Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 9, 1993                   TAG: 9306090038
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IF ONLY THESE DIM-BULBS WERE HALF AS BRIGHT AS CYBILL...

I would rather sit through six spots in which Cybill Shepherd tosses her hair around and tells everybody how really, really hot-looking she is.

The commercial we are talking about here is set in a kitchen, where these three dim-bulb sisters are cooking.

One of the dim-bulb sisters reaches into the cabinet for an ingredient, the identity of which escapes me, and dislodges a bottle of olive oil.

This bottle of olive oil falls on a new blouse another of the dim-bulb sister has bought and stains it horribly.

Everything turns out all right, of course, because this miracle cleaning stuff gets the olive oil out and leaves the dim-bulb sister who bought the blouse in the first place grinning oddly and making very strange noises.

I know you don't have to be accurate when you do television commercials, but it seems to me the original premise here is wrong.

I mean, what half-wit of either sex is going to put a new blouse down on the kitchen table while other half-wits are cooking?

You can bet your life you'd never find Cybill Shepherd in a kitchen. She wouldn't want all those fumes in her really, really gorgeous hair.

I've found it necessary to defend myself against this commercial by rewriting it to the extent that it probably comes closer to the truth.

In my version, the oil is spilled as in the original, but before anybody can get to any of this great cleaning stuff, the half-wit sister who bought the blouse has the sister who dropped the oil in a very sophisticated wrestling hold.

It takes the other sister a long time to remember 911, but she calls the cops while the blouse-owning sister is force-feeding olive oil to the other sister.

"You like olive oil, you idiot, have some!" the blouse-owning sister is screaming.

The sister who is responsible for the stained blouse is drowning in olive oil and she opens a cabinet drawer and gets a knife.

She stabs the blouse-owning sister, who begins to grin oddly and make very strange noises.

The sister who called the cops has procured an automatic rifle and fires it into the ceiling.

The cops come and arrest everybody and put yellow police-line tape all around the stained blouse.

The three sisters never speak to each other again, which means they can never do another commercial.

The one who dropped the olive oil is convicted of malicious assault and is sentenced to watch 12 Cybill Shepherd commercials a day.