Talking to myself.

Expect to see more warm-hearted reality TV, like Extreme Makeover Home Edition. It works, see, and it's totally commercial from opening titles to final credits, and they're already working on more like it. I think I'm a dinosaur. I was raised when there was the show--and then there were the commercials. Now, here are the Extreme folks, putting up a house and talking about the lumber they're using, and how the company that supplied it, Weyerhaeuser, plants umpteen gazillion new trees every year. In other words, they're doing an ad lib commercial for a product-placement advertiser who not only gave them the lumber, but no doubt paid a couple million bucks for the privilege.

So what, you say? Gee, I don't know. It just makes my teeth itch--even while I'm thinking, Isn't this wonderful what ABC's doing, sending its hand-picked crew of goofy-sexy designer-builder-entertainers, like dei ex machinae, to lift some deserving family out of their misfortunes. How can you get mad at the marketing sharks for taking over TV when they're doing good, instead of rewarding Machiavellian jerks, like on Survivor and Big Brother. When everything on the most compelling medium is an infomercial, where can you look? Is this what our culture is--life is about stuff? Yes. Always has been. Get over it, Dave. What the regulators and legislators are working on now is indecency. Oh, I get it now.