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Monday, May 21, 2012

Judith Barsi's Final "Heavenly" Film


Before I continue with today’s blog entry, I wanted to post this link to a Monday matinee that was posted just a few weeks ago.  The link will take you to the entry for Saturday Night Fever, where I talked about the Bee Gees contribution to the soundtrack album.  Sadly, Robin Gibb passed away yesterday at the age of 62.  Thoughts and prayers go out to his family at this time.

Now, onto today’s blog entry.  And this entry also features a tale that is filled with tragedy and lament over what could have been.

When I say the name Judith Barsi, does the name ring a bell?  I imagine for a good portion of you, you probably have never heard the name before in your life.  Yet, she had quite a few credits to her name in her very short career.  She starred in several commercials, had guest appearances in television shows such as “Growing Pains”, “St. Elsewhere”, “Cheers”, and “Punky Brewster”, and voiced the character of Ducky in the movie “The Land Before Time”. 


At first glance, Judith Barsi appeared as a happy and adorable little girl who came to life in front of the camera.  But Barsi’s homelife was anything but idyllic, and by the time anyone realized how serious her situation was, it was too late.

When Judith Barsi began acting at the age of five, her mother, Maria, groomed her to become an actress.  Standing at a little under four feet tall by the time she was ten years old, her mother even went so far as to have Judith endure hormone injections at UCLA in an attempt to help her grow taller.  Now, you’d think that this was bad enough, but it gets much worse.

While Maria Barsi was determined to make Judith a star, Judith’s father, Jozsef Barsi seemed to be more of a destructive influence on her.  His first marriage ended messily amidst allegations of domestic abuse, and family members of Jozsef stated that he had always suffered from low self-esteem, and often took out his anger on those closest to him.


Truth be told, both of Judith’s parents were in less than ideal family situations themselves.  While Jozsef had to deal with the fact that he was conceived illegitimately and was teased by others because of it, Judith’s mother also suffered from psychological and physical abuse brought on by her own father.  Both of Judith’s parents were born in Hungary, but they didn’t actually meet each other until they met at a restaurant in Los Angeles, after both immigrated to the United States at different times.  They fell in love, got married, and had Judith in 1978.

But when Judith’s career began to take off in the United States following her being discovered at a skating rink, Jozsef grew more and more paranoid, and soon he became dangerous and unpredictable.  He threatened to kill himself and his family, and even held a knife to Judith’s throat just before she left to film a movie.  The final straw came when after displaying some alarming behaviour on a film set, Barsi broke down in front of her agent, and the truth came out about the abuse that was going on at the Barsi household.

Initially, there was going to be an investigation into the Barsi household by Child Protective Services, but in a stunning move, Maria Barsi dismissed the case worker, stating that she had begun divorce proceedings and that she and Judith were to move to a new home.  But, somehow, Maria didn’t go through with that plan.  She told friends that she was afraid of losing the family home and the belongings within it. 

If only she had known what would eventually happen on July 25, 1988, Maria and Judith might still be alive today.

That night, Jozsef shot and killed Judith and Maria inside the Barsi family home, setting the crime scene ablaze.  Shortly after, he took his own life in the garage.


Judith Barsi was just ten years old when she died.

To say that her death was a huge tragedy is an understatement.  I am absolutely sickened to death over reading about this case because I feel that the very people who were supposed to protect her ended up hurting her the most.  It’s easy to blame Jozsef for the tragedy.  He set it all in motion, and he was obviously emotionally disturbed.  He needed serious help, and because he didn’t get it, his daughter ended up losing her life.  But Maria isn’t entirely blameless here.  She owed it to Judith to get her away from the abuse, and she didn’t do it. 

As I said, the death of Judith Barsi is a tragedy, and it breaks my heart that her ten years on this Earth were filled with fear and abuse.

Strangely enough, Judith’s last credited role was in a movie that was released over a year after her death.  It was an animated film classic directed by Don Bluth, and Barsi played the role of Anne-Marie, a little orphan girl who was desperate to find a place where she belonged.


Of course, the movie that I’m speaking about is the Monday Matinee feature for today, the 1989 film “All Dogs Go To Heaven”.  Besides Barsi, the film also starred Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Charles Nelson Reilly, and also in his final film appearance, Vic Tayback.  Although this film didn’t do so well at the box office as compared to other Bluth films as “The Secret of N.I.M.H.” and “An American Tail”, the movie later went on to have great success on home video, becoming one of the most rented and sold video cassettes of 1990.


Just as the film’s title suggests, the film depicts a situation in which an afterlife for pets exists.  In the case of Charlie B. Barkin (Reynolds), a mongrel who works for Carface Carruthers (Tayback), a gangster business partner working at a casino fashioned out of an oil tanker in late 1930s-era New Orleans.  With the two dogs fashioning an elaborate con which nets them huge riches, it seems as though both Charlie and Carface are destined for a life of great wealth.


Too bad Carface refuses to play fair.  After deciding that he’s keeping all the earnings for himself, he arranges for Charlie to be taken to the pound.  Charlie ends up being rescued from the pound by his friend, Itchy Itchiford (DeLuise), but his freedom is short-lived, as Carface and his sidekick, Killer, end up killing Charlie.

Now, here’s where our story goes into a bit of a free fall.  Despite the fact that Charlie lived his life in a less than angelic way, he finds that he has gone up to Heaven after all. 

After all, all dogs go to heaven.

But Charlie’s determined to get back to the land of the living at any cost.  And he succeeds in doing this by swiping his “life watch”, and winding it back up again.  This action turns time backward, and Charlie ends up being brought back to Earth.  Of course, no action comes without its consequences, and in Charlie’s case, the tradeoff was huge.  As long as the watch kept ticking, Charlie could not die.  He lived the life of immortality.  But if the watch ever stopped, Charlie would once again die...and this time, he would NOT be going to heaven.  Instead, he’d be taking a direct trip to someplace...warmer.

So, with that warning fresh on his mind, Charlie returns to life on Earth where he reunites with Itchy, and comes up with a plan to open up a rival business that would shut down Carface’s operation for good as a method of revenge.

Of course, Carface has a bit of an advantage in his quest to keep his business afloat...a secret weapon in the form of the little girl with the name Anne-Marie (Barsi).


It turns out that Anne-Marie has a very powerful gift.  She has the ability to communicate with animals, a gift that Carface uses to his advantage by having Anne-Marie help him bet on races.  Charlie decides to woo away the young girl from Carface with the promise that he will find her a home and a loving family if she goes with him.

Alas, Charlie soon goes back to his old ways once more, and ends up treating Anne-Marie the same way that Carface did...using her gift to make money through various animal competition.  But clever Anne-Marie soon realizes what is going on, and calls Charlie out on his scheme, a move that makes Charlie feel terrible.  But Charlie still convinces the girl to stay with him, reminding her that he treated her with more kindness than Carface was even capable of.

Sometime during the film, Anne-Marie ends up finding a wallet that Charlie had stolen from a married couple as a start-up fund for his new business.  She and Charlie get into an argument, and Anne-Marie decides to take the wallet back to its rightful owners.  Charlie soon discovers that the couple has invited Anne-Marie in for breakfast, and that the couple was so charmed by the girl that they talked about adopting the girl as their own.  Charlie then does one of the most selfish things that he could have done.  He pretends to be sick to gain sympathy from Anne-Marie, and succeeds in making the girl leave the home of the nice couple. 

And almost immediately, Charlie and Anne-Marie face one dangerous situation after another.  They almost get caught by Carface, they end up falling through a warehouse floor, and almost get eaten by an alligator!  But through it all, Charlie and Anne-Marie grow closer as a result, and it seems as though things might work out after all.

That is, until Anne-Marie overhears Charlie telling Itchy that he doesn’t care about her, and she runs away.  Anne-Marie gets kidnapped by Carface, and soon, Charlie and Itchy find themselves racing against time to locate Anne-Marie and save her from Carface’s clutches.  But when the endgame confrontation forces Charlie to make an impossible choice...which choice will he make?

Of course, I’m not going to tell you how the movie ends.  You’ll just have to watch it for yourselves. 

However, it was nice to see the clip of Anne-Marie finally finding happiness with a family who really had her best interests at heart.  Mind you, Charlie’s insecurity about the situation temporarily ruined everything, but before that happened, Anne-Marie was overjoyed and for the first time in a long time, she felt like a little girl again.


It’s a sadly bittersweet moment that the character of Anne-Marie found happiness and peace, when the actress who played Anne-Marie had none of those things.  The only thing that we can hope for is that if there really is an afterlife in this world, that Judith Barsi has finally gotten the peace that she longed for during her tumultuous decade of living.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Working Hard For Her Money


It’s Sunday today, which means that we’ll be sticking another quarter into the jukebox to listen to another classic from years ago.  And, today’s artist was someone very special indeed.


This blog entry is going to be a celebration of the life of Donna Summer, who passed away on May 17, at the age of 63. 

To a lot of people, Donna Summer was first and foremost a disco artist, whose heyday was during the late 1970s.  And, yes, it’s true that Donna Summer’s music influenced the disco scene heavily.  But Donna Summer was more than just a disco diva, and as this blog entry will hopefully showcase, Donna Summer ended up finding that there really was life after disco, despite some controversy and some dry spells along the way.

First, let’s take a look at the life and times of Donna Summer.

Donna Summer was born LaDonna Adrian Grimes, on the last day of December, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts.  She was one of seven born to Mary and Andrew Grimes, and according to Donna’s mother, Donna learned how to sing at a very early age.

Although Mary Grimes often talked about how Donna would sing all around the house, it wouldn’t be until Donna was ten before she made her public singing debut.  It was at her church, and Donna ended up replacing another vocalist who was a no-show.  The priest invited Donna to perform in front of the congregation, thinking that it would be a cute performance.  But, little did everyone realize that out of the small frame of that ten-year-old girl came a huge and powerful voice.  Everyone was stunned at the spectacle, including Donna who started crying right there and then. 

And after that powerful performance, Donna came to the conclusion that she wanted to share her voice with the rest of the world, and aimed to become a star in the recording industry.

In high school, Donna performed in school musicals, and was very well-liked in school, but she was also in trouble at home for purposely violating her curfew.  Just weeks before graduating high school, Donna left for New York City, joining a band by the name of “Crow”.  The band would later break up after failing to get a record deal, but Donna soon found herself auditioning for the Broadway musical “Hair”.  Unfortunately for Donna, she lost the part she was auditioning for to Melba Moore, but when the opportunity came for her to play the same role in the Munich, Germany production of the musical, Donna made the choice to move halfway across the world to pursue her dream.  During this time, she learned German, and participated in several German productions in both English and German.  Right around this time, Donna released her very first single, a song called “Sally Go ‘Round The Roses” in 1971, but it failed to make an impression on the charts.  Nevertheless, Donna was thrilled to have even one single released, and she was determined to release more.

Between 1971 and 1974, she continued to record sporadic singles, and sang back-up for the successful rock band, Three Dog Night.  She also married a man named Helmuth Sommer, and gave birth to a daughter, Mimi, in 1975.  But the marriage soon broke up after Donna had an affair with someone else.  Donna left the marriage but ended up keeping Sommer’s name, anglicizing it to become Donna Summer.


Shortly after giving birth to Mimi, Donna would end up releasing a rather controversial hit.  The song was called “Love To Love You Baby” (inspired by a lyric that Donna had come up with), and the song immediately reached #2 on the Billboard Charts.  The song would eventually become one of Donna’s best known singles, but it didn’t come without controversy.  The BBC reportedly banned the song from airplay due to Summer moaning and groaning throughout the song.  Despite this, the song helped put Summer on the map, and was just the first of many disco releases by her.

TRIVIA:  A sample of “Love To Love You Baby” appears on Beyonce’s smash single “Naughty Girl”.

Really, with songs such as “I Feel Love”, “Hot Stuff”, “Last Dance”, and “Bad Girls”, it wasn’t long before Summer soon found herself at the height of fame in discotheques all across the country.  She even managed to turn the melancholic tale of a cake sitting out in the rain into a number one hit when she covered the song “MacArthur Park” in 1978!  Now THAT’S talent!


(No, seriously...Donna Summer made MacArthur Park easier to listen to...I have always hated that song...but that’s another story altogether.)

So, you’d think that when the “disco sucks” movement of 1979 effectively made disco sales plummet to obscurity that the career of Donna Summer was finished for good.

You would think wrong.

Certainly, with disco becoming the most hated genre of music as the 1970s turned into the 1980s, a lot of artists who thrived during that period soon disappeared into obscurity. 

But Donna Summer was never one of those people.  If anything, Donna continued to grow as an artist with the new decade.

The reason why was because Summer was never afraid of changing or adapting to new styles of music, and in 1980, Summer made the decision to try her hand at other genres of music other than disco.  This change caused Donna to part ways with her old record label, Casablanca.  Soon after, she joined the roster of artists at Geffen Records, where her first post-disco album, “The Wanderer” was released in late 1980.  The album successfully fused the new genre of “New Wave” with classic rock, a mixture that proved successful for Pat Benatar, and other similar artists.  The title track soon reached #3 on the Billboard Charts, and her following album “Donna Summer” also did quite well on the charts.

However, Donna Summer’s recording contract with Geffen would hit a snag in late 1982 when she received the news that she still had to fulfill one more album released under her Casablanca contract.  By this time, Casablanca Records had become a wholly owned subsidiary of Polygram Records, so Summer recorded the album “She Works Hard For The Money” in 1983 to finish up her original contract.


Ironically enough, that album would end up netting Summer another smash single.



ARTIST:  Donna Summer
SONG:  She Works Hard For The Money
ALBUM:  She Works Hard For The Money
DATE RELEASED:  May 27, 1983
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #3

I specifically wanted to spotlight this song for three reasons. 

Firstly, the song was one of Donna’s highest charting singles.  It received a lot of airplay back in 1983, and although it didn’t make the top spot on the generic Billboard Charts, it did peak at #1 on the R&B charts in the summer of ’83.

Secondly, the song happens to have a fantastic message that the music video portrays brilliantly.  The basic gist of the song deals with the workforce, particularly with the women in the workforce, and just how hard they worked to earn every last penny.  In our video, we see a woman who had dreams of dancing on stage at a ballet, but instead traded in her leotards and ballet slippers for an apron and a notepad for taking orders.  She puts in a full day of work each and every day for complaining customers, her ungrateful children, and her equally overworked co-workers.  Eventually, the stress of keeping it all together gets the better of her, and she suffers a mini-breakdown.  But, towards the end of the video, our exhausted protagonist (and all the other women on the street) launch a bit of a revolution, dancing in the middle of the street as Summer herself watches from a distance.

Okay, so the video is kind of cheesy to watch now, but back in 1983, it was very popular.  It quickly became a video played on “heavy rotation”, one of the first videos by an African-American female artist to accomplish such a feat. 


TRIVIA:  Summer was inspired to write the song after meeting an overworked bathroom attendant while she was on tour.  In fact, if you take a look at the back cover of the album that the song appeared on, her picture is featured there (she’s standing to the left of Summer).

And the third reason why I chose this song was because it’s the perfect example of Donna Summer breaking out of her mirrored glass cocoon to find life after disco, and proving to the world that her powerful voice could thrive in any musical genre.

Shortly after Summer released “She Works Hard For The Money”, her success in the United States slowed to a crawl, especially after it was reported that Summer allegedly made anti-gay comments in response to the AIDS epidemic that was widely reported on in the 1980s.  Summer quickly denied making these comments, and claimed that it was a terrible misunderstanding, and actually filed a lawsuit against New York magazine in 1991 after they reprinted the rumours as fact.

In Europe, on the other hand, Summer’s career was still “Hot Stuff”.  Teaming up with Stock, Aitken, & Waterman, she released her 1988 album “Another Place In Time”, which spawned three Top 20 songs in the UK, including the 1989 song “This Time I Know It’s For Real” , which peaked at #7 in the United States, Summer’s final Top 10 hit in North America.

In Summer’s later years, she would release several albums that covered a wide variety of genres, including gospel, dance, and new jack swing.  She also had a few guest appearances on the sitcom “Family Matters” as Steve Urkel’s Aunt Oona.  She never stopped making music, and continued to release albums and perform in concert.

That is until she passed away three days ago from lung cancer...and with her passing, ended the life of a fantastic performer, a skilled songstress, and all in all, a lovely woman.


Donna Summer
1948-2012

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Pinky And The Brain


This is going to sound like it may be a bizarre question, but have you, at any point in your life, had the dream of world domination?

I know it sounds crazy, but I’m sure at some point, most of us have wondered what it would be like to be in complete control of everything in the world. 

So, what kind of leader do you think that you would be?  Would you be a humanitarian leader who makes sure that nobody in the world goes hungry, and that every single person in the world has a safe and happy life?  Or would you be a global dictator, making all seven billion people on the planet cater to your every whim?

To be absolutely honest, I think I would make a terrible world leader.  Not because I would be needlessly cruel, because I wouldn’t be, but because I would be so desperate for compromise between two arguing parties that nothing would get accomplished.

In short, I’d be the “stalemate” leader.

But, there’s a difference between saying that you want to rule the world, and actually doing just that.  Some have said that they wanted to rule the world in jest, while other, more dangerous people have tried to accomplish this goal through terrorist activities and organizations. 

And, then there’s the curious case of the two cartoon characters that are going to be featured in today’s blog.  These two characters are small in stature, and some might even say that these two are nothing but rodents.  To think that this duo’s main ambition was to take over the world was laughable, especially when you consider that they make their home inside of a cage in the interior of a science laboratory.

However, these two weren’t going to let that stop them.  They were determined, they were crafty, and they never gave up hope in their quest for world domination.  I mean, yes, sure, in every episode, they actually failed in their quest, but their bond continued to stay strong with each failure.


They’re Pinky, they’re Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, NARF!


Yes, we’re going to take a look back at Pinky and the Brain, a cartoon that defined a generation of kids during the 1990s...and a cartoon that this blogger loved watching very much.

And Pinky and the Brain ended up getting their very own cartoon series on the now defunct WB network from 1995 to 1998.  But, prior to that, these two lab mice made guest appearances on another Warner Brothers creation.


Remember the cartoon series “Animaniacs”?  The show debuted on the FOX network in September 1993, and was created by Steven Spielberg and Tom Ruegger, the duo responsible for the hit smash “Tiny Toon Adventures” just three years earlier.

Animaniacs featured the escapades of the Warner Brothers, Yakko and Wakko, and Dot, the Warner Sister.  The story goes that the three Warner siblings were created in the 1930s, a time period where cartoons such as Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop were all the rage.  They were sealed inside the water tower on the grounds of the Warner studios, and they remained there for sixty years until they broke free.  Most of the stories that the Warner siblings starred in involved their escapades hanging around the studio staff, including Dr. Scratchansniff, Ralph, the security guard, and...


...yes, that’s it.

But, of course, part of the charm that was Animaniacs were the secondary characters of the show.  Slappy Squirrel, Buttons and Mindy, Chicken Boo, Katie Ka-Boom, and the Goodfeathers made thousands of children laugh throughout the show.


Oh, and Pinky and the Brain?  They first appeared on Animaniacs too.  Immediately, Pinky and the Brain became two of the most popular characters to appear on the show, and they proved so successful that they ended up getting their own show which debuted on September 9, 1995.


Part of the success behind Pinky and the Brain is to the credit of the voice actors who portrayed the two characters.  Both Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche are no strangers to the world of animation, as both men have well over one hundred voice credits between the two of them.  But there was something about Paulsen’s portrayal of Pinky and LaMarche’s portrayal of the Brain that made the show more fulfilling to watch. 


For the character of the Brain, LaMarche chose to make him sound a lot like Orson Welles.  The character of the Brain even had a bit of a resemblance to Welles.  In most of the episodes, the Brain is the mastermind behind the duo’s plan to take over the world.  Because both Pinky and the Brain were genetically modified lab mice, their genes were unlike those of any ordinary rodent.  In Brain’s case, he ended up with an oversized brain, which likely became a factor behind his quest to take over the world.

He certainly didn’t let being stuck in a cage stop him from meticulously planning his quest for world domination.  His tail actually worked as a skeleton key in which he could unlock his cage whenever he wanted.  And Brain’s plans were planned out intelligently and with much thought.  He really put a lot of effort into his various plans for world domination.  And, why wouldn’t he?  It was always his dream.

What was interesting was that despite the fact that Brain wanted nothing more than to have total control of the world, it wasn’t for evil reasons.  In fact, Brain felt that by taking over the world, he would use it as a message of goodwill to the planet.  He actually believed that it would be better for the world if he was in charge.  Many of Brain’s plans for achieving world domination had to do with the act of winning people’s hearts so that they would let their guard down, and let Brain take over as a sign of goodwill. 

Basically, Brain used pure manipulation to get what he wanted.

But, Brain’s desire to take over the world might have been linked to a traumatic childhood event.  In one episode, it was revealed that Brain once lived inside a tin can with his family.  However, Brain was taken by force by scientists, and the last thing Brain had seen before being taken away was a picture of the world on the side of the can.  So, it’s entirely possible that Brain associated his plan for world domination with wanting to reunite with his family.

It’s very deep if you look at it that way, don’t you think?

Of course, the show would be quite boring if Brain succeeded in his plans, and in every episode, his plans would fail.


Mostly due to the ineptitude of Pinky.

Pinky was, to put it lightly, the anti-Brain.  And, Rob Paulsen used a high-pitched Cockney accent for Pinky as a sharp contrast to the monotonous deep voiced Brain.

Pinky (named by Brain) is also a genetically modified lab mouse, but unlike Brain, his genes seemed to be affected more negatively.  He’s dim, he’s aloof, he says a lot of nonsensical words like narf, zort, and poit, he’s...well...he’s Pinky!

While Brain acts in a more melancholic manner and acts a bit stuck-up, Pinky is more open-minded, and very rarely gets in a bad mood.  And despite the fact that Brain often inflicts physical harm on Pinky by bopping him on the head, Pinky is determined to assist Brain in his quest to take over the world.

For Pinky, though, it didn’t matter to him how badly Brain treated him.  He loved Brain like a brother, and would have done anything for him.

That’s about all that I have to say about the cartoon itself, but just to close off this entry, here’s one final piece of trivia.

TRIVIA:  The characters of Pinky and the Brain were inspired by real life employees who worked on Tiny Toon Adventures, Tom Minton and Eddie Fitzgerald.  Fitzgerald was the one who inspired Pinky’s “Narf” comment, as he reportedly said it around the office all the time.  The Brain was designed after Minton, but was given the Orson Welles connection after LaMarche joined the voice cast.


“Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky...try to take over the world!!!”

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.