Returning to the Game In Progress...After a Brief Commercial Break

Recently I was visiting another local establishment in East Meadow that serves food and drink (emphasis on the libations, light on the feast) after returning from another hard day of toil at work.

This particular place has a huge visual and audio entertainment system that receives various sports broadcasts from all over the planet, conveniently placed at each of the four corners of this business, which leaves the patrons time to converse as they crane their necks awkwardly every few minutes, which will undoubtedly lead to an increase in chiropractic care over the next few months.

Now I do not want to step on the finely pedicured toes of Lauren Lev, an excellent and insightful Patch blogger who normally covers the subjects of adverse advertising well, but this is something that truly gets my Gatorade boiling.

What I have also noticed while watching many different teams, both college and professional, is the inane increase in commercial interruptions. It seems that every time a player steps out of the batter’s box or into a huddle that we, the viewers, must pause for the hawking of a product or propaganda of a service.

Now I understand the fascination with the commercials during the Super Bowl. This has turned into a competition of mammoth proportions and extreme popularity that actually rivals the sporting event itself in recent years. But the quality of commercials then is way superior to the ones that are on during the regular season.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about this is the part that makes me scratch my almost completely bare head under my unique ball cap in the first place; is the idea of a sporting event on television network and it's need for ad revenue deciding the pace of a game (no matter how awful the score may be) and taking time to pitch a slew of products and services (no matter how awful they may be). Some of which state awful things like, "the most common side effects of Cym-(rhymes with malta) can include vomiting, abdominal pain, drowsiness, dizziness, diarrhea, muscle spasm, blurry vision, suicidal thoughts and hallucinations which just by watching scared the pants off of me more than the first time I watched "the Exorcist".

You see, that while in the middle of trying to watch Mariano tie a record for “the most games saved” or Reyes doing his best Rickey Henderson impersonation, I will see a Shampoo commercial pushing “extra body and extra volume.” When the very next commercial is for a dishwashing liquid that “Dissolves difficult to remove fat and grease.”  I ask the guy next to me, "if Sabathia should stop showering in the locker room with the first product and use the second one instead to get rid of that paunch he carries on field in his mid-section from the first to the sixth inning?”

In the middle of trying to decipher some college football game where teams with names like the Long Thorns try to splash through the defense of the Crimson Tirades, we'll see a commercial for the Military asking our kids to “be all he can be” and a commercial for Dole products “New Homemade Smoothie Mix.” Then the guy next to me says, “I understand the concept of a navel orange, but what branch of the military is a pineapple from?” And another spectator three seats down wants to know "What happened to the Bud Light drinking frogs?"

And later in the middle of trying to view a soccer team from a third world country (where many inhabitants are probably so hungry they would actually eat the stale pretzels in the bowls on the counter of this bar and smile happily) trying  to beat another soccer team from another country (that stops player's practice in the middle of the day to take a nap), we see a commercial for a car that parks itself and an insurance company where a lizard talks with an accent from down under and the little reptile is easier to comprehend than the games play-by-play announcer.

And the guy on my other side says, ”Does Fire and Theft Insurance pay out only of your car is robbed while it is ablaze? Shouldn’t they call it....Fire OR Theft Insurance?"

Now it may just be the alcohol talking, but the shot preparing/shot sharing bartender will invariably chime in with the fact that he hates the commercial interruptions more than all us patrons put together by exclaiming that, “Between the All Temperature Cheer and the Polygrip commercials, I have learned that in my old age it will be easier to do my laundry while wearing it in the shower and it will be easier to brush my teeth in my hands where I can see them, provided Vision Center gives me my new prescription glasses in an hour or I go for my new fangled Lasik Surgery!”

So there you have it.