Ron Popeil, the American inventor and TV pitchman behind the Pocket Fisherman and so much more crap you never knew you wanted, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit, providing ample opportunity to underemployed smartasses to sass the Ronco entrepreneur. One example:

Question:

It is true you invented the technology to keep heads alive in jars, but just haven’t released it yet?

The Real Ron Popeil:

Still working on it! Send me your address so I can have someone come pick up your head.•

An excerpt from “The Pitchman,” Malcolm Gladwell’s thoroughly enjoyable 2000 New Yorker profile of a guy who is always fishing:

In the last thirty years, Ron has invented a succession of kitchen gadgets, among them the Ronco Electric Food Dehydrator and the Popeil Automatic Pasta and Sausage Maker, which featured a thrust bearing made of the same material used in bulletproof glass. He works steadily, guided by flashes of inspiration. This past August, for instance, he suddenly realized what product should follow the Showtime Rotisserie. He and his right-hand man, Alan Backus, had been working on a bread-and-batter machine, which would take up to ten pounds of chicken wings or scallops or shrimp or fish fillets and do all the work–combining the eggs, the flour, the breadcrumbs–in a few minutes, without dirtying either the cook’s hands or the machine. “Alan goes to Korea, where we have some big orders coming through,” Ron explained recently over lunch–a hamburger, medium-well, with fries–in the V.I.P. booth by the door in the Polo Lounge, at the Beverly Hills Hotel. ‘I call Alan on the phone. I wake him up. It was two in the morning there. And these are my exact words: “Stop. Do not pursue the bread-and-batter machine. I will pick it up later. This other project needs to come first.” The other project, his inspiration, was a device capable of smoking meats indoors without creating odors that can suffuse the air and permeate furniture. Ron had a version of the indoor smoker on his porch–”a Rube Goldberg kind of thing” that he’d worked on a year earlier–and, on a whim, he cooked a chicken in it. “That chicken was so good that I said to myself”–and with his left hand Ron began to pound on the table–”This is the best chicken sandwich I have ever had in my life.” He turned to me: “How many times have you had a smoked-turkey sandwich? Maybe you have a smoked- turkey or a smoked-chicken sandwich once every six months. Once! How many times have you had smoked salmon? Aah. More. I’m going to say you come across smoked salmon as an hors d’oeuvre or an entrée once every three months. Baby-back ribs? Depends on which restaurant you order ribs at. Smoked sausage, same thing. You touch on smoked food”–he leaned in and poked my arm for emphasis–”but I know one thing, Malcolm. You don’t have a smoker.”•

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“As seen on TV.”