MARK MY WORD: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR: WINNING'S TOO MUCH WORK

Americans love a good promotion, particularly when it's staring at you from the back of a box of sourdough pretzels.

"Win the Big Backyard BBQ!" the advertisement on the box exclaims. There's even a photograph of a crowd gathered around a portable stage in a neighborhood near you. The promotion promises the grand-prize winner that a "superstar band" will perform in your backyard on Labor Day with the whole event televised live on VH1, a cable music channel.

The fine print points out that the winner gets an all-expense barbecue for 100 people in his or her backyard, featuring a "national musical talent." He or she also gets a deluxe barbecue grill and $3,000 in cash for this "grill and groove" promotion.

Of course, you have to fill out and mail off an entry form on the bottom of the box. Then, there are the rules for the drawing, which fill up the whole side of the box in tiny print that would make most people go blind or at least reach for a magnifying glass.

But then maybe it's best that we don't read the fine print.

Our family is all for Labor Day barbecues, but holding a televised one for 100 people in our backyard could be a problem.

"Where would we put everyone?" my wife, Joni, asked the other day.

But it wasn't all the people that concerned me the most. I immediately thought about how much work it would take to turn our backyard into a sound stage.

"We'd have to repaint the outside of the house, fix the gutter and spruce up the whole backyard," I pointed out. "Not to mention, we probably would have to tear out a bunch of trees to fit in all those people."

There goes the $3,000 in cash. We'd have to spend that much or more just to remake the backyard. Plus, there's a matter of parking. Just where would we park all those people, in the middle of the street?

In addition, there's the question of just who do you invite to the party. It's not easy coming up with a list of your 100 closest friends, business associates, neighbors, children's friends, mailmen, dogs, cats, total strangers and anyone else that might be interested in the barbecue bash.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this promotion is that the musical entertainment remains a mystery. Does the winner get a polka band or a rock group, or something in between?

At this point, our family would prefer to just munch on the big pretzels and leave the sweepstakes to others.

Some promotions, of course, are better than others.

The Class A baseball team in Lowell, Mass., recently invited expectant mothers to the first-ever "Birth Night."

Women who registered were given free admission to the ballgame and the promise of a year's supply of free diapers. Thirty pregnant women and their husbands showed up for the ballgame.

The sellout crowd of 5,000 joined in breathing exercises led by a childbirth coach. But even all that heavy breathing didn't send the women into labor. Perhaps, the promotion was just poorly timed. Maybe it would have been better suited for Labor Day.

Still, the event wasn't a total loss. The first woman who goes into labor will win all those diapers if she notifies the team.

With promotions like this, what's next, a trip to the moon?

Maybe so, but our children would prefer a lifetime supply of "Rugrats" movies. In Becca and Bailey's world, that would be even better than the "Big Backyard BBQ" or "Birth Night" at the ballpark.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.