That elusive virtue known as common sense finally is cropping up in Southern California.
The land of liposuction, earthquakes and $1,200 sunglasses seems, at long last, to be wising up.
Evidence of this startling turn of events comes in the upper right-hand corner of a recent full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times placed by the popular 99% Only chain of stores.
Everything at these stores–paper towels, canned tomato three-packs, baby wipes–is only . . . 99 cents.
And there in the corner of the big ad is the tell-tale evidence of sanity poking through the smog in L.A. For a mere 99 cents each, shoppers now can buy O.J. Simpson’s book, his memoir titled “I Want to Tell You.”
“But I’m Not Listening” seems to be the judgment of the citizenry, who have left the books (the ad reads: “Publisher originally tried to sell for $17.95”) gathering dust in bookstores, which have unloaded crates of the skimpy tome to the 99% Only chain.
A buyer for the stores says he bought 10,000 to 20,000 of the O.J. books, in which the then-jailed O.J. (later found not guilty of the killings) reflects on a wide range of timely issues. These include why his painful case of athlete’s foot made him suffer like the Biblical Job (p. 132) and how his jailing reminded him of the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross(p. 129).
P.S.: O.J. says he didn’t kill her.
“I Want to Tell You” was one of the first of more than 60 related books written after the June 1994 murder of Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman.
Mike Matteri, a buyer for the 99% Only chain, wouldn’t disclose how much he paid for the books, but he hinted it was around 50 cents apiece. By selling them at 99 cents, Matteri said, “We’re making a pretty good profit.”
In his book, curiously on page 99, O.J. predicts from his jail cell: “In the end, I’ll have my dignity intact.”
Now he can even put a price tag on it: 99 cents.
