An ode to the ad.

Television ... that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night--Ray Bradbury

When we first got VCRs, we all captured our favorite shows for future viewings, certain we'd want to see that primo "Miami Vice" episode a dozen times. But when DVDs arrived, well, the tapes went into storage. No point in watching grainy low-res TV again. There's something the tapes had, though, that DVDs lack: The ads.

This summer I'm spending the rainy days sorting through basement boxes of VHS tapes, converting ancient recordings to digital format. Couldn't care less about the shows: I scan for the semiotics of the Reagan era, watching the '80s come back to life. Legwarmers! Neon! Brick walls! People who believe in Crystal Light because they believe in themselves! It's not like finding the Dead Sea scrolls. But it is like finding a newspaper from the day the scrolls were hidden.

In the process of conducting this video archaeology I've come to a conclusion: We need an all-commercial TV channel. Not another shopping channel with seven-minute close-ups of ugly costume jewelry, but a highlights channel for the best of the best. From today's cheekiest spots to forgotten Buster Keaton endorsements of regional beers. You want a true history channel? Run ads for '60s rhinovirus treatments. Few of us remember what John Kenneth Foster Galbraith Whoever said, but 50 million people recall that Contac contained Tiny Time Pills; some of us would enjoy revisiting that revelation.

Sure, it sounds crass. Nothing but ads? Please. And we'll all wear paper jumpsuits and pop Soma pills.

Since the 1950s it's been almost mandatory among the smart set to profess snarky cynicism toward advertising. An Alka-Seltzer spot? Why, that's nothing but a Madison Avenue plot to make the dull-eyed hoi polloi push away their Swanson's foil-wrapped dinners and rise en masse to mindlessly, conspicuously consume.

But, with few exceptions, ads reveal the time more than the shows they interrupt. Granted, "Dynasty" tells you something about the Eighties--shoulder pads were in, oil was New Economy. But the ads say more. A soap opera in the end is just a soap opera; a soap ad is current events. ...