"I WANT TO SEE YA IN A KIA!!" ......THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF LOCAL TV ADS....

              Not too long ago, the BQ cavorted in the suburbs of Philadelphia.......which, in the jargon of TV advertising, is considered a 'Major Market'......

              That means that the rates and fees to advertise on the Philadelphia stations were way way beyond the practical budgets of local merchants.........but it wasn't always that way.......

               Now that we enjoy the coastal splendors of Delmarva (the catch-all locale for Delaware, Maryland and Virginia).......we discovered, to both our delight and misery, that the local TV stations were overstuffed with local merchant ads of every variety and craziness........

                When watching TV down here, we time travel back to the glorious 1950's......when local TV was awash with yammering used car salesman, furniture store owners hawking their recliners, restaurants of every cuisine on earth tempting us with close-ups of their best dishes still frying up in the pan........

                  Some it's funny, some of it's excruciating.........but in a strange way, it's all entertaining.......

                  How can you not love the local exterminator who treats you to the sight of a crudely animated termite colony......with the lowly soldier termites carrying their giant, engorged Queen like Cleopatra on a barge......

                  How can you resist the Auto Mall guys out on the highway.........sometimes dressing up as doctors, exclaiming "I'm a CAR.....diologist!"

                   And in the course of these mini-dramas, you get to meet their kids and extended families......who usually get to stand together as group and wave at you.....

                   Ah, the kids. How the local TV hucksters cherish their offspring.  And they want you to realize how damn cute their kids look while beating the drums for used cars, window treatments, real estate and tractor rentals........

                    The kids, for their part, dutifully stand before the cameras, reciting the ad copy with all the dramatic force of Arnold Shwarzenegger's first line readings in 'Conan The Barbarian'.  (To be fair, some of the kids become raging hams, tearing through their dad's commercials as if auditioning for the next Disney Channel comedy....)

                   Only the local attorneys make any attempt at dignity......staying in their suits and ties as they promise you big payoffs for that tumble you took in the supermarket parking lot........

                    But they're no fun at all......we much prefer our current personal favorite, a local dentist who'll whip your crooked teeth into aligned submission without forcing you to take out a second mortgage......an emaciated, aging little guy wearing a hawaiian shirt underneath his white smock, he resembles a mug shot of a serial killer who everyone mistook as a "quiet man...."

                    We kid these local ads......but here's the funny thing.......with the daily news evenly divided up between horrific weather and equally horrific politics......we're taking entertainment value from the unlikely source.....our neighborhood merchants, whose amateur night-school pageantv-variety show unfolds every night before our weary eyes.

                    Keep on sellin' guys.......death to the Termite Queen.