So tonight I got to represent the St. Louis television-viewing public and sound off about two pilot episodes and a bunch of commercials. It was a good thing I was there, because if I wasn't then St. Louis would have been represented by people over the age of 70. David, michael, and I were obviously not the target demographic there, but aren't we between the ages of 18 and 35? Aren't we the big earners and, most importantly, the big spenders? Don't we control what is on the airwaves?

The first show was a shoddily-cut pilot starring some actress from 3rd Watch as a hypnotherapist who meets a man she thinks she knew in a past life. Also rounding out the all-star cast was a woman who wore men's briefs (and nothing else save a button-down shirt), the past-life guy and his team of nameless, racially diverse cohorts whose names or occupations we never learned, another past-life guy (she apparently got around a lot more in her past life), and another psychiatrist woman who just kind of appears without any sort of explanation. Unfortunately, it seemed they tried to cut an hour-long pilot into a half-hour show, so we were forced to watch a breakneck plot that made no sense being executed by characters we knew nothing about. And to top it all off, the show was called "Soulmates". Whatever TV execs came up with this idea must've been smoking something fierce. At one point the woman flew to Hawaii for no apparent reason. It would seem that hypnotherapists not only rake in the money but also have flexible schedules that can be dropped at a moment's notice. What a career. The audience didn't seem impressed by it except for the annoying old ladies who sat in front of us. They seemed to like it because of the flashback World War II "past life" scenes and not because of any merits of the show itself.

The second show was a sitcom pilot that was filmed back in the 80's. Apparently there is some sort of public clamor for one of the actresses from the Mary Tyler Moore Show to have her own show, and this was a pilot she had done awhile ago that would let us see if she was really prime-time sitcom material. The show itself eventually became Spin City (after a few alterations), so it was actually pretty funny. The actress we were supposed to be judging, however, was absolutely awful in what became the Michael J. Fox role (after a bit of tweaking). She also had an equally-unfunny daughter, and both were fortunately upstaged most of the time by the rest of the cast. Whatever public clamor there is over this woman will soon die down if she actually gets her own show.

In between shows we had a wacky emcee doing drawings for prizes. The drawing cleverly required that we circle our "favorite products" from a list that would be included in our prize package if we won. They did this before and after we saw advertisements related to these products. Those clever bastards. I, however, made most of my choices based on which package contained more product (would I want to win 4 rolls of toilet paper or 6? Hmmm....) or, for products such as wrinkle cream and hair barrettes that I only use when no one else is around, I chose the one in the flashier packaging (there were pictures of the products on the questionnaire). Some of the pages even allowed us to choose prescription medications that are supposedly only obtained with a doctor's permission, and one page let us choose either our favorite brand of nicotine patch or (my personal choice) hypnosis to stop smoking. I chose this in the hopes that, if I were chosen as the winner, I could convince the hypnotist to bring forth some rememberance of a past life so I could go to Hawaii and have all sorts of wacky, shoddily-cut adventures with characters that seemed to appear in and out of my life.

I hope that I've performed my duty as a representative to all Festival readers. My opinions on allergy medication, dishwasher detergent, and situational comedies may not match exactly with your own, but chances are they were closer than Oldie McGee's sitting in front of us.