COVID Chronicles

Leisure World residents are living in historic times as the COVID- 19 pandemic unfolds around the world. Residents are welcome to share their experiences, observations, opinions and insight with their friends and neighbors in this occasional column. The deadline is Thursday for the following week’s publication. Email submissions to rutho_news@lwsb.com. Submissions are subject to editing for clarity and brevity.

Commercial Capers

by Joan Rose

LW contributor

Is it just me, or does it seem like television commercials are taking up a lot more of our time while watching TV? Homebound as we are, I spend a lot of time in front of the tube, and I’ve noticed that no matter what station you turn to, there is a commercial running and two or three more appear after that before you can get to the program you wanted to watch.

The nightly news is a good example. On all three major channels in the evening, there is a show about the national news. Some overpaid newscaster is reading the news to you in little snippets, punctuated by two or three or four commercials. At first, the newscaster entices you by reading the more important news of the day and after a few minutes, he or she starts to say, “When we come back....” and you know that the rest of the half hour is going to consist of mostly commercials.

Oh, I know that the TV commercials are vital to the business and they pay the newscasters their outrageous salaries, but enough is enough.

When you think about it, it seems that television commercials show us life in a parallel universe. In television’s Commercial Land, no one wears masks except for workers at fast food places and then they throw the pizza (or whatever) in the back of your car and you happily drive away.

In Commercial Land, everyone is young, thin, healthy, beautiful, rich and no one works. They all seem to be on perpetual vacations, and we are treated to scenes of beautiful forests, meadows and mountains where these fortunate people are running or biking or driving the latest cars.

These enviable people are sometimes alone, but more often they are in big groups of happy, peppy people. No social distancing for them! They are in Venice with a significant other, drifting through the beautiful canals or they are paddle-boarding in beautiful, deep blue lakes or hiking through the majestic redwoods.

No one in Commercial Land is overweight but should they feel the need for a workout at a gym or in a home gym, the commercial shows us that these people are all slim and smiling, peddling on their stationery bikes in their size 0 workout clothes.

A lot of people in Commercial Land are very concerned with food preparation, and they are always seen working in a happy group of people, making their pizzas together in a lovely kitchen or being swept into ecstasy over a boxed dinner.

In a lot of commercials, while the people in Commercial Land are laughing and riding bikes down a mountain trail or dancing the night away in a nightclub, the announcer is telling us that in order to help our constipation (or whatever ailment we have), we should try their pills. The announcer tells us how wonderful the pills are and the commercial even shows a cartoon diagram of the pills going down our throats and into our stomachs.

Then comes the bad news. The announcer advises us that, as with most drugs, if you take them, there could be serious side affects which include hair loss, astigmatism, dry skin, tooth decay, athlete’s foot, sibling rivalry, bankruptcy, hangnails, hammer toe, bleeding gums, pernicious anemia, coma and possibly death. Then the announcer gives us even scarier news that this list of side effects is incomplete and there may be more!

You can bet that I will always say “Uh, no thanks!” to these pills, should my doctor every prescribe them!

So, I guess what we should do, while we are being isolated due to the pandemic, is to watch these relentless TV commercials with the sound and the close captioning turned off.

This way, we can enjoy watching all the breathtaking scenery and the wonderful locales that the beautiful people in Commercial Land inhabit without knowing what they are selling. Then we can smile and think to ourselves, “That’s okay, beautiful people... our turn is coming.”

est to the community and may contain opinions, suggestions, compliments and complaints without being scurrilous, libelous, defamatory, repetitive or otherwise inappropriate.

The names of individual employees, titles and/or departments will not be permitted in letters that could adversely impact any Foundation employee directly or indirectly.

Member Column: At a maximum 500 words, columns may present an argument, opinion or information about pending issues of concern to the community.

Priority to first-time or less frequent writers. Some names will be left out to protect privacy.