A TwoFer - TV Commercials I Have Memorized and Learned to Hate and Other Thoughts on the Media

TUESDAY, MAY 18, 2010


A TwoFer - TV Commercials I Have Memorized and Learned to Hate and Other Thoughts on the Media

You have too much time on your hands and are watching way too much television the day you realize you have memorized the entire script of several old movies, many commercials and the ‘one eight hundred number’ of truly obnoxious commercials! These are not the commercials that would ever need to be memorized.

These ones though are somehow stored somewhere deep in my memory banks. The response is immediate as the stimulus appears on the screen or anywhere within earshot. It is like salivating when the bell rings or even worse… it is like THAT song running through your brain for days at a time.

You would hope it was something that just once you could enjoy. But NO! It is your parents’ Irish Rovers album on a continuous loop; or one particularly catchy Harry Belefonte song that keeps repeating over and over and over in your subconscious. There is no way to turn the volume down. The longer it plays, the louder it gets. This is how they should teach children what ‘increase geometrically’ really means. Some of your intimate friends take joy in being the stimulus and walk around humming these songs in your presence. This is the sign of either a truly great friend or a most pernicious enemy. Just a few bars can make your brain feel like it has Ebola and will collapse in a wet gooey mass of gray stuff.

Television commercials are far worse than music. For the truly fortunate, they only pop up if the television is on or when someone mentions them in casual conversation. For those not so lucky… well, let’s try our best not to get into that because I do not want to have to apologize for this concrete example of how small talk can become deadly. Reported on the evening news: Billy Mays commercial causes people in the O'Hare boarding lounge to go Postal.

It’s not “Where’s the Beef?” or just a single line from a commercial. Instead, it is the whole ball of wax. From the second the dead guy starts screaming until the mute button is engaged on the remote. For those lucky, the sound stops when it is muted. The problem is when the sound often does not stop. The shouting continues well after the button is mashed. Do hearing impaired people see text running across their retinas when the closed captioning is turned off? Do they see rows and rows of exclamation points?

I hear the exact accent, the pitch and sound of the announcer, the music in the background in my mind. I assume that this happens to other people. Since I am not clairvoyant I am not certain of that. In one way I hope it does, but in the larger scheme of things I wish for sanity in our world and hope that it does not.

Sometimes it is not just a commercial. Entire shows can be embedded deep in the memory banks and recalled if the wrong channel button is entered on the remote. Just how many times can Anthony Bourdain go to Thailand? If he goes back would somebody please change the menu!

The History Channel is one of the worst. Not just repeating a show every once in a while; they add insult to injury. They manage to do this two or three time in a single day. It is not like I am ever going to start worrying about whether or not the history is going to change. Is Lee going to accept Grant’s surrender? George Washington’s troops will always successfully retreat from Manhattan. Won’t they? That is why they call it history. DUH. No number of reruns are going to make ancient history tonite’s news. It is far worse when no amount of repetition of tonite’s news, does not make it ancient history. Are there any blonde women in America that Tiger did not have sex with?

If you broke down and bought the Blue-Ray, DVD, or if you sent your credit card number to Steve so he could debit it and downloaded a movie to your iPod or iPad; you can be in just as bad a shape.

I am not the only one that knows ALL the dialogue of ‘You’ve Got Mail’. Seriously, someone bought me the DVD because the VCR tape was getting worn out. Enabler! I only need to see Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan to get started: “The Godfather answers all of life’s questions. What to pack for a trip? “Leave the gun, take the cannolis.” ” OR Kathleen Kelly: “The truth is, he was the one who made me start thinking about writing” Joe Fox: “Mister 152 Felony Indictments” Kathleen Kelly: “Mister 152... insights into my soul.” Joe Fox: “Yeah. Well. Can't compete with that.”

I wonder if the old monks in the monastery got that same way when a novitiate was reading the Psalms during meals. I can see the tonsured guy with his gruel dribbling down his chin, a thought bubble above his head, looking at the reader with the caption in it: “May you burn in Hell! Another damn Rerun!”

I can’t remember where I first herd “Repetition, repetition, repetition.” Seriously, I still hear the voice in my head and I constantly hear that coming from somewhere deep in my brain. I think it might be time to see if something else is on a different channel. Woe is me if Tony is on and still so enthusiastic about a cuisine that is hot enough to make my hiney hurt just watching someone else eat it.

I am going to see if I can have my friend perform brain surgery and get some of this stuff outta my head. Maybe I am just sick. A summer cold is a different animal.

Maybe it’s just time to crank up the DVD and slam the disk in.

"I hoped it was you... I really hoped it was you."


“I wouldn’t let him.”
“Why not?”
“I should be enough.”
“I did not know how long we had together. Who does?”