Fleur De Los

Watching the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien on Hulu, I saw an ad for Goodwill Industries of America. It showed a pink flamingo; pink, fuzzy dice; a pair of legs wearing pink heels and pink-and-black striped socks. The tag-line at the end prompts viewers to “Free your stuff” and donate. I couldn’t find a clip of it - which is weird, makes me think I’m the only person to ever see it - but I found the video above, which only is partially a complete fucking waste of time and bandwidth.

I remember my mother doing this when I was a kid. Every year she’d ask what I did and didn’t want out of my old toys (This sucked being a kid — I wanted it all, all the time) and then she’d put them in a paper bag with a purple heart drawn on it. I thought it was to benefit kids who couldn’t afford new toys. I was wrong. And this commercial just made me think of how crappy most of the toys I gave away were and how crappy the things were in the commercial.

I had some joke about how stupid Goodwill’s new tag line really was; “Please, help the unfortunate people of this country that can’t afford to buy extraneous crap by donating your used and unwanted extraneous crap.” God, I’m so fucking witty. I haven’t even been to a Goodwill Store and I came up with that. Comedy is so easy.

But then I looked up Goodwill. They don’t take your crap and distribute it, they sell it. Online even. They’re like Salvation Army. I shop at Salvation Army all the time. That shit is great. This one time I got a mirror, a “Happy Hour” carved-wood chalkboard and 8×10 faux-prints for the “Grass Skirt Grill” and the “Coconut Café” for just $30 bucks! And — wait, where was I … ?