this page intentionally left blank

I was channel surfing whilst slightly inebriated and ran across the ending of the mildly romantic, poorly written "Meet Joe Black"... the story of Bill Parrish and his daughter when Death comes to take him. "Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that, what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. I say find someone you can love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart. I'm not hearing any heart. Run the risk, if you get hurt, you'll come back. Because, the truth is there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love - well, you haven't lived a life at all. You have to try. Because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived." Of course, the edited for television version has ample commercial breaks throughout the film, so the first commercial break after I stumbled upon the channel consists of the following: 1) a spot on hair coloring for men depicting a handsome man with a gray beard approaching a lady and being abruptly rejected, then coloring his beard, approaching the same lady and she nearly tackles him with sexual aggression. 2) a spot on herbal formulated pills for "natural male enhancement" which I can only assume is as close you can get to penile enlargement on network television without a censor 3) a lengthy spot on prescription remedies for erectile dysfunction So my question is this: what demographic do they expect will be watching a "Meet Joe Black" re-run at 10 o'clock in the evening on regular television? I mean, really, Claire Forlani isn't that attractive that she would be the Pied Piper of graying, horny, small dicked men with erectile dysfunction... is she? What have we come to here? I'm going to bed when I finish this last Mariana-trench-deep glass of bourbon. Really, I mean it.