When I was wee, randy 16-year-old, my friends and I used to go to a teen dance club every week for “Sprite Night.” I thought it was kind of a funny name for a dance, but they WERE nights filled with the kind of magic and promise that only exist when you are 16, it’s summer and you’re horny.

After three months the name was changed to “Mountain Dew Night,” and I suddenly realized “Sprite Night” had been a corporate-sponsored lie. All the nookie I got was misbegotten and foul to me … kind of. Advertising killed my buzz.

Watching “Baseball Tonight” over Veishea, I saw an ad for the History Channel on the field behind home plate, and it hit me again that advertising is just getting way out of hand — and it never stops.

I’ve felt that way for a long time, but still it amazes me. Anyone who has watched any NASCAR at all knows that the limits of how many ads can be placed in plain view of the home audience has already reached critical mass.

Syndicated television shows are chopped to place more commercials in a half-hour show, but commercials don’t have the same effect they used to have. People change channels, fast forward a video-taped copy or simply space off when bad chalupas are hawked.

Chihuahuas, Energizer bunnies and 3-D Gap ads may rivet us the first 12 times we see them, but soon they have the opposite effect. The Taco Bell dog was cute the first few times, but everyone’s sick of that thing now. If you didn’t hate Taco Bell for its bastardization of Mexican cuisine (steamed tortillas — what is that?), you probably do now.

Advertising is like a shark. It needs to keep moving and growing or it dies, and it has no fear, remorse or morals.

Hourlong dramas in the late 1960s were nearly 56 minutes without commercials. These days, “hourlong” shows are down to 44 minutes. That is over 25 percent commercials. Most 30 minute comedies are only 21 minutes … ridiculous.

So now it seems maybe the outer limits have been reached. Any more commercials, and people might just stop watching. So what to do?

With the help of digital technology, ads can truly be placed anywhere. Take “Seinfeld,” for example. One of the hippest shows television has ever seen not only had some of the best writing going, but in retrospect, some of the most unused, premium ad space in history.

Seinfeld’s counter top is the perfect place to stick a can of Coke or a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Not only can an ad be placed there with the help of space-age technology, it can be rotated in every scene.

Every product a character might use can now be changed at will. No longer will we watch the episode where Elaine drank a Yoohoo while talking to Jerry; now she can be doing anything from drinking pop to eating a footlong sub to smoking a 4-foot water pipe, if anyone ever wants to sell one.

I am not a complete idealist, either; I recognize that newspapers and magazines can’t operate if money doesn’t come from somewhere besides subscriptions.

American television rocks harder than Cheap Trick Live at Budokan. Have you seen what’s on around the world? It’s pretty poor.

We’ve been able to make great leaps in the quality of humor and drama programs, and revenue is partially responsible for that, at least the technical advancements in laugh track technology.

So I am not a complete Pollyanna about the whorish nature of advertising. It is somewhat necessary.

British television may be OK once in awhile, but a steady diet of that non-competitive, state-sponsored treacle and one would go quite mad.

But it’s not an open-ended system. Let’s at least pretend we have a little integrity. Let’s act like there is something more important than watching soccer players run across a different company logo every time they cross the field.

Let’s leave classic programs untouched. No one needs to watch the same episode of MASH that’s already been seen 20 times and suddenly get a face full of product placements for Mountain Dew, Honda and Jiffy Pop.

It’s bad enough watching movies where the actors prance around like walking billboards, casually placing products with their labels in clear view.

Movies have gotten so bad these days it seems half of them only exist for the ads they contain. “Mission to Mars” is the worse example I’ve seen in years of ad spotting in films. M&Ms, Pennzoil, Kawasaki and Dr. Pepper were not only used, but used as mainstage props in all of the movie’s major plot points.

Advertisers will do anything to force us to look at their products; it may be the gentlest kind of mind control, because it makes us think we need things we don’t need when we are trying to do something … anything else.

Soon Mount Rushmore will be sponsored by Michelin, Lake Okoboji will be brought to us all by a grant from the Mobil Corporation, and the mark of the Beast will get you 0 percent off chicken wings at Pizza Hut.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily. This opinion is brought to you by the good folks at Hy-Vee. Hy-Vee — where there’s a helpful smile in every aisle.