out chocolate, making the corporate know-it-alls I dreamed of this baby ever richer.
Down to business.
Val, a straight-talking, no-nonsense, “let’s get down to business” type of person, was straight to the point. To sell the surprises that everyone recognized as disgusting, they would have to come up with a bigger idea, something huge, smart, larger than life… Here Val paused… because she knew her next words would not just sell chocolates that no one could deliver, but make millions of men line up outside the company’s packed stores to spend big bucks on a product they despise.
Before declaring what would become his permanent claim to fame, Val paused, looking around the room, to better catch his attention and keep the memory of this supreme moment forever green in his mind. then he he said
“To sell chocolates, you have to get women to tell men that the purchase of these chocolates and the size of the box will be interpreted by every girl on earth as an indication of how ardently they are desired, loved and sought after. Bottom line , the target of their advertising campaign would not be the men who would actually buy the chocolates… but the women who would ‘encourage’ them to do so, in EVERY way available to them. Yes, in EVERY way.”
Val then unveiled her first ad, a classic soon destined for the Advertising Hall of Fame. It was like this:
“The size of the box,” he would say, “indicates how much he loves you.”
The picture showed two boxes of chocolate. The five-pound box had a large black X through it. The 20-pound box was surrounded by a bright red heart with an exclamation point.
Simply amazing!
Val’s incredible idea finally gave women what they’ve always wanted, for thousands of years: a way to know, measure, even weigh how much men REALLY love them; the proof of being as easy to acquire as the simple purchase of chocolates.
“Brilliant” was the least of it.
In the life of each one of us, there come only a handful of moments of transcendence, moments of destiny, moments in which you feel immensely happy to be alive. Our man Val knew that moment that day…and when stunned executives surrounded him with their warmest congratulations, they knew it too. And they immediately increased the size of the box and the weight of their obnoxious product…because they knew immediately that Val, his son, was a genius. And so he voted unanimously to create a day named after him, Valentine’s Day, a day worth billions to love capitalists around the world. It was the least they could do. And so Val became filthy rich.
Every time a woman received a two pound box of shocks from her lover, she knew the donor was dead meat, a cheap, two-stroke thug… that she had to go out and immediately get the 20 pound box… thus passing the test of love… and making Val richer and richer. Eureka!
Of course, other companies watched this phenomenon, this cornucopia of riches, with as much attention as imaginable; Val made sure they did, because in due time, he made great deals with florists, bakery companies, every diamond supplier in the country…always with the same impressive results.
That is why you will live today like a cat on a hot tin roof, spending good money that you do not have to appease the little woman who controls your life. Make sure, too, that you sing “My Funny Valentine” the right way, the feminist way, with words about you, not her, because women have always hated this tune and its wacky sentiment.
So “I look laughable, unphotographable…” because that’s what she wants you to say, right after you’ve looked at the size of the box.
(You’ll find the inimitable “My Funny Valentine,” released in 1940, on any search engine; music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart. I prefer the original version, and the original lyrics, by Frank Sinatra.)
