Prime time

Partly because today was a big sports day in the area and partly because I have no social life, I chose to spend the better part of the day in front of the TV watching sports.

The Phillies were in Milwaukee, finally ending the playoff series that would send them into the League Championship Series on Thursday. I'll be there, which beats watching it on television, although I'll have to come to grips with the $80 ticket price. I try not to think about that part.

During the game, in addition to the numerous Frank TV commercials, there's one for Dish TV (no relation) that features a scene from "Poltergeist," where the kid looks into the white noise on the TV and says, "They're here" and an aged Craig T. Nelson rises from bed to tell us that they really aren't here. At the bottom of the screen, the disclaimer appears: SCENE FROM POLTERGEIST. NOT INTENDED TO DEPICT ACTUAL CABLE VIEWING EXPERIENCE. That's nice. Otherwise, I would have thought the kid was watching cable TV. Maybe they should simulate the bill you get in the mail every month?

Then there are those Viagra commercials. The ones that sing the joyous "Viva Viagra." The best one is the older guy and the young woman dancing. Suddenly, old guy gets a boner and he surreptitiously looks around the room before grabbing his "wife" and running into a nearby elevator and presumably up to their room for some endless 4-hour bonerific sex.

It's all right there on the afternoon TV, presumably while kids are watching, down comes the guy in the blue tuxedo (probably 4 hours after taking a pill) to interrupt his wife from her important duties to take care of his important duty. After that comes the ad for Flowmax, encouraging older adults not to pee so much. SEE OUR AD IN GOLF MAGAZINE.

They can run those ads, but you still can't say tits on television.

The tough part of the day was that the Eagles and Phillies games were going on at the same time. My credo is that playoff games outweigh regular season games, and in this case it was best to stay tuned to the Phils, who turned out to be the only winner of the pair. Thankfully, both the games were finished by 4pm, because that's when the girls started playing golf.

Meanwhile, in a place called Half Moon Bay, California; Paula Creamer was on her way to winning the Samsung World Championship against 19 of the best LPGA golfers. That lasted until just before 6:00pm, right after the liquor store closed, leaving me to watch 60 Minutes half-sober.

Andy Rooney wondered out loud about the 700 billion dollar bailout (sorry - rescue) and exactly what a billion dollars would look like if you stacked a billion one dollar bills on top of one another.

I don't know about that, but I do know that if I spent $5,000 a day, a billion dollars would last me a 200,000 days - or 548 years.

I'm not that greedy. The government could bail me out for less than half of that.