You are what you watch

I'm a little concerned about what the television commercials that air during the shows that I've been watching mean about me. Especially, when it comes to cable television where there's a lot of target marketing by companies looking for a cutrate way to hit their likely customers.

For instance, I was watching a rerun of "The Jeffersons"...before you say anything, it was a flashback episode and anyone that can resist a little peak into the lives of George and Weezy before they moved on up has some sort of genetic deficiency. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice that there seemed to be numerous firms that thought that I might have a structured settlement from a lawsuit, but still might be in economic crisis and willing to sell the monthly payments to them for a lump sum payment. I'm not sure that I'm truly the target for the ad since a) I don't actually have a structured settlement and b) I'm smart enough to realize that the lump sum payment that they're offering is significantly less than the actual value of the settlement.

I've also found that frequently cable television believes that I am a female with acne that hasn't taken advantage of the advances in blemish medication that ProActiv has made. While I appreciate what they've done for the likes of Jessica Simpson, I'm still not sure that they were aiming for me.

Maybe the problem is that I'm watching shows that I'm not supposed to be watching. Maybe that's because, when I do watch television, I frequently have difficulty deciding what to watch. Realistically, if you were an advertiser trying to get my attention, you would put an add on the programming "Guide" that I continuously scroll through trying to find something of interest. That's how the Pay-Per-View movie people end up with a chunk of my money every month. You'd have just as much success putting advertising on the DVR menu screen. I tend to stare at that a lot as well.

I'm not saying that I have a problem with the bad advertising -- well, maybe with the structured settlement people...that seems kind of unethical and slimy -- I've always had an affinity for bad commercials.

I'm old enough that I remember when the UHF stations were the domain of "As Seen on TV" advertising. (If you don't understand the terminology, for God's sake, that's what Wikipedia is for.) To this day, I harbor a grudge that I was never able to buy a set of Ginsu knives. I try to get Casey to say into his toy microphone, "Hey, good looking, we'll be back to pick you up later!" And, I'm one of about 15 people that got the joke in Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything" that referenced a late night ad for a soul music compliation.

Really, I actually am a sucker for the Time Life series infomercials. Many is the time that my wife has been perplexed as she's entered the room to find me watching a half-hour infomercial hosted by the likes of Billy Dee Williams or John Sebastian or the two guys that are still playing as America hawking some music collection or other. I find it somehow soothing to watch 10 second snippets of old songs being lip-synched to on "Ed Sullivan," or "American Bandstand, " or "Hullabaloo." I don't even minded the stilted sales pitch that always includes something like, "A generation of performers stepped forward to put their mark on the musical landscape and change the way that we listened to pop music forever." And, then they cut to a clip of Herman's Hermits or Gerry and the Pacemakers, putting much more significance on the role of "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter" to the British Invasion than I probably would.

Perhaps I should just stick to that and leave my viewing of old television shows to my various DVD box sets (although I'm still stuck without "Happy Days" or "The Dick Van Dyke" show sets, so there's only so much that I can do there).

But, at least I'll know who to call if my dumbass lawyer ever agrees to have a $500,000 settlement spread out over five years of monthly payments.