Patricia Heaton needs to buzz off.

Specifically, she needs to stop starring in obnoxious Albertson's commercials, wherein -- clad in her satin knockoff finest, swanning about in a limousine -- she tries to convince us that she both shops for herself, and doesn't make so much dosh on Everybody Loves Raymond that the only pennies she ever pinches are the ones she picks up from the floor because they're a heads-up promise of good luck.

I suppose it's possible she is concerned about saving cash, but only to cover the bills for her next plastic surgery, about which she will speak openly to the press because she is So Brave; then, weeks before its inevitable annual "Gracefully Aging" or "Fab at 40!" or "Botox? No-tox!" issue, People will run another comprehensive pat on the back championing Heaton's courage in opening up about the plastic surgery that allows her to unleash her enormously exposed cleavage upon the poor, unsuspecting, dolled-up masses at various awards shows. Because she doesn't want to look her age, and she's not afraid to tell you, or make you feel crazy for not feeling the same or not having the funds to suck and tuck your figure into a size four satin tit-sling of a thing. She is the real hero.

The idea that Patricia Heaton gets tingly inside when she drives past an Albertson's and sees that cotton balls are on sale two-for-one is about as believable to me as Star Jones hawking Payless shoes. Star Jones is kind of celebrity who wants to talk like she's an everywoman, but walk the walk of the rich and famous, and that strut doesn't include wrapping her pampered, pedicured piggies in discount pleather footwear. Far from it -- she'd go out of her way to buy the ten-of-a-kind Blahniks just because she can, but since you can't, and she really feels for you on that score, she thinks you should go spend ten dollars at Payless, because really, she would, if she had to, she swears it (but she thanks Jesus at night that she isn't reduced to that fate).

Nothing could endear me to Albertson's less than the image of a babbling-like-she's-on-speed actress who's all but wearing a tiara to the grocery store, while everyone lines up along the red carpet to celebrate her for deigning to shop there and save two dollars on a pound of steaks and fifty cents on a loaf of Roman Meal -- which of course she won't eat, because it's got carbs in it, and she's not due for liposuction again for another few months so she can't possibly eat two slices of cracked wheat bread and risk gaining the corresponding hoggish amount of weight.

I was in the grocery store yesterday shopping for a marinade for some turkey burgers. Right next to my regular Lawry's marinades was a "Carb Options" version intended for the fad dieter in your household. This carb-free paradise promised to rescue me from the whopping two grams of evil per serving in a regular marinade, and it sent me into convulsive fits that I'd already put a bottle of that poison into my cart. Taking a deep breath, I left the aisle, bargaining with myself that I would go to Church every day and completely stop eating anything but pork rinds, if only the Diet Gods would prevent those enormous two grams of carbs from rendering me useless to anyone but Richard Simmons.

And speaking of sweating oldies, why does John Elway insist on wearing his pants pulled up to his armpits in his Prevacid commercials? Why is a football hero of not-too-ancient lore suddenly wearing his hair and his clothes like he's eighty-five, flashing naked ankles and feet jammed into Docksiders while hawking indigestion meds? Pretty soon he'll be smacking together his gums and squinting mightily at the prompter while trying to convince us that we should soak our dentures.

Which, if we buy what Patricia Heaton is feeding us from her grocery bags, we could purchase at Albertson's for half the price and win a round of applause from the gathered masses. Truly, Heaton deserves an ovation for filling out all those confusing little boxes, releasing her personal information into the wild recklessly because she is so eager to acquire the little plastic card that, as she so gleefully babbles in her speed haze, is "your ticket to easy savings."

I'd buy her line a lot faster, yet apparently at enormous personal savings, if the commercials entailed her manservant or houseboy trotting off into Albertson's with her card and picking up her cellulite-reduction cream and firming lotions at an outrageous discount. Or if she yelled at her limo driver to pull over at the local market, and then dispatched him inside with a shopping list while she huddled inside the car and locked the doors, desperate to avoid locking eyes with anyone who might be wearing less expensive shoes than she.

Shoes that Star Jones sold them; shoes that go with the Old Navy outfit that Morgan Fairchild and Joan Collins so eagerly hawked in a TV spot, yet wouldn't be caught dead in unless the alternative were being sent off to the Great Beyond in legwarmers, or potato sacks, or legwarmers made of potato sacks.

Potato sacks that, incidentally, are on special at Albertson's, and if Patricia Heaton had purchased or eaten a carbohydrate in the last five years -- but she hasn't, and nor should you, because they will make you fat overnight and kill you and eat your whole family as it cuts a cruel swath through your house of cold, calculated, starchy revenge -- she'd tell you they're a great deal indeed.

Someone got here by searching for: I hate you DJ Qualls Watching: Last night's Sopranos episode, which seemed pretty good, although I admit I haven�t really ever watched one before so I have no basis for comparison. Counting down: Six days until my next 10K.