Project Mayhem

Happy Valentine’s Day is an oxymoron. More relationships are destroyed by that holiday than fostered. According to the National Retail Federation, consumers spend about $14 billion annually on Valentine’s Day. Compare that to the roughly 50-percent divorce rate and you get an estimated $7 billion being flushed down the toilet along with the periodic wedding ring. Seven BILLION dollars, roughly seven times the Gross National Income of Belize, where these folks could be vacationing had that not wasted their cash on someone they were going to dump or someone who was planning to dump them.But, I digress; the worthiness of Valentine’s Day is not the focus of this ProjectMayhem rant. Rather, it is the greeting cards that surround it. Nearly 200 million Valentine’s Day greeting cards are exchanged every year, each with its own excruciatingly cute, trite, staid and forced poetic prose. Though they try to be, they are not, funny, they are not romantic, they are not warm and they are definitely are not touching. I get the image of a blue-haired team of greeting-card writers wildly giggling to themselves as they create such winners as the card I saw with two monkeys on the front and an inside punch line reading, “It’s Valentine’s Day, Let’s Monkey Around.” No, God, please. Or, the one in the “contemporary” section that read, “You Make My Heart Bling.” Kill me. I knew I missed my calling, I should have been a Valentine’s Day greeting-card writer: “You Make My Heart Go Sizzle … Fo Shizzle!” Yeah, that’s cool. Can you dig, yo?
The more borderline-romantic these displays of faux creativity get, the more painful they become. Card Cover: “Look at you, standing there reading this Valentine’s Day card, looking so irresistibly, so oh-my-God gorgeous.” Inside Card: “I know it’s not polite to stare, but don’t ever expect me to stop.” What the …? That’s so cute … Grandpa. (I can’t help but think of the weird uncle in every family who thinks he’s funny and snort-laughs at his own jokes. No one thinks he’s funny, but, you know, he’s your uncle.) And then there are the cards that sound so horrifically stale, they could be script material for “Leave it to Beaver.” Ward Clever: “Who says opposites attract, June? After all, look at us, we’re both perfect and we get along great.” [Cue laugh track.]

But, somebody’s buying these things. I monitored the Valentine’s Day greeting card section in the store for a few minutes, before store security got nervous and started doing walk-bys. (It is Los Angeles, after all.) People seemed to be fairly receptive to the crap they were reading; a few chuckles here and there and one straight-out guffaw! I imagine these are the same people who keep the sales reps for The Clapper, busy. We were in a Walgreen’s, so… I watched one woman pick up and point down one particular card two or three times. She left without buying it, but I just had to know. I meandered over, the security detail shadowing me. On the cover was a cuddling African American couple with a flowery inscription reading, “Our Love is Forever.” Inside: “I love you, baby. Then. Now. Happy Valentine’s Day.” There’s a decision, here?

Feeling at this point that I better buy something or my image would be posted on Walgreen’s watch-list, I randomly pulled a card from the aisle-long display of Valentine’s Day cards and proceeded to the counter. I read it as I walked. Cover: “To my wife: (I’m not married) With love to you as always, and love as never before. Love to you today, my love, and love forevermore.” As I walked toward the checkout counter, I deftly slipped the offending card next to the Preparation H in aisle four.

Here’s a thought: Divorce cards. Laugh if you will, but there’s $7 billion-worth of potential profits out there.