Among the food items Linenger has requested from the ground are pretzels, and to his delight, he spies a bag of Rold Gold pretzels nestled in the Progress as the crew continues unpacking that weekend. Linengener grabs the bag and is just about to open it when Tsibliyev stops him.

"Hey, don't eat those!" the commander says. "Those are for the commercial."

In the midst of one of the more difficult periods Mir has endured in its eleven-year history, the TsUP [Russia's mission control] has scheduled Tsibliyev to perform not one but two television commercials, one for Rold Gold, the other for an Israeli milk company. Linenger can tell Tsibliyev is embarrassed to be filming the commercials, which is one reason, he suspects, the commander insists on doing them late at night.

The first to be filmed is the milk commercial, which requires Tsibliyev to gobble globs of milk floating in the air; there is no speaking part.

"I couldn't believe it," Linenger remembers. "In the middle of all this, they want him to do a milk commercial. All of a sudden, at 11:30 at night, we need to do a milk commercial. 'Stop working on the oxygen generator, we have to do a milk commercial!' I could see he was sort of ashamed that the Russian space program had degenerated into doing milk commercials, so I said 'Good night' so he could do it. Then later I came back out and saw Sasha filming him. He looks at me and turns beet red. It was embarrassing for both of us."

Tsibliyev's embarrassment turns to irritation the next morning when the TsUP, acting on directions from the commercial's director, asks him to reshoot one scene. The commander, it turns out, hadn't been smiling.