I Really Need To Find A Whammy To Bludgeon

The focus groups have adjourned.The suits in the corporate boardroom have made their final executive decisions. The audience has been targeted.

Now to move in on the prey.

This is a science. Or an art. Whichever. Either way, it helps make people a lot of money off other people.

The truest gauge of success that I see is this: Can advertising convince a person that they're something they are not simply because they're watching the commercial?

Here I am, on a Saturday afternoon, willingly existing in a haze of apathy as I watch the Game Show Network.

First is the old '80s game show they called "Press Your Luck" -- the one that everybody instead called "Whammy," because the obnoxious little cartoon characters wiping out the pot of some feathered-haired contestant yelling "Big money! No Whammies!" was about all the show had going for it.

(When it was remade a few years ago, they just got right down to business and called it "Whammy").

Quite fascinating. Reliving those childhood halcyon days of instant-fortune voyeurism and (like "Deal Or No Deal") rooting against the contestants just so you can judge them for being too greedy.

So, speaking of judging people based on a handful of minutes of television exposure, it's on to the "Love Connection" with host Chuck Woolery.

This, of course, is the more-polite version of "Elimidate."

I pontificate on how societal mores have changed such that game shows about love and making connections have become so much more cold-blooded.

I marvel at my advanced level of awareness now, stroking my ego that I'm smarter now than my mother was when she engrossed herself in this show and actually believed that these people had found true love.

I do this until I'm ambushed by advertising.

I watch as a commercial promoting an amazing new weight loss system (where the women, in my opinion, look better in the before picture than the after one) is immediately followed by a commercial imploring the viewer to indulge sinful desire by partaking in a tub of Breyer's ice cream.

You know, if I want ice cream, it's OK. There's a perfect weight loss system I can turn to once I emerge from my indulgence in the fantasy of instant success, whether that be striking "rich" with a $13,000 pot or finding a soul mate after a night at a moderately priced steakhouse paid for by the producers of "Love Connection."

Is this what people who watch the Game Show Network are most apt to respond to? And if so, what does that say about me and my acquiescence to this state of mind?

I can only say that my Saturday was salvaged by an obligation to take my son to Dixie Youth baseball practice, followed by an obligation to join my church league basketball team in our race to the championship.

And tonight, I find myself feeling better.

My son found an interesting show this afternoon. I thought he had fallen asleep before I looked over and saw him enthralled in a Discovery Channel show called "Man vs. Wild."

This is where a former British military survivalist guy named Bear Grylls thrusts himself into situations where he must find a way to survive and ultimately rejoin civilization.

As I watch Bear suck the fluid out of a fish as he floats in a self-made bamboo raft in the South Pacific desperate for even the slightest bit of fresh water ... and bite the head off a water snake and eat the rest of the body whole on spot in Sierra Nevada ... and bludgeon a bunny rabbit with an improvised weapon made of wood ... and crush the roots of an exotic plant that will poison fish to float to the surface ... all to prove that he could survive any boneheaded situation we might find ourselves thrust into ...

I realize I am in a different place tonight.

For the commercials don't implore me to partake in sinful indulgences that will lead me to amazing weight loss systems. They advertise manly things -- like big trucks and virility drugs and "MANday" Monday with a multitude of images of men doing manly things like punching bears in the face.

I feel better now.

But maybe, even, a little worse.

After all, it's not like I'm bludgeoning bunny rabbits with improvised weaponry or crafting manmade bamboo rafts.

I'm just watching, waiting for somebody to tell me who I am because of what I'm watching.