Madison Avenue market psychologists,

like a mountain lion, a grizzly or a

Diamondback rattler knows its territory,

know what commercials to play on

just the right channels at just the right

time to generate revenues and maximize

profits for the companies that pay them,

like lobbyists in Washington DC, oh so

well. Cialis’ two old-timey claw-foot tubs

appropriate for two old-timey folks are

placed between fairways and next to greens

and often close to the holes on the Golf

channel Friday, Saturday and always on

Sunday with the biggest audience as Tiger

and Phil walk past and tip their caps to the

naked bodies in the tubs and as an aside,

why are the naked bodies in separate tubs

in an ad for erectile dysfunction assuming the

dysfunction got functional? Anyway, on

the Retro channel, lawyers offer the possibility

of a big payday for sufferers of bad hip

replacements, of unmeshed uterine meshes,

for those who ingested questionable pharma-

ceuticals which may have led to cervical and

bladder cancer and mental or other physical

disabilities or who may be way in arrears on

their income taxes and insurance companies

offer million dollar term life insurance policies

for a song and banks celebrate the glories of

reverse mortgages which if left to their logical

conclusions would leave the house in the hands

of the bank at which time some other company

would offer a way out of foreclosure all seen

over and over and over night and day on the

channel where the viewers just want to watch

reruns of “The Naked City,” “Route 66,” and

“Mayberry R.F.D.,” because they can escape

from the present and live again and again and

again in that simpler day and time all the time

in the Time Machine named Retro TV.

Is that what Madison Avenue knows in order to

help the hapless and helpless old timers looking

for a break from or maybe belated pay-dirt for all

the days’ woes or is it just another target group

whose money they seek to take? At which point

Madison Avenue, Mountain Lions, Grizzlies,

Diamondback rattlers, the pharmaceutical and

insurance companies, lawyers, banks, the Naked

City detectives, and Buz and Tod and later Linc

in their Corvette, Andy, Opie and Barney whistling

on their way to the fishing hole all looked at each

other quizzically and we stared blankly at them

while Rod Serling smiled into the camera, raised

his big, black eyebrows, then frowned and announced,

“Welcome to the twilight zone” as a pedestrian

walked past the house and saw the blue light

emanating from the big, bay window just as the

police car pulled up and told the curfew violator

to get in the car.