This is Vince Offer. He is best known as ShamWow Vince, lesser known as SlapChop Vince, and all but forgotten as the writer, director, and star of The Underground Comedy Movie. According to this press release from Square One Entertainment, a company owned by Vince, he is also a former Scientologist who sued the church for attempting to destroy his movie and his livelihood.

But anyway, I saw this post on Skepchick show up on the front page of reddit the other day. I don’t know what it says that I’m skeptical of a webpage called skepchick (maybe I just don’t trust women), but I have some issues with their story. They’re saying that, because Vince is fighting Scientology, you should buy a Shamwow to support his fight. My problem is that they don’t have any source that shows any connection between Shamwow and Vince’s lawsuit against Scientology (Journalism school FTW!). In fact, the only real source for this whole article appears to be this blog post from ESPN Milwaukee and the aforementioned press release, which was released more than four years ago by Vince’s own company. I’ve done a little bit of looking around, and aside from this slate column, there really isn’t much out there about Vince.  I’m on the look out for more information, but until I see something definite, I’m inclined to take the whole idea of ShamWows supporting the fight against Scientology with 20x its weight in salt.

(The whole Scientology thing just sounds frivolous. Look at the timeline: Vince was charged by Scientology in 1997. He sued the Farrelly brother for stealing scenes from his movie in 1998. Underground Comedy Movie was released in 1999. He sued Anna Nicole Smith for backing out of a role in the film in 2000. He didn’t sue Scientology until 2004. Why does he wait seven years to file a lawsuit? Why does he go after Anna Nicole Smith and the Farrelly Brothers first? Why did no other stories ever come out about the lawsuit? It just doesn’t add up to me.)

But, regardless of his thoughts on scientology, that did get me thinking about Vince. Maybe, despite his uncanny resemblance to the Geico Gecko, Vince Offer is actually one of the most brilliant examples of commercial-comedy for our generation. Sound crazy? Well, it is. But you might enjoy the argument.

Based on the little there is to know about Vince, he used to have his own cable access comedy show in Los Angeles. This, by relatively the same nature of argument that makes me a journalist because I publish my own site, makes Vince a comedian. He also produced his own comedy film, which generally ranks in the bottom of both critic- and user-based polls as one of the worst movies of all time, and was able to push over 100,000 units by hawking it on late-night TV.

According to the press release, Scientology ruined his career and he was forced into selling vegetable choppers at swap meets until he was able to form his own company and start producing infomercials to sell them. Interestingly, Square One Entertainment, the same company behind Underground Comedy Movie, also handles sales of both the ShamWow and the SlapChop. Seeing as I just called out Skepchick for not naming their sources, I’ll explain that my only basis for that assertion is that the “customer service” link on both products pages links to the email address “ronny@squareoneent.com” (emphasis mine). www. Squareoneent.com isn’t an actual webpage, but I’ll have to assume that the email address works and that the company is Square One Entertainment. (There’s also a German company called Square One Entertainment, which mostly just distributes German-language translations of American films. There doesn’t seem to be any connection.)

So, why does a company with “Entertainment” in its name produce infomercials? It’s entirely possible that this was the name the company settled on when they were still in the movie business, and they elected not to change it when they began selling towels and slicers. That wouldn’t be too surprising, as a quick google search turns up a couple of different companies based in the US called “Square One Productions” (the most logical alternative I can think of to “Square One Entertainment”).

But, (and here’s where I’m going to veer into purely speculative theories) what if the ShamWow and the SlapChop are both just part of one of the most elaborate comedy sketches ever developed? The first time I ever saw the ShamWow ad, I actually thought it was a joke. It seemed like a David Cross sketch from Mr. Show. I eventually came to accept it as real, but everything I’ve read on the ad points to the humorous nature of the whole thing, to Vince’s seemingly condescending behavior towards the audience and the crew, and to the general over the top nature of Vince himself. But look at the SlapChop ad (I’m putting both Vince ads at the bottom of this post, if you haven’t seen them already). He’s now making the kinds of jokes (“you’re going to love my nuts”) that the sort of guy who would write, direct and star in a movie that aimed to be as offensive as possible would pick up on immediately, especially considering that chopping testicles apart with a vegetable chopper would, evidently, be right in line with the humor of his film (bear in mind, he also apparently runs the company that sells SlapChop). You can’t explain that away with anything but an deliberate double-entendre.

So, my theory (and again, this is all pure speculation. I don’t have anything to back this part up other than my own bored imagination) is that this guy Vince Offer releases a movie in 1999 that everyone hates because it’s so offensive that it forgets to be funny, and is more or less never heard from again.  Until, of course, 2008, when he suddenly shows up on TV selling ShamWows and SlapChops, two products that, by his own admission (“beware of imitators”) have more or less existed before. He sells them using an obnoxious persona that most people mistake for parody. He slowly begins to veer into more bizarre and crude humor (if two examples are enough to prove a trend) on national television, similar to what was done in his previously hated movie. He slowly gains the acclaim that was denied of his previous comedy work, because now they’re not hating Vince Offer, they’re hating ShamWow Vince, the douchebag TV sales guy.

So I ask again, is this the dawn of one of the most bizarre and brilliantly deranged comedy acts in history? Probably not, but watch these ads again, only try to imagine them showing up in the middle of an episode of Kids in the Hall or something, complete with laugh track (which would, I admit, be a bit like assuming that the freecreditreport.com band was actually a well-established musical act performing a series of commercial jingles as some kind of high art concept album–in other words, The Who Sell Out):

See what I mean? No, I didn’t think so. But hey, Vince Offer secretly being a genius of avant-garde comedy is probably more likely than the $20 you spend on ShamWows going to fight the Church of Scientology.