Search This Blog

Friday, May 18, 2012

Whammy of a Scandal or Pressing His Luck


Game shows can be a source of great entertainment.  With excitable contestants, energetic hosts, and the promise of cash and luxurious prizes, there is never a shortage of spontaneity and excitement.

Certainly, when most people go on a television game show, they have the dream of winning everything in sight, and for most people, they manage to win the game fair and square.

This blog entry is not about that though.

I’m sure that you’ve heard about some quiz show scandals that have happened over the years.  You know, the scandals where contestants (and in some cases, the producers of the show) have cheated or fixed the game to their own advantage.  It was a big deal back in the late 1950’s, as the reputations of several game shows were ruined.

Take the quiz show, “Twenty One”.  In 1956, contestant Herb Stempel accused producer Dan Enright of forcing him to lose the game on purpose so that another contestant, Charles Van Doren, would emerge victorious.  At first, the public didn’t believe his claims, dismissing him as a sore loser, but it was eventually confirmed that producers began to rig the show after their sponsors pressured them to make the show more exciting.

Other quiz show scandals soon followed.  On the show, “Dotto”, a former contestant declared that he had found a notebook filled with the answers to the questions that contestant Marie Winn had answered on stage.  And, on “The $64,000 Question”, contestant Patty Duke (yes, THE Patty Duke) had testified that she had been coached in what to answer on her appearance.

As a result of these scandals, several changes were made.  For a period of five years, television quiz shows disappeared from the airwaves.  And when game shows returned to television and enjoyed a second wind in the 1970s, networks initially issued a cap on the total amount of winnings that a contestant could walk away with (which have since been removed).

But despite all of the rules and precautions that networks have made to prevent another scandal from happening on quiz shows, some contestants seem to find new and ingenious ways to get the maximum experience out of their appearance, even if it means cheating to get it.

Well, if you can consider what our contestant did cheating.  It’s been debated since he made his appearance on a game show in 1984, and a documentary on the scandal was filmed in 2003 depicting the scandal piece by piece.  In fact, a lot of the information found within this blog entry was taken from this documentary, which can be found online at YouTube.

Just enter the words “Big Bucks: Press Your Luck Scandal” in the search box.


Now, some of you who may have been born after the mid-1980s might not remember the television game show, “Press Your Luck”.  The show was hosted by Peter Tomarken (who died in a 2006 plane crash), and aired on CBS between 1983 and 1986. 


The concept of the show was quite simple.  There were three contestants per episode, each of different backgrounds, and they were seated in front of a gigantic prize board with flashing lights and changing images.  Each of the eighteen squares on the board contained prizes, cash values, and other surprises.  But, we’ll get to that a little bit later.

All the contestants would get a chance to press their luck on the board...but before they could, they would try for the chance to win some spins.  The more spins that a player had, the better the chance was to win big!  How players earned the spins was by answering trivia questions asked by the host.  Players could buzz in if they thought they knew the answer.  Their answer would be added on a list of three possible answers.  If a contestant guessed the right answer, they’d earn a spin.  If the contestant buzzed in with the correct answer before the choices were revealed, they would get three spins.

After the questions were asked, and the spins were tallied up, the contestants would use their spins on the board.  A flashing light would bounce around the quiz board in a seemingly random fashion, and it was up to the contestant to stop the light by pressing a button on their podium.  Wherever the light stopped was what the contestant would win.  In most cases, the light would stop on a prize, a vacation, or cash prizes.  But contestants needed to heed caution as well, for there was a one in six chance of landing on a yellow square with an ugly red cartoon character inside of it.


These little red guys were known as “Whammies”, and they certainly did a whammy on the contestants.  If they landed on one, they lost everything!  And, if they landed on four during the course of the game, their game was over.  Let’s watch these mischievous critters in action, shall we?


Wow...you can definitely tell that this show was an eighties creation, couldn’t you?  Though, I readily admit that Boy George whammy was awesome!  And, here’s some trivia for you.  The man who designed the Whammy was Savage Steve Holland, who would later create the cartoon series, “Eek! The Cat”.

Part of the strategy was to determine whether you wanted to keep playing, or pass your spins to another player.  Basically, they had to choose whether they wanted to play it safe, or press their luck (hence the game’s name).  The winner was the contestant who had the most money after all the spins were used up.

Now that you know how the game was played, let’s meet our crafty contestant who was the catalyst behind the Press Your Luck scandal.


This is Michael Larson.  Or, rather I should say, was Michael Larson.  He died of throat cancer in 1999.  In the days that he was living, before he appeared as a contestant on Press Your Luck, he was a seasonal ice cream truck driver, who was often unemployed.  As a result of this, he spent most of his off days watching a lot of daytime television, especially game shows.

And when Larson happened to come across “Press Your Luck”, he was mesmerized by the game show...specifically the supposedly random pattern that flashed around the board.

But Larson soon discovered that the light pattern wasn’t quite as random as people were lead to believe. 

Larson frequently recorded episodes of Press Your Luck on his VCR, and played them back, over and over, in freeze frame mode.  By doing this, he cracked the pattern of the flashing light, as well as the squares on the board.  This diagram that I borrowed from the Wikipedia page on this scandal will help me explain it.


So, as you can see, each square was theoretically numbered from 1-18, beginning with the top left square going clockwise.  One discovery that Larson made was the light pattern.  Although the producers made it appear that the light pattern was completely random, Larson discovered that only five patterns determined how the light moved.  Once he figured out the pattern of the lights, he then focused his attention on the squares. 

And two squares caught his attention...squares four and eight.

In the second round of the Big Board game, Larson discovered that squares four and eight contained prize values plus one additional spin.  If a player landed on that square, they would win an extra spin.


There was also another interesting fact about those two squares.  Neither one contained a Whammy during the show’s entire three year run!  And, square number four was always the square that had the highest cash value.  So, if someone were to successfully memorize the pattern, they could basically play the game forever, as each time you landed on square four, you’d get an extra spin!  Why, someone could net themselves a mighty huge payday if they ever figured out the code.

And on May 19, 1984, Michael Larson decided to put that theory to the ultimate test.

Larson spent his entire savings on the trip to California, where “Press Your Luck” was taped, and auditioned for the show.  Interestingly enough, the contestant supervisor, Bobby Edwards was skeptical about Larson, saying that he was suspicious of him from the moment he went into his contestant audition.  Bill Carruthers, the executive producer of the show, disagreed.  The final decision was that Larson would be a contestant.  His opponents were Ed Long, a Baptist preacher, and Jamie Litras, a dental assistant.  Interestingly enough, Long and Litras also had strange feelings about Larson at first.  Long recalled that Larson had told him that he hoped that he didn’t have to go up against him, while Litras thought that Larson was intense and creepy.

At any rate, the first round went off without much incident.  Larson only earned three spins, and his first one landed on a Whammy square.  His next two spins earned him a total of $2,500, putting him in last place.  But that was fine with Larson, for he knew that the really big money would come in the second part of the game.

The rules of the game stated that whoever had the lowest score after the end of round one would start spinning on round two first.  And since Larson was in last place at the time, he was first to spin.  Having earned seven spins in the question round for round 2, we saw him go to work.  He promptly earned over eleven thousand dollars using his light strategy, and things were going well.  But then Larson pressed the button a little too early, and ended up winning a trip to Hawaii instead of big money.  Larson looked visibly puzzled at first, but soon went back to work.  By his fifteenth spin, Larson had earned over thirty-five thousand dollars in cash and prizes...but unfortunately, by his fifteenth spin, the show’s half hour had come to an end.  So, the decision was made to take the episode and split it into two parts.  Larson’s episode was to air on a Friday, and the second part would air the following Monday.


And on that Monday, the show resumed with Larson’s sixteenth spin.  Then a seventeenth spin, and then an eighteenth spin.  Peter Tomarken was blown away by the situation, and his opponents could only watch in shock as Larson’s total continued to rise.  Astute viewers might notice that somewhere around spin number nineteen, Larson’s demeanor changed, and he spun in complete silence, almost as if he was in a trance.  After 40 consecutive spins, Larson’s score had hit the six figure mark, and by the time he passed his two remaining spins to opponent Ed Long, his total was $102,851!!!

The audience gave Larson a standing ovation, and even Tomarken was blown away by what had just happened.  And would you believe that at some point, Larson almost lost it all?  You see, when it came time for Jamie Litras to spin, she tried to play strategically and passed a couple of spins down to Larson...a move that he never planned for.  And sure enough, Larson was so distracted that he pressed the button too soon.  Luckily, the light landed on a trip to the Bahamas...but that particular space had been a Whammy square just moments earlier.  His whole plan could have blown up in his face at that moment.  But in the end, he emerged victorious, and ended up with a total of $110,237, a record for most money won in a single day on a game show at the time.

Behind the scenes, however, producers were very upset.  It turned out that Bobby Edwards’ suspicions about Larson were legitimate.  Reviewing the tape, and watching Larson’s body language and his strange reaction to winning the Hawaii trip, they suspected that he had cheated.

However, proving it was the challenge.  CBS was initially going to withhold Larson’s winnings due to their belief that he had cheated by memorizing the patterns to his own advantage.  But according to the game rules, there was nothing in them that justified his disqualification from the show.  So, CBS was forced to pay Larson everything that he had won.  At the time of the Larson scandal, contestants could only come back to the show if they won less than $25,000.  Because Larson won four times that amount, he was never seen on the show again.  And to ensure that something like this never happened again, producers arranged for more light patterns, to make it harder for future contestants to crack.

So, what has happened since the Press Your Luck scandal? 

Well, some would say that whether he cheated or not, Michael Larson’s greed and manipulation of the Press Your Luck game board netted him some bad karma.  Most of his winnings were in cash, and Larson had invested the cash in real estate.  But when the investment turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, Larson ended up losing most of the fortune he won on the show!  Then, he tried to follow a radio contest which would reward someone with $30,000 for matching serial numbers on dollar bills with the one read on the air.  Larson withdrew large amounts of money from his account in one dollar bills to win the contest, and at one point had $40,000 in one dollar bills stolen from him after he carelessly left it behind at a party!

In the end, Larson lost his money, his common-law wife left him, and he ended up getting himself tied up in illegal activities involving a foreign lottery and was forced to go on the run.  He died in February 1999 at the age of 49, alone and penniless.

Talk about your karmic retribution.


There is one final footnote to add onto this blog note before we close the book on the Press Your Luck scandal.  In 2002, the Game Show Network brought out a revamped version of Press Your Luck which was simply called “Whammy”, hosted by Todd Newton.  The gameplay was exactly the same as it was back in 1984, only with a modernized board, and more Whammy spaces than ever before.  Well, in 2003, the decision was made to have a rematch featuring the contestants who lost to Michael Larson on “Whammy”.  Of course, Michael Larson had died by this point, so Ed Long and Jamie Litkas went up against Michael’s brother, James.

Guess what?  James ended up winning the whole game.  But, unlike his brother, James did it the legitimate way...well, we can hope anyway.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

31 Candles


So, here we are at my twentieth Thursday confession, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

You see, tomorrow is a fairly important day in my own life and times.  Tomorrow just happens to be my birthday, and the age that I am turning this year is the same number as the days in the month of May, the letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, and the number of flavours that Baskin-Robbins ice cream claims to make.

Yes, tomorrow is birthday number 31 in a series of fixed numbers yet to be determined, hence the reason why the title of this entry is “31 Candles”. 

You know, when I was a kid, if you had told me that I would be turning thirty-one someday, I probably wouldn’t have believed it.  When I was a little boy, thirty-one seemed so far away.  When you’re a kid, you somehow seem to believe that you’ll remain a kid forever.  You think that you’ll be eleven forever.

Of course, we all know that the fountain of youth does not exist, and we all eventually grow to become adults (well, at least physically).  Still, sometimes I wish that I was eleven again, eating a chocolate brownie ice cream cone, courtesy of the Baskin-Robbins birthday club in which I was a member until I was thirteen.

(Mmmmmm...Baskin-Robbins.  Why did you have to close your doors in my hometown?)

Anyway, enough about that.

Because my birthday is tomorrow, I thought that I would turn this entire blog entry into one super long confession.

That’s right.  You heard me.

THURSDAY CONFESSION #20:  I’m turning this entire blog entry into a haven of mini-confessions in preparation for my 31st year on this planet.

So, I hope you’ve got some time to kill.  Sit back, grab a beverage, and relax.  I’ve got some things to get off my chest when it comes to birthdays.

For one, turning 31 isn’t as big of a deal as I thought it would be.  To be perfectly truthful, I actually took my thirtieth birthday much harder.  For some reason, people really freak out when their age becomes a number that ends in zero.  I know.  Thirty was tough for me.  When I turned 30 last year, I was a bit depressed about it.  When I was in my early 20s, I had my whole life plotted out in my head, and I had believed that by the age of 30, I’d have my own house, be married, and have at least one child.

Guess what?  I’m still waiting for that house, wife, and children.  And you know what?  I’m at the stage in my life where it’s not quite as big of a deal as it was a year ago. 

Do I still want all of those things?  Of course I do.  But, obviously, it wasn’t meant to be at thirty.  Maybe I’ll just have to wait until I’m 35, or 40, or 60 even.  Yet, for whatever reason, I had assumed that because I didn’t have those things at 30 that I was a failure at life.

Now that I’m saying farewell to thirty, I wonder why I stressed out about it so much.  Come to think of it, stressing out about any “milestone” birthday is just a complete waste of energy.

It may have taken me almost the whole year to figure it out, but age doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to having your dreams come true.

(Well, unless you’re a woman who is 65 and wants a biological child, in which case, time is NOT on your side.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s no timetable for life.  I don’t have to feel like a failure because I haven’t done all the things that I want to do before I turned a certain age.  Because I know I’m not.

Of course, one thing that might have helped me a lot this year was the fact that I didn’t purposely set unrealistic goals for myself as I had done for previous birthdays.  When I blew out the candles on my cake, I always wished for the impossible.  I wished that I could move away at the drop of a hat, or that the one that I was destined to spend the rest of my life with would suddenly appear at my front door.

Sure, it’s nice to dream, but at some point, you have to realize that the only person who can make dreams come true is the person staring back at you in the mirror.  And, I suppose one lesson that I’ve learned as I transition between 30 and 31 is not to set myself up for failure.  It makes for much happier birthdays if you keep your goals for the year as simple as possible.

Prior to turning 31, I always felt as though my whole life was stuck in a huge roundabout with absolutely no way out.  But on the eve of my 31st birthday, I’m beginning to realize that there might just be a way out.

My goal for my 30th birthday was to try and find a way out of my comfort zone.  I think that I have done a fairly good job at maintaining that goal, even if only through small steps.  Take this blogging venture for example.  For years, I was a bit afraid to showcase my own personal thoughts and feelings in a public venue for fear of being unfairly judged, or verbally attacked.  Instead, quite the opposite has happened.  It’s really refreshing to post whatever happens to be going through my head at the time, and have people not only get it, but respond with positivity and kindness.  And any criticism that I was prepared for has been nothing but constructive, which was also welcomed.

So, it dawned on me.  If I can find the courage within myself to share my thoughts and feelings in an online setting such as this one, what’s stopping me from doing the same thing outside of the blog?

I know that one of the things that have been a constant struggle for me is self-esteem.  I’m getting a lot better at finding it, but admittedly I need some tuning up in that department.

Yes, the above clip comes from a cartoon show targeted at young girls, but it's one of the best examples I can think of to illustrate this point.  For what it's worth, here’s goal #1 for 31:  Believing in myself more than I have been.  I’m almost there.  There’s still work to do, but I’m getting better at understanding myself.  I know that this will not be an overnight change, nor was I expecting it to be.  But being accepting and gracious of any victory, no matter how small, will be the key to this, I think.

Goal #2 for 31 is to take part in an activity that puts me completely out of my comfort zone.  In fact, that goal was also one that I had marked down for my 30th birthday as well.  It ended up being a goal that I succeeded in...at some level.  You see, earlier this year, there was an opportunity to do some traveling through my job.  The opportunity was a chance to head down to a stakeholders meeting for a week, and from what I have heard, the meeting was supposedly jam-packed with fun, excitement, and enjoyment.  Not exactly typical adjectives one would use to describe stakeholders meetings, but that’s the way that the company I do my day-to-day job does them!

I applied to go to the meeting because it sounded like something that would have been a huge positive experience.  And, I admit that I was overwhelmed to have been selected to go through the store vote!

All right, so in the end, the district chose someone else from another store in the district to attend.  But, I stepped out of my comfort zone and expressed interest in going.  I even applied for and received my passport for the trip in hopes that I would be selected to go.  I can call that a victory.  After all, I did just say that I would start celebrating the small victories in the previous goal, didn’t I?  Look at it this way, next year when the offer comes up again, I can throw my name into the hat again.  After all, if I could win the store nomination in 2012, I could potentially do it again in 2013.  And, even if I don’t, I still have my passport which is good until 2017.  That’s plenty of time to plan a vacation out of the city for a while.  After all, I have no excuse now.  J

And my final goal for my 31st year is also a simple one.

Goal 3 for 31 is to keep maintaining the new-found positive attitude I’ve developed over the last couple of years.  Maybe my place of residence isn’t my idea of home, but I am grateful that I do have a place to stay.  And maybe my job drives me crazy half the time, but it does allow me to pay the bills. 

One of the biggest challenges that I have dealt with over the last few years has been trying to keep a positive outlook on life because I’ve been in situations where I have been surrounded by negativity.  People who complain about every possible detail, and people who have a “woe is me” attitude.  I can be supportive as any friend, but if I am around too much negativity, it starts to rub off on me, and I end up becoming the same way.  It’s not a very nice way to live, and it took me quite a few birthdays to break out of that vicious cycle.  As a result of this, I’ve done a lot of re-evaluation with my life.  I stay away from negative situations, cut out the negative people from my life, and tried to find something good in every situation.

So, I think that by staying positive about birthdays, (and life in general), I have to believe that at some point, the positivity will be a rewarding experience.

Okay, number 31.  Your time to shine begins Friday.  Let’s make this the best year yet.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Attack of the Angry Birds!


Have you ever seen the Alfred Hitchcock film, “The Birds”?

The film, which was released in 1963, depicted a situation where killer birds swarmed over a seaside town in California.  The birds attacked children, adults...nobody was immune.  I’ll readily admit that the movie made me fear birds for about a month afterwards, and I even talked about the movie for a spell back in October when I wrote about Alfred Hitchcock.  You can read that blog entry if you click HERE, but only if you want to.

At any rate, it’s never quite explained what exactly happened to the birds in the film to make them go absolutely insane with murderous intent, but whatever it was, it must have made them mad enough to leave bite marks and scratches all over Tippi Hedren’s face.

In short, they were some mighty angry birds.

You know, come to think of it, today’s blog entry also focuses on angry birds as well.  Only, in this case, these birds are more fun than frightening.

Of course, I’m talking about the app that made smart phones buzz with anticipation, and is played by millions of people both online and through their 4G networks.


This blog entry is all about “Angry Birds”.

You might have noticed that I have blown up the font a little bit larger than normal.  This is intentional.  For one, the game itself has only been around for two and a half years, so there’s very little information to dig up in regards to the game.  And, for another, I’m sure that most of you out there would rather PLAY Angry Birds instead of reading about it.  So, I’ll make this entry short with the promise that if you read it in full, you can find a link to the online version as a reward.

(Or, you could simply scroll down to the bottom.  Either way, it’s incentive, right?)

So, how did Angry Birds begin?


In 2009, a Finnish mobile video game company, Rovio Mobile, began to brainstorm ideas for a new video game to be downloaded onto mobile phones.  Staff began reviewing various game proposals, and eventually came across a character design sketched by senior game designer Jaakko Iisalo.  The design showed a cluster of angry looking birds that had no visible legs or wings.

It was a simple design, but the development team seemed to like the sketches very much.  At the time though, they weren’t exactly sure what sort of game they were going to do, but they knew that they had to incorporate the bird design at some point.

As the game was developed, programmers and developers were puzzled on what kind of antagonist the birds would have.  They knew that they had to have some enemy, but weren’t sure of what to do.

But then the “swine flu” epidemic of 2009 was plastered all over the news, and soon after, the development team had their answer.


Pigs.

More specifically, pigs in a brilliant shade of green, in various sizes.  The pigs were sketched out, and became the main enemy of the little red birds.

Now things were moving along.  Soon after, the concept of the game was created.  Taking inspiration from physics-based games such as “Crush the Castle”, the team went to work on designing the game levels for the game.

I suppose this is a good enough time as any to describe how the game is played.



You start each level with a small group of birds.  As is the case with every level, these birds are very, very, angry.  Most of the birds are red in colour, but there are variations as well.  Yellow birds, for instance, increases its speed the longer it flies.  Blue birds can split off into three smaller birds.  Black birds will explode on contact with whatever it hits, and white birds can drop explosive eggs onto the ground.

Now, in each level, you have a slingshot that you can use to shoot the birds at whatever angle you wish.  The object of the game is much like the classic storybook “The Three Little Pigs”, only without all that huffing and puffing.  You have to knock down the structures (which can be made of wood, ice blocks, or stones and boulders).  In the process, you want to turn our pigs into bacon, ham, and sausage by making their own buildings cave in on top of them.  If you succeed in killing every pig before you run out of birds, the level is completed, and you move onto the next round.

The game was officially released on December 11, 2009, and almost immediately became a huge success all over the world.  Praised for its addictive nature, comedic gameplay, and a relatively low cost as compared to other popular mobile games, the game quickly became one of the most downloaded mobile app of 2010.

Here’re some more facts for you about the game.  Did you know that between mobile phones and online, the game has been downloaded over one billion times?  That’s a lot of people playing Angry Birds, isn’t it?


Angry Birds has also spawned a multimillion dollar merchandising empire on top of the game downloads.  You can buy Angry Birds T-shirts, pajama pants, board games, and stuffed animals of all your favourite Angry Birds characters.  Believe me, my fifteen year old niece is obsessed with Angry Birds to the point where a quarter of her wardrobe is filled with sweaters with bright red flying birds stitched front and center on them.

The original game became so successful that four spin-off games were created between 2010 and 2012, including “Angry Birds Rio”, and “Angry Birds Space”. 

Believe it or not, there are even plans in the works to create an animated series, or a movie based on the Angry Birds franchise.  Not sure how exactly that will work out, but considering that a movie based on the board game “Battleship” is set to be released on May 18, I suppose anything is possible.

It seems hard to believe that a video game about angry birds would have even a spot in the competitive marketplace...at least it did back in the days before it was created.  But while the birds in the game were angry, the developers of the game couldn’t be.  After all, those angry birds netted them a huge fortune!

Now, as promised, I have included a couple of links to the Angry Birds online game.  If you happen to use the Google Chrome browser (which is the browser that this blogger currently uses about 95% of the time), you can click on this link to play the Angry Birds online game.


I haven’t tested this link on other browsers, so I don’t know if it works.  But, if it doesn’t you can use this one as well.  It’ll take you to the Rio version.


Happy playing!  J

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

May 15, 1940


It seems hard to believe, but we're halfway through the month of May. I tell you, this year is just flying by. Or, maybe I'm just getting older.

Whatever the case, we're going to take a look back on a specific event that took place on May 15th. Before we do that though, let's take a look at some of the other events that also took place on this date.

For celebrity birthdays, we have quite the eclectic list. Born on May 15 are Jasper Johns, Wavy Gravy, Madeleine Albright, Trini Lopez, Lainie Kazan, K.T. Oslin, Brian Eno, Chazz Palminteri, Mike Oldfield, Lee Horsley, Dan Patrick, Emmitt Smith, David Charvet, Ahmet Zappa, David Krumholtz, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, and Alex Breckenridge. And, a very happy birthday to all of you!

And, here's a look back at some of the happenings in history on this date.

1536 – Anne Boleyn stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery, and incest. She is eventually condemned to death

1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, marries James Hepburn, her third husband

1648 – Treaty of Westphalia signed

1701 – The War of the Spanish Succession commences

1718 – The world's first machine gun is patented by lawyer James Puckle

1755 – The community of Laredo, Texas is founded

1800 – George III of the United Kingdom survives assassination attempt by James Hadfield

1811 – Paraguay declared independence from Spain

1817 – The Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason opens in Philadelphia, the first privatized mental hospital to open in the United States

1862 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill into law which would lead to the creation of the United States Department of Agriculture

1905 – The city of Las Vegas, Nevada is founded

1919 – The beginning of the Winnipeg General Strike, nearly the entire city population walk off the job

1928 – Mickey Mouse debuts in his first cartoon, “Plane Crazy”

1932 – In an attempted coup d'etat, Inukai Tsuyoshi, the Prime Minister of Japan, is killed

1943 – Joseph Stalin dissolves the Comintern

1958 – Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3...exactly two years later in 1960, Sputnik 4 was launched

1969 – People's Park “Bloody Thursday”; Governor Ronald Reagan fences off park from student protests which sparks a riot

1970 – Two students are killed on the campus of Jackson State University by police during student protests

1974 – Ma'alot Massacre; 31 people are killed, including 22 children

1991 – Edith Cresson becomes the first female Prime Minister in France

2008 – California becomes the second state to legalize same-sex marriage; overturned by Proposition 8 just months later

2010 – Just three days shy of her 17th birthday, Jessica Watson becomes youngest person ever to sail around the world solo and unassisted, without stopping


2011 - Wildfires in Alberta destroy part of the community of Slave Lake

That's quite a lot of history that took place on May 15, isn't it?

So, when are we going back in time this week? Well, I'll tell you.



The date is May 15, 1940. The place is San Bernardino, California. And the legacy of the blog topic for today has admittedly been mixed, depending on who you ask. If you're looking at it through a businessman's point of view, it could be declared one of the most successful franchises of all time. But, if you look at it through the eyes of nutritionists, doctors, and Morgan Spurlock, you might have a rather negative view of the company which has boasted sales of “99 billion served and counting”.



Regardless of what your stance is, we're going to look at the history of the fast food joint known as McDonald's, which opened up its first restaurant on May 15, 1940.

Are you lovin' it so far?

To begin this tale of how this franchise grew into a multi-billion dollar company, we've got to take a look at how this story began. And to do that, we're going to go back in time a smidgen further, to the year 1937.

That year, a man by the name of Patrick McDonald opened up a restaurant known as “The Airdrome” (named for its close proximity to an airport) in Monrovia, California. Would you imagine that hamburgers were only ten cents, and all-you-can-drink orange juice was five cents? Oh, to be able to go back to those prices again!



Patrick McDonald had two sons, Maurice and Richard (or Mac and Dick, as they liked to be called). They were instrumental in relocating the restaurant to San Bernardino, California in 1940, and with the move came a name change.

And with that, the “Airdrome” was rechristened as “McDonald's Famous Barbecue”.

For eight years, the McDonald brothers did quite well with their restaurant, but came to a conclusion that the bulk of their profits came from the hamburgers. So, the brothers made the decision to change up the format in October 1948. The brothers closed up their successful car-hop restaurant format, and simplified the menu. The menu would only include hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, milkshakes, soda, and apple pie. The car-hops were eliminated to make the restaurant more of a self-serve operation. The name was changed once again, simply to “McDonald's” in December 1948.

Five years later, the McDonald's brothers began to franchise McDonald's, and some of the first locations to get a McDonald's were Phoenix, Arizona, and Downey, California.



TRIVIA: The McDonald's restaurant in Downey, California is the oldest surviving McDonald's location that is still in business today.

Right around this time, the McDonald's brothers created the company's first mascot, a little man known as “Speedee”, which was used to promote the restaurant's quick service. The Speedee logo is still present at some locations, like the Downey, California one, but Speedee was replaced by the red, yellow, and white clown known as Ronald McDonald, in 1963.



TRIVIA: The first actor to play Ronald McDonald was Willard Scott, who looked NOTHING like the image that most of us would associate with Ronald McDonald.

So, the McDonald brothers were doing well with their franchise, and continued to make a lot of money with their small chain of restaurants. But in 1954, their franchise would explode with the introduction of a third business partner.



When businessman Ray Kroc received word that the McDonald brothers had used eight of his own Multimixer milkshake machines in their flagship San Bernardino location, well...their milkshakes brought Mr. Kroc to their yard, and he just had to check and see what all the fuss was about.



He was quite impressed with the McDonald brothers business model, and recognized a gold mine when he saw it. So, he gave them the suggestion to franchise their restaurant all over the country. However, the McDonald brothers weren't sure if they were ready for such a huge responsibility. It was only after Kroc stepped in and offered to do all the heavy workload that they agreed to take him on as a partner. So, on April 15, 1955, Kroc's first McDonald's opened up in Des Plaines, Illinois, and the rest as we say is history.

Today, the restaurant has over 33,000 locations in 119 different countries, serving an average of 68 million customers every day all over the world, and now makes a profit of three billion dollars a year!

And, looking at the rich history of the company, there's a lot of stuff to talk about. So much stuff that I would require a blog entry that has eighteen thousand words. And, one thing I've learned is that nobody wants to read a blog entry THAT long.

So, I thought I'd highlight a few of the more interesting things that have come out of McDonald's 72-year history and talk about them in a bullet point list. Some of these are positive achievements, but there's a few negative points as well. Either way, I hope you enjoy a brief look at McDonald's history since it began on May 15, 1940.

MCDONALD'S TIMELINE (A Brief History)

1958 – McDonald's sells its 100th million hamburger. That same year, Tampa Bay opens up the company's first location in Florida.

1959 – McDonald's opens up its 100th location in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

1960 – Boston, Massachusetts gets its first McDonald's, the first location to open up in New England.

1961 – The McDonald brothers sell Kroc business rights to their organization for $2.7 million. Initially, the brothers agreed to a “handshake agreement” with Kroc, which stated that they would get royalty payments on the gross sales. But because they failed to get the promise in writing, Kroc refused to give them anything. To add salt to the wound, while the McDonald brothers kept their original restaurant, they failed to retain the right to use the name McDonald's. They were eventually put out of business after Kroc opens up a McDonald's a block away. Nice, huh? The same year, Hamburger University opens up, with a first graduating class of 15 students.

1962 – The first McDonald's with inside seating opens up in Denver, Colorado.



1963 – The creation of Ronald McDonald. Soon after, an entire group of McDonaldland characters would arrive including Grimace, Birdie, the Hamburgler, Fry Guys, and Mayor McCheese. The same year also brought forth the creation known as the Filet-O-Fish.



1967 – Canada becomes the second country to franchise McDonald's, the first location opening up in Richmond, British Columbia.

1968 – The first Big Mac is made.

1970 – McDonald's opens up a restaurant in Costa Rica, the third country to begin franchising.

1971 – McDonald's begins its huge growth in the world, opening up its first locations in Australia, Japan, Amsterdam, Germany, and The Netherlands. France and Great Britain would also open up locations in 1972 and 1974 respectively.

1973 – The Quarter Pounder and the Egg McMuffin are introduced to the menu.



1974 – The very first Ronald McDonald house, a charity for critically ill children, is opened up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1975 – The McDonald's Drive-Thru is introduced as a method to serve soldiers at nearby Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Within years, almost all McDonald's locations would utilize it.

1977 – A breakfast menu is added to McDonald's

1978 – The 5000th McDonald's restaurant opens in Japan.



1979 – The first Happy Meal is produced and sold in the United States.

1980 – The launch of Chicken McNuggets proves highly successful in McDonald's locations, prompting a relaunch of a previously failed product, the McChicken.

1984 – 1984 was a rough year for the company. Ray Kroc dies on January 14, a man by the name of James Huberty killed 21 people at a McDonald's in San Diego, California, and the company lost millions in their Summer Olympics “When the US Wins, You Win” campaign...due to the Soviet Union boycotting the event and having the U.S. Team win more gold medals than the company was prepared for!



1987 – A plane crashes into a McDonald's in the Wasserburger Landstrasse, killing fourteen people inside or near the restaurant, as well as on the plane.

1990 – The first McDonald's opens up in the Soviet Union, which was the largest McDonald's to open up at the time.

1992 – McDonald's Coffee Case – Stella Liebeck sues the restaurant after receiving third degree burns from a spilled coffee at the drive-thru window.

1993 – McDonald's sells its 100 billionth hamburger. That same year, the McCafe line is launched in Australia. It would eventually be launched in other countries.

1997 – The first McFlurry is made in a Canadian McDonald's location.

2003 – Launch of the McDonald's “I'm Lovin' It” campaign.



2004 – Morgan Spurlock releases documentary “Super Size Me”, which details Spurlock surviving on nothing but McDonald's, which wreaks havoc on his health. That same year, McDonald's eliminates its supersize options from the menu.

2006 – Donald Gorske enters the Guinness Book of World Records for eating the most Big Macs in an entire lifetime, with over 25,000 consumed.

And, that's only scratching the surface! There's lots more information to be found about McDonald's online and in books. You just have to know where to look.

And, so ends our look back on May 15, 1940. Did you love it?


Monday, May 14, 2012

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad


In this world are hundreds of objects which are fantastic by themselves.  Yet, by combining some of these objects together, the whole ends up being more extraordinary than its parts.

There are lots of examples of this out there.  Peanut butter and chocolate mixed together creates the work of art known as the peanut butter cup.  Vanilla ice cream is a tasty enough treat made all the better by hot fudge.  And for some people, a simple glass of orange juice gets a kick by adding a tiny splash of vodka.

(Of course, one person’s tiny splash might equate to half a bottle, but that’s their choice.)

Today’s blog subject is a movie that is one of my favourites.  The reason why is because it takes two subjects that I absolutely love, and combined them together into an unexpected and hilarious box office smash.

I have always loved stories, books, movies, and songs that have an aura of mystery and action.  From murder mysteries to crime dramas to secret missions, all of these grab my attention.  In fact, when I was a teenager, I once contemplated studying law or becoming a private investigator. 

And then I saw my first autopsy on CSI and it sickened me off the profession for good.  Even though I know that they don’t really DO autopsies on CSI, it still makes me wince.

Regardless, I always loved a good mystery, especially if the case is especially tough to solve, and if it has a lot of dramatic car chases or action sequences.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m also a huge fan of parody.  I liked watching Saturday Night Live or MAD-TV, I’m notorious for changing around song lyrics around the holidays in something I like to refer to as “The Bastardization of Christmas Past”, and I love watching people doing improv.

I love parody so much that I even did a blog entry on the subject, which you can read HERE, if you wish.

So, given what I have said about combinations being blended together, you can imagine where I’m going with this, right?

Today we’re going to look back at a movie that successfully combined an action-filled detective story with the fine art of parody.  It’s a movie that was released on December 2, 1988, and spawned a couple of sequels in 1991 and 1994.  The movie was made on a twelve million dollar budget and ended up making over six times that at the box office.  And with the movie boasting such star power as Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban, George Kennedy, and O.J. Simpson (well, before his infamous murder trial in the mid-1990s anyway), it was destined for success.



I’m sure by now, you’ve guessed what the movie is, but let’s watch the intro anyway.


Yes, we’re going to take a look back at the 1988 film, “Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad”.

But do you know where the name came from...the Police Squad portion of it, at least?


Well, the story behind that came six years prior, in 1982.  That spring, ABC debuted a new television program called “Police Squad”.  It was created by the team of Jerry and David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams (who also worked on the successful 1980 motion picture “Airplane!”), and like the movie, Leslie Nielsen was one of the stars.  The show itself was a spoof of police dramas, and incorporated dozens of sight gags, slapstick comedy, and wordplay.  The show was critically acclaimed, but for whatever reason, ABC pulled the plug on the series after only a half dozen episodes had aired.  Despite this, the show gained a cult following, and it was this following that garnered interest in the Naked Gun movie.


Neilsen reprised the role he played on the Police Drama series, Lt. Frank Drebin, a detective who unbeknownst to him causes a whole lot of mayhem and unfortunate circumstances for innocent bystanders during his investigations.  Despite this, he always managed to put the right person behind bars.

And certainly, as the film begins, we see Frank Drebin in action right away, successfully dismantling an anti-American summit held by such figures as Fidel Castro, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Idi Amin, amongst others.  I could describe what happens, but I think a video is worth a thousand words in this case.


Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Officer Nordberg (Simpson) is at a harbour, investigating a heroin operation on a nearby barge.  The head of the organization is the dangerous Vincent Ludwig (Montalban), and once Ludwig’s cronies get wind of Nordberg’s presence, they shoot him over and over, with Nordberg eventually falling overboard.


Miraculously, Nordberg survives the multiple bullet wounds, and ends up in hospital.  But, Nordberg’s situation goes from bad to worse, as the police suspect that Nordberg was secretly involved in Ludwig’s drug trafficking scheme.  Drebin agrees to try and clear Nordberg’s name, but his commanding officer Captain Ed Hocken (Kennedy) gives Drebin twenty-four hours to accomplish this task.  Drebin is assisted by a police force scientist named Ted Olsen (Ed Williams), and Olsen gives Drebin a weapon in the form of a cufflink.  If pressed correctly, the cufflink could shoot a miniature tranquilizer dart that would temporarily knock an assailant out cold for a few hours.  Remember this for later...it makes an appearance within the last 20 minutes of the movie...though you’ll have to see it for yourself, as I never reveal movie endings.

But, Drebin soon realizes that the road to proving Nordberg’s innocence (which actually seems quite ironic given what would eventually happen to the person who played Nordberg) is not going to be easy.  You see, Ludwig had his own secret weapon.  And that secret weapon was named Pahpsmeir (Raye Birk).  Pahpsmeir happened to be a little bit of an inventor himself, and he has invented a beeper which could also be used as a mind-control device.  One click of the beeper, and the unsuspecting victim could be told to do ANYTHING with post-hypnotic suggestions.  Ludwig also learns that Pahpsmeir invented the device as an aid in Ludwig’s plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II by making someone else do the deed under hypnosis.

TRIVIA:  This part of the plot was based from the 1977 film, “Telefon”.

An attempt is made on Drebin’s life shortly after Drebin meets with Ludwig, accidentally revealing that Nordberg survived the shooting.  He manages to take control of a doctor at the hospital where Nordberg is recovering, and attempts to kill Nordberg at the hospital.  Luckily (or unluckily depending on your perspective), Drebin foils the plan, and ends up in a “dramatic” car chase.


However, Drebin ended up with another problem.  He ended up falling head over heels in love with Ludwig’s assistant, Jane Spencer (Presley).  Jane is unaware of Ludwig’s criminal past, and once she discovers the truth, she firmly aligns with Drebin, and shares everything with him...in more ways than one.



Well, at least you can say that they were responsible...much more so than some people that I’ve known in my lifetime at least.  J

So, here’s our situation.  Ludwig is the head of a drug trafficking operation.  He has joined forces with Pahpsmeir, a man who has invented a device that can turn people into trained assassins with the press of a button.  Pahpsmeir’s goal is to assassinate the Queen of England, but Ludwig seems to want to use it to get rid of Nordberg.  Meanwhile, Drebin is trying to prove that Nordberg was framed by Ludwig and his henchmen, but is finding that danger lurks everywhere.  To complicate matters, he has fallen in love with Jane.



It all comes to a head when some of Frank’s poor choices lead him to nothing but trouble.  It’s bad enough that he accidentally sets Ludwig’s office ablaze.  But when he believes that Ludwig is going to kill Queen Elizabeth II at a reception, Frank causes an international scandal, which ultimately leads to him being removed from Police Squad.

So when Jane comes to Frank with the information that the assassination attempt on the Queen is set to happen at a California Angels baseball game, and that the assassin is rumoured to be one of the players in the game, Drebin is left with a tough choice.  Does he sit back and do nothing and let the Queen take a bullet?  Or does he risk getting arrested, and go to the game to protect the Queen and foil Ludwig’s plans once and for all?

And with that, I’m going to close the case file on this film, which I believe to be a perfect balance of two genres that I enjoy.  Combining the thrill of action and the suspense of mystery to the farcical nature of parody was a tough feat for any director.  Luckily, David and Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams did a fantastic job with it.

Sadly, Leslie Nielsen passed away in November 2010, so with his passing, the Naked Gun series officially comes to an end.  But, I’ve only tackled the first film.  Maybe next year, I’ll revisit the series and talk about the sequel...

...hmmm...actually, it was called 2 ½, wasn’t it?  What would it be called then?  A halfquel?  A sequel-half?  A Sequalf?

Quite the conundrum, isn’t it?  Much like this one final scene...