2021 American Jiggle Machine Awards

As fall descends on Fayette County and the Christmas-present-buying season looms, it is time for me to bestow my AJM award. (Derived from the hilarious, but useless exercise machine with a wide strap for one’s posterior from the 50s. Uh, that’s the machine from the 50s, not the posterior.) Last year, it was an in-the-door ice dispenser that launched cubes across the kitchen floor, the insulated body suit for runners trying to lose weight, and the dreaded weighted blanket that almost suffocated me.

This year I’ve chosen a pair of, in my mind, completely useless new products, both of which, when donned, make their users resemble a person in a Bozo the Clown getup crashing a somber funeral procession.

The Electric Head Massager–– Helmet Type. An atheist buddy once told me, “You can pretty much tell the excessiveness of a religious sect by the goofiness of the headgear of its leaders or followers.” (Note: The Taliban don’t score well here.)

If this is universalized, the head-massager thingy is pretty, pretty problematic, as Larry David might say. What is it? Well, it resembles a Roomba vacuum cleaner you wear on your head, which, in Amazon’s words, “improves sleep disorders, headache, and relaxing.”

So, you may think “ideal Christmas present” for your spouse if you want to “improve” his or her morning headaches––as opposed to, say, asking Bubba to back off a few vodka shots while watching “America’s Got Housewives” or whatever each evening.

When I was a kid, I’d think, hey, if I pinch my wrist really hard, I won’t notice the pain from the flu shot I’m getting in my caboose. I’m guessing the head massager works like that: This helmet will press on your noggin so tightly you’ll totally forget your throbbing head. One Amazon reviewer wrote: “This product is amazing if you’re super curious to know what the last moment of a walnut feels like between the two handles of a nutcracker. Really stressful medieval contraption.”

But it’s the optics that get to me more than the spurious efficacy. Their pitch says, “You can use it at home, at work, at travel.”

Use it “at travel?” Maybe so, if “at travel” entails asking Scotty to beam you up to the Starship Enterprise. I wouldn’t advise strapping it on during takeoff on the Air Emirates red eye to Abu Dhabi.

As for “at work?” Yeah, okay, if your job is night watchman down in the bowels of the Catacombs of Paris during a blackout where nary a soul can see you. But for the normal workplace? I think if a new hire encountered her boss sporting one of these helmets, she wouldn’t exactly bubble over with confidence and optimism. Her first Pavlovian response: Spiff up the ol’ resume and log on to Monster.com.

On the helmet website, there is a photo of a pretty, young ingénue donning one of these contraptions. They want you to think she’s thinking, “Hey this is perfectly natural––nothing awkwardly weird about this at all–– and my head feels great.” But we suspect what she is really thinking, “Four years of Julliard training for a Mother Teresa role and this is the gig I’m offered? What? Meryl Streep had a conflict?”

Take it from me fellow Fayette County neighbors, this is right up there with the weighted blanket as one of the highest-ranking Jiggle Award winners. Buy this as a gift only if your only alternative is the scabrous shake weight exercise dumbbell.

The Sleep Sock (not the actual name). This one is also up there with last year’s winner, the stifling, unwashable weighted blanket. The “body sock” is a stretchy cloth tube you slither into when heading for your nightly forty winks. Picture a rat snake shedding its translucent skin. It’s like that, only the snake is wise for discarding its exoskeleton; the sleep sock wearer is––well, the opposite of wise––imprisoning herself in this straight jacket telling herself, “Shooowee, I’m sure gonna sleep better confined to this contraption.”

You ask yourself, why would anyone strap herself into a cloth sock before going nighty night? Well, turns out, one person’s confining sock is another person’s hug. They tell me the inventor/salesperson says her mother’s early death meant she lost forever her mother’s hugs. And this creepy sock thingy delivers pressure to one’s body––you know, like a mother’s hug.

The old logic teacher in me makes me think this hug analogy is a fallacy of epic proportion. A stretch about as wide as, “Let’s get out the Walmart floaties and go for a dip in Firple’s above-ground pool––you know, sorta like those folks on the Titanic did.”

The makers justify the hug metaphor, which, they tell us, is based on the “science of Deep Touch therapy.” (The caps are theirs.) Hmmm, you think–– well, if it’s SCIENCE! …. But PainScience.com tells us, “therapeutic touch … [is] culturally rich but scientifically bankrupt.”

The makers claim it calms you, “just like a hug,” which, in turns, “helps reduce anxiety.” Or, if you’re slightly claustrophobic like me, drives you up the friggin’ wall like being stuck arms-clamped-to-your-side in a sewer drain.

Some of our Fayette County citizens, they tell me, have to get up a couple of times in the night for some reason or other. How do they cope with this strangle blanket?

Turns out, they’ve put a slit in the bottom of this contraption so your feet can flop out. I suppose you could duck-walk to the bathroom. But unless you’re pretty adept at mimicking Simone Biles on a balance beam, I’d say this maneuver’s bound to result in an I’ve-fallen-and-can’t-get-up moment. And I don’t even want to think of what happens when you get to your destination.

Now, if you find yourself in possession of one of these $89.99 devices (marked down from $99.99) you might want to get a local seamstress to remove the stiches connecting the two ends of this tube contraption; so, for an extra 12 bucks you’d have a nice light-weight blanket. Or––you could go to some bigbox store and pick up one for 16 bucks or so.

It’s just my opinion, but I’d say the huggy straight jacket edges out the robot-vacuum-cleaner head massager for the American Jiggle Machine Award for 2021. And Christmas is just around the corner.

You’ll thank me.

Jim Austin lives in La Grange.