By Chris Cosci

Some cable channels do not broadcast twenty four hours a day. Usually they will stop broadcasting from early morning (1:00-2:00 a.m.) to mid-morning (8:00-9:00 a.m.). Since the cable company wants to make sure something is always on the air, they tend to fill this time with infomercials.

When I'm getting ready for work in the morning, I find that this is the case with some of the channels I usually like to watch. In most cases, I will flip past these temporary infomercial networks and find something else to watch. An infomercial would need something quite incredible to keep me from changing channels.

The other morning, this happened. What made me stop will be revealed later, but first let me tell you what this infomercial was selling. The product was called the Aerobed. The Aerobed is not just your everyday air mattress. Nay, the Aerobed is a virtual nighttime sleeping sensation!

The Aerobed comes with many amazing features that are repeated roughly forty million times in the span of half an hour. It inflates in minutes! When deflated, you can store it easily in your closet! When inflated, it's the same luxurious height (their wording, not mine) as a bed in an average hotel room!

The hosts described the Aerobed with such overacted enthusiasm, you'd think they just discovered a gold mine sitting on top of an oil well. And they joked around with each other in a very unfunny, very forced, and obviously very scripted manner. For example, take this nugget of witty repartee that took place when one host realized how much extra space he had after replacing his guest bed with an Aerobed that you can store away:

HOST 1: Wow! Now, I can use this extra space and turn this room into a gym. Or maybe I can turn it into a home office.

HOST 2: (patting the stomach of Host 1) I'd stick with the gym.

Oh, those witty hosts! Anyway, this brings me to what really attracted me to this infomercial. One of the hosts started talking about how easily regular air mattresses can puncture when kids bounce around on them or the family cat climbs up on one with its claws. So, to prove the durability of the Aerobed, they brought in a tiger. Yes, a tiger.

Obviously, the creators of this infomercial recognize the lingering threat of a tiger wandering into your home trying to pounce on your air mattress. That, or they are really pushing for the Kenyan demographic.

Whatever the case, a tiger was brought in to climb up on the Aerobed while the wide-eyed hosts made such perceptive comments as "Look at that: not even a scratch mark!" I'm sure you can imagine how this was a moment I couldn't miss.

After all was said and done, I still had no intention of buying the Aerobed. However, if I come home one day to find my mattress shredded by a Bengal, maybe I'll reconsider.