I’ve been pretty sick for the last two days, and so I’ve spent a lot of time in bed, some of it watching TV. I find TV kind of soothing when I’m sick — just sucks up enough of my attention to keep me from thinking about how crappy I feel.

But there was a point where I realized that I had decided that the best thing to watch was the infomercial for the Time-Life 70’s Music Explosion collection, featuring Barry Williams, who’s spent the last 30 years milking a living from having once been Greg of the Brady Bunch. (I have a favorite Barry Williams performance, myself: A few years back, he went on “Celebrity Boxing” and got pounded by Danny Partridge/Bonaduce — who any fan of fallen child stars can tell you has had some practice with his fists outside the ring over the years, not mention plenty of other drama.)

Anyway, I know every freakin’ song on the collection. Shit, I’m old. And the idea that this seemed like the best thing on TV for at least a while is pretty scary, as a comment on both me and the state of television. And as the 70’s was the last pre-video era of pop music, let me just say that there were some capital-U ugly people with hits. No, not just strange and kind of cool ugliness like the 70’s version of Meatloaf, or Joe Walsh; but everyday annoying-guy-from-work ugliness, like Rupert Holmes of the execrable “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”. (I should note that Rupert has recently become a pretty successful author. But authors get to be ugly, even in 2005.)

But Barry Williams selling 70’s pop on an infomercial seems perfectly fitting — kind of like Donny Osmond ending up as a game show host in a bad toupee. But there’s another of the big CD collection infomercials that has Roger Freakin’ Daltrey selling. Roger Daltrey. Of The Who. Come on, this is like if you spotted Keith Richards selling vitamins on QVC. OK, maybe more like Sting selling cars in prime-time. (No, wait; that did happen.) Still. Ick, ick, ick.

OK, now I will take some more drugs.