{"id":5062,"date":"2011-08-21T01:09:19","date_gmt":"2011-08-21T09:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=5062"},"modified":"2020-09-25T05:16:15","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T12:16:15","slug":"bad-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=5062","title":{"rendered":"Bad Pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While looking for information on the physical specifications of <a href=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/gahoon.jpg\">the gahoon<\/a>, I ran across mention of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xaphoon.com\/\">the Maui Xaphoon<\/a> and of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xaphoon.com\/pocketsax.html\">the Maui Xaphoon Pocket Sax<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xaphoon.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/xaphoon.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=323\" height=\"217\" style=\"border: 0 ; display: block ; margin-top: 1em ; margin-bottom: 1em ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ;\" \/><\/a> Now, a pocket saxophone <em>could<\/em> be a good thing, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xaphoon.com\/\">the marketing by Maui Xaphoon<\/a> indicates how it could become a <em>social ill<\/em>:<\/p> <blockquote><a href=\"http:\/\/www.xaphoon.com\/\">It will bring you JOY &mdash; Imagine being able to create a sense of community wherever you are &mdash; at a bus stop, in a cave, waiting in line, even a parking garage!<\/a><\/blockquote> <p>Yeah, <em>imagine<\/em>.  Imagine innocent people stuck at the bus stop, spelunking in the Sand Cave, queued at the <abbr title=\"Department of Motor Vehicles\">DMV<\/abbr>, or just trying to get to or from their cars, and some <em>g_dd_mn'd would-be pied piper<\/em> tries to horn them into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xaphoon.com\/XaphoonSheetMusic\/02%20-%20Kumbaya.mid\">a <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">community<\/span><\/a> to end the loneliness of his here-to-fore <em>friendless<\/em> existence.<\/p> <p>(<abbr title=\"by the way\">BTW<\/abbr>, if you don't want to pay <abbr title=\"United States\">US<\/abbr>$57.95 or more for a pocket saxophone, then consider <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=t4QAHf6K1i4\">flubberjibbel's <abbr title=\"do-it-yourself\">DIY<\/abbr> pocket saxophone<\/a>.  Just don't try to rope me into some <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">community<\/span> with it.)<\/p> <p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder ; font-variant: small-caps ;\">Up-Date<\/span> (2020:09\/25)<span style=\"font-weight: bolder ;\">:<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/xaphoon.com\/collections\/all\">The Maui Xaphoon products pages<\/a> have moved, and <a href=\"https:\/\/xaphoon.com\/products\/maui-xaphoon-pocket-sax-classic-black\">the lowest list price of a The Maui Xaphoon Pocket Sax is now $65<\/a>. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=t4QAHf6K1i4\">The <abbr title=\"do-it-yourself\">DIY<\/abbr> video to which I linked parenthetically<\/a> was made private, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/results?search_query=diy+pocket+saxophone\">a search of YouTube<\/a> finds other videos for <abbr title=\"do-it-yourself\">DIY<\/abbr> pocket saxophones.)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While looking for information on the physical specifications of the gahoon, I ran across mention of the Maui Xaphoon and of the Maui Xaphoon Pocket Sax.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[164,6,4],"tags":[1048,1047,1046],"class_list":["post-5062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-commentary","category-public","tag-pocket-sax","tag-pocket-saxophone","tag-xaphoon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5062"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11411,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions\/11411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}