Ad Placement Advertising at its best has the potential to make you forget the show you're watching, bus you're riding, or roller-skates you're skating. Advertising at its worst brings one back into the nightmare that he/she passes off as his/her life. Lets face it, your life sucks in comparison to the shows you watch. Even on your best night you're not hanging out with David Caruso in Miami or shooting the shit with Sippowitz. I bet you've never even seen a crime scene, let alone given Caruso movie career advice (he should do blaxploitation), and Sippowitz don't do friendships- just ads. Commercials bring you back into the real world. Not everybody can fly Air Wolf or commandeer Kitt, but everyone can- or at the very least has the potential to- buy new and improved Kotex . This small little detail validates peoples' otherwise worthless life. Did you see the new Heineken commercial? I bet you did. Is your fridge now stocked with the smooth import? I bet it is. Is your house now the wild party portrayed in the commercial? Not even close. Admit it, you don't have more than two friends and those people are just work acquaintances. I'm not trying to be condescending; in fact, I'm in the same boat. At least commercials give you the potential to live vicariously through television; while trying to hang out with stars, if your lucky enough to meet/stalk them, gives you nothing but the potential for a restraining order. Take it from a person who's not allowed within 3 miles of Nell Carter- stick with the commercials. Unfortunately, commercials aren't totally utopic. Problems arise when your disposable income becomes smaller than your eyes. You see the Always Ultra Thins and you've got to have them, but then you realize that you're not even a girl and not quite a woman. There you stand, pads in one hand and a Swiffer Wet Mop for your dishonorable discharge. This should be the lowest point in your life, but the commercials keep calling. Next, your home is jammed tighter than Kotex, full of: K-Tel cassettes, thigh-masters, Welch's, Gap Tap shoes, and Tampons. You're now homeless. All of your money has been spent on Tampons and other related Tampon products (The Tampon Waffle Iron). It was an inevitable extension of the commercial generation, hence commercial real estate. Ever notice the similarities between Re-Max and Tampax? I haven't, but I think it's an interesting theory worth pursuing. Can commercials right your newfound serfdom? Yes. That's where infomercials come in. They are the evil-lite commercials, and are there to improve your life. Unlike real commercials that give you a fake sense of belonging, infomercials have live studio audiences, which provides you instant membership into a community. This is something your fridge full of imports, even as much as you nurture it, could never provide. Unfortunately, every rainbow does not have a silver lining. Your sense of belonging only lasts as long as you're in the studio audience. Once outside the studio, infomercial patrons seek out others who have bought into their newfound life. Through the random chance of brand recognition, allegiances are formed and broken on shaky grounds. Inevitably, allegiances alienate those outside of the circle. For example, there were urban street gangs popping up in the mid eighties, who fought over the optical clarity of Blue-Bockers in comparison to Vaurnet. Those who wore Blue-Bockers, coincidently purchased through infomercials, decided that the non-sleek American styling of their sunglasses hammered the Euro sexy Vaurnet's. The warfare escalated, with an estimated eighty deaths per day* at the height of the crisis (dubbed ultra-violet in a nod to Clockwork Orange 2: The Fake Tan). Artists were quick to issue a response to the violence. Corey Hart's squash the violence anthem 'I wear my sunglasses at night' was a plea to stop the senseless crime perpetuated during the daylight hours. Alas, not everyone listened to Hart, which is why the United States presently has the highest per capita prison population. Shades have been replaced with shanks. True fact, the wheel chair inmate in HBO's Oz is based on a man who was crippled when he bucked the trend and went straight for the militant Terminator X sunglasses, which were usually reserved for the over 80 crowd. Thus, what we're left with is an article completely unrelated to advertising. Therefore I would like to take this opportunity to pitch the Mustache Press' store. With state of the art cross-referencing and orders guaranteed sent to your grandmother's house, it's impossible to lose. Actually, you have a lot to lose, considering 103% of the Mustache Press readers/writers/stockholders are virgins. * The eighty deaths may or may not be actual MADD statistics, which are completely unrelated to the ultra-violence