It’s Show Time! But First, a Word From Our Sponsor . . .

I don’t mind coughing up a few bucks to buy whatever the entertainment brokers are selling. But it has led to an all-too-cozy alliance between celebrities, athletes, entertainers, artists and product hucksters.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that if you got fed up with obnoxious commercials for four-wheel drive trucks, light beer or body-building shampoo, you could escape by simply turning the TV set off.

Not anymore.

Been to an Angels game lately? You will still see ads on billboards over the outfield fence that have been part of the national pastime for decades. But now, thanks to the stadium’s super new-and-improved high-tech video screen, fans not only get to see instant replays of snazzy shoestring catches and muffed double plays, but also get to sit through Toyota commercials between innings.

Same goes for rock concerts. Go to the Pacific or Irvine Meadows amphitheaters--or even clubs like the Coach House or the Crazy Horse--and you will often be surrounded by banners promoting beer companies or local radio stations.

It’s getting ridiculous. In the grocery store where I shop they have installed a scrolling tote board device with ads from local and national advertisers over the checkout counter. So instead of using my valuable time in line doing something constructive, like balancing my checkbook or marveling at those dramatic National Enquirer photos of a World War II bomber discovered on the moon, I have to endure even more product pitches.

The encroachment of advertising into every facet of daily life figures heavily into Louise Page’s play “Golden Girls,” which is currently running at South Coast Repertory.

Although Times theater writer Sylvie Drake complained that the script includes “a lot of fairly dry talk about a subject,” it is a subject that warrants discussion. And what better way to approach the subject than a play about commercial sponsorship of athletics? It is a neat double-barreled assault because arts and entertainment are every bit as rife with commercial oversaturation as sports.

Go to the movies and for five or six bucks what do you get? A movie, yes. But first, as the TV and radio announcers say, a word from our sponsor.

Movies are routinely preceded by several minutes of slides advertising the neighborhood pizza parlor or muffler shop. On top of that there are usually short film advertisements for this newspaper as well as a whole string of other movies that the studios and theater owners hope you will go spend more money on.

Buy a videocassette of “Top Gun” and you also get your own personal copy of a Pepsi commercial.

Heck, you wouldn’t even have to leave your theater seat to see what I mean. Flip through SCR’s program guide for “Golden Girls” and you will run into page after page of ads for everything from champagne to personal investment banking.

But I will take the comparatively subtle approach at SCR any day over the Performing Arts Center official who stepped on stage several nights last week before National Ballet of Canada performances with a speech to hustle up more subscribers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah--somebody has to foot the bill. I realize that SCR’s very ability to stage plays like “Golden Girls” depends largely on the sponsorship of corporations much like Autolan, makers of “Golden Girls Shampoo.”

I can forgive the pitches from financially strapped nonprofit arts groups a little more easily than the for-profit people--and boy, are they for profit.

I don’t mind coughing up a few bucks now and then to buy whatever the entertainment brokers of the world are selling. But I wish they would stop collecting for one sale with the right hand and using the left to pick my other pockets at the same time.

It has led to an all-too-cozy alliance between celebrities, athletes, entertainers, artists and product hucksters.

Baseball players tussle with management over their right to wear shoes displaying the trademarked stripe of a particular shoe manufacturer so they can get more advertising loot.

Eric Clapton and Phil Collins turn their hits into beer commercials. Lou Reed, one of the quintessential anti-establishment figures of the ‘60s, sells blue jeans and motor scooters. Venerable actor John Houseman hypes vegetable oil.

Everybody’s a salesman.

On one hand, it’s a sad commentary that a second baseman, a Shakespearean actor or a rock guitarist can often find greater financial rewards singing the praises of underwear than in simply doing what he is most qualified to do.

Thankfully, there are a few holdouts.

In a new song called “This Note’s for You,’ Neil Young takes aim at rock singers and other celebrities who sacrifice artistic integrity for commercial considerations.

“Ain’t singing for Pepsi/Ain’t singing for Coke/Don’t sing for nobody/Makes me look like a joke/This note’s for you.”

There is more I could say, but you will have to wait and read about it in my book “Stop the Hucksterism!”--on sale soon at your favorite bookstore.