A Few Words About the Sponsors

I watch a lot of television.  My motto in life is "Entertain me!"  Of course it is impossible to view as much tv as I without also taking in commercials.  Try flipping channels when a commercial starts.  Every channel you stop at will also be showing a commercial.  The bastards time these things.  For some reason, these people think we enjoy watching commercials.  They even have half hour blocks dedicated to a product; the infomercial.  "Let me set my TiVo to forever save the half hour show about the Snuggy."

Billy Mays, the king of the infomercial died over a year ago.  Yet his image is still being used in advertisement.  "You know what Billy always said..." proclaims the replacement barker.  I know how Billy died, so I can imagine what he always said.  "Save me some of that cocaine.  I have a second nostril to fill."

A current commercial has a young girl asking her mother if she has seen her favorite blouse.  The mother says no, but we then enter flashback mode and see the mother out barhopping and partying her ass off while wearing the fore-mentioned blouse.  Mom is so soused that she spills food all over the front of it.  Next we see mom retrieving the soiled blouse and washing it.  Later still, the daughter is wearing the cleaned blouse and tells mom she must have overlooked it in the back of her closet.  The product this commercial hawks is laundry detergent, but it also is telling mothers that it is okay to steal from your kids, leave them alone at night to go out drinking, and if confronted, lie your ass off.  This ad does not show the outside of the mother/daughter's home, but I bet if it did, it would be a trailer park.

I also get a kick out of "We Buy Gold" commercials.  "Are you tired of having all that gold jewelry taking up half your sock drawer? Are you constantly tripping over bars of gold in every room of your house? Well, send it to us. No need to worry about weighing it, or the price of gold being in constant flux. We'll send you the amount of cash we deem feasible. You can trust us."  Yes, I can trust faceless strangers that only means of contact is some PO Box in some unheard of part of the country.

I do have a favorite commercial.  I haven't seen it in years but it goes like this.  Man comes home from work and yells out, "Hi honey, I'm home.  What's for dinner?"  The wife, downstairs, yells back, "What's for dinner?!!  I spend the whole day mopping up this damp leaky basement and you want to know whats for dinner!  Mop water soup, that's what's for dinner..."


We now return you to your regular scheduled program...