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Monday, September 08, 2014

I Ordered WHAT?!?

As many of you are well aware, I cancelled the FOODIE FRIDAY posting for this past week due to the death of Joan Rivers this past Thursday.  I used that space to talk about some memories that I had of her - right down to the instance where I found a comedy album of hers that was not meant for the average seven year old listener.

So, because of that, I decided to make this edition of
FUNNY MONDAY all about food!

Specifically, menu items.

Now, when it comes to dining out at restaurants, diners, or even a hot dog stand on the corner of a downtown intersection, 99% of the time, they are going to have a menu posted either in a book format, or plastered over top of the cash register area.  And, 99% of the time, that menu will be spelled correctly and present the information that you need to know in an easy and orderly fashion.

It's that 1% that we'll be featuring in this space.

Granted, many of these examples that I will be showing you today will feature examples from foreign countries or Chinese food places - because let's be honest.  Engrish can be fun!  But I found quite a few other surprises to share as well.  And, of course, there will be some commentary from me along the way.

But of course, I have to give credit where credit is due, and I wish to thank acidcow.com, Pinterest, pleated-jeans.com, Buzzfeed, and oddee.com for the examples provide here.

Are you ready to begin?



For some reason, I don't see myself standing in line at Subway just to sample one of THOSE subs.  I especially don't see myself paying twenty bucks for that flavourful combination.



Wow...um...yeah.  Um.  No comment on this one.  I'm actually rendered speechless.



You see, this is what happens when you use Google Translate on your map.  You literally get a hodgepodge of stuff that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.  Though, it'd be interesting to see pig hearts tossed onto the ceiling.



You want me to do WHAT to the roasting chicken?!?



Well, I would think that if I was to have my head and feet removed, plucked to nakedness, and broiled in an oven at over 350 degrees, I'd be rude and unreasonable too!



Funny.  I don't recall Campbell's ever making that flavour...



AWESOME!  Can we have that surcharge added to my workplace?  With the amount I get any given day, I could have retired three years ago!



Um...yeah.  After the first item on that list, I don't even care that they spelled the heading "MAIN COURSE" incorrectly.



So, what exactly is the difference between these two types of chicken that would make it seem more "real".  I can tell you.  Three dollars and five cents.



Wait.  I'm confused.  Does this mean that you get measles after eating at this restaurant, or do they actually serve the virus that causes measles on your plate?  Either way, YUCKY!



I've heard of people enjoying bacon (myself being one of them), but this is going a little bit overboard.



Oooooh, PETA's not going to like this at all!



Actually, on second thought, this disclaimer actually makes the previous post seem tame in comparison!



One of these things is not like the other,
One of these things just isn't the same,
If you can't guess which thing is not like the other,
You might be insane.



"You can't sub a potato for another beer."  Unfortunately.



For some reason, before this menu was corrected, I had this image of people ordering a burger and being followed by a herd of sheep, like in the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb".  Or in New Zealand.



And, what's wrong with the boy chicken, Wendy's?  I know that forty years ago there was a women's lib movement, but come on.  Isn't this placard a little bit sexist towards male chickens?  I...oh, hold on a sec.

Oh, wait...they EAT the girl chicken?  Oh, ahem.  Carry on.  :)



Wow...I know they have a one child per family rule in China, but offering a free child with your meal is a little much, don't you think?



I can't say that I've ever ordered a gym shoe at a fast food place, but if I were to order two of these meals, I'd have a new pair of shoes for just under five dollars!  You can't beat that deal!



Wow.  Beer on the children's menu!  Must be from Europe.



Total cost of burrito in my case?  $73.10.



Why would anyone buy broken glass for $2.39 a pound?  You could smash up your fine china for free!  Oh, wait.  Buying broken glass at a restaurant...yeah, that's different.



I'm assuming that this classified ad really means "LEBANESE" dishes.  I'm assuming anyway.



Oh, the joys of unfortunate restaurant names...

Sunday, September 07, 2014

I Don't Want To Miss a Thing

It's another fantastic Sunday morning, and I hope you're looking forward to another edition of the Sunday Jukebox this week.  I think I've chosen a song that most of you will like, and I definitely have an interesting spin on today's topic.

Now as you know, this year I've decided to make every Sunday Jukebox spotlight a #1 hit from the Billboard music charts.  And, each week, I've featured at least one #1 hit from either the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990, and even from the 2000s.

Many of the artists that I have featured on this blog entry have had several #1 hit singles, such as Michael Jackson and Katy Perry.  After all, both artists had well over five #1 singles alone from the same album (for "Thriller" and "Teenage Dream" respectively).  Some have been one-hit-wonders.

Regardless of which, many of the artists that I have featured in this blog thus far haven't had to wait too long to achieve their very first #1 hit single.  Take last week's Sunday Jukebox artist, Little Eva.  Her debut single, "The Loco-Motion" became a #1 hit for a week.  Mind you, it was her only #1 hit, but still, it was the first release that she ever did.  That's a big deal.  Why, compare her to say, Madonna.  It took her six singles before she scored her virgin #1 hit in December 1984 with "Like a Virgin".

And some artists had to wait even longer than that to have a #1 single.  For Prince, it took six years before he hit #1 with 1984's "When Doves Cry".  For Bryan Adams, it took one year longer for him to achieve a #1 single with "Heaven" from 1985.  And for Michael Bolton, it took practically fourteen years since he released his first single for him to achieve his very first #1 song, "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You?".

So, as you can see, some artists had to wait quite a while to taste the sweetness of success on the top of the charts.  And the group that I will be featuring in this blog entry had to wait even longer than any of the artists that I previously named in this entry so far.

It's not like they never tried to get to the top of the charts.  After all, this band first formed in 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts, and are still going strong after nearly 45 years together.  But when it came to releasing songs, it took them forever to score a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

Mind you, they came quite close on several occasions.  The first time was in 1976, when a re-issue of their classic rock single "Dream On" peaked at #6.  Twelve years later, in 1988, the band's rock ballad "Angel" managed to do even better, making the #3 spot.  "Love in an Elevator" became a Top 5 hit in 1989, and a few months later, "Janie's Got a Gun" did one spot better.

But would you believe that it would take the band a total of TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS before they would secure their very first (and as of 2014, only) #1 Billboard Hot 100 hit?  That's a really insane amount of time to wait!  I mean, certainly the band hit #1 several times on the United States Rock Charts, but the Billboard charts were a huge deal.

I guess you could say that fate certainly played a hand in this band's #1 single.  Selected as a song for the movie soundtrack for a summer blockbuster certainly helped with the song's promotion - and the fact that one of the stars of the movie was the daughter of one of the band members probably helped the song get selected for the soundtrack in the first place.



ARTIST:  Aerosmith
SONG:  I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
ALBUM:  Armageddon:  The Album
DATE RELEASED:  August 18, 1998
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS:  #1 for 4 weeks



Wow...not only was this Aerosmith's first #1 hit, but it stayed on the top of the charts for practically the whole month of September 1998.  Not bad, eh?  This was the #1 song sixteen years ago this week, and it certainly was a very powerful song.  I certainly remember beginning my twelfth grade year and hearing this song on the radio being played multiple times.

But then again, the song was written by established songwriter Diane Warren, who is no stranger to creating beautiful music.  She's written songs for Michael Bolton, Gloria Estefan, Celine Dion, Belinda Carlisle, *NSYNC, Olivia Newton-John, Whitney Houston, En Vogue, Laura Branigan, Taylor Dayne, Sheena Easton, and Cher!  Certainly this is one artist who definitely knows her way around a sheet of music.



And of course, you all know the guys who became Aerosmith (the band members, of course, being Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton, Joey Kramer, and Brad Whitford (not to be confused with actor Bradley Whitford).

Together, the combination of Diane Warren and Aerosmith blended together quite nicely.  Not only did the song spend four weeks at #1, but it sold well over one million copies in both CD and cassette single format (yes, Virginia, they still sold cassettes in 1998).  It went on to become the 17th best-selling single of 1998.

Of course, part of the reason why the single did so well was due to the phenomenal success of the movie that featured this song on its soundtrack. 



On July 1, 1998, the film "Armageddon" was released in theatres, and it was a film that depicted a group of blue-collar drillers who were recruited by NASA to save the world.  After getting a warning sign from pieces of an asteroid raining down over Manhattan, NASA has discovered that the worst is yet to come.  If they don't come up with a way to destroy the gigantic asteroid from striking the Earth's surface, the results could cause another extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaur population some sixty-five million years ago.

The movie also deals with a few side plots as well.  After all, two of the men recruited to destroy the asteroid are Harry Stamper and A.J. Frost (played by Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck respectively), who are at odds because of the fact that A.J. is dating Harry's daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler), and Harry is not happy about this at all.  It goes without saying that by the end of the movie, both men develop a bit of an understanding towards each other, and one of the men makes the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that the world continues to keep spinning.



Of course, you probably realize one of the reasons why Aerosmith was so keen to contribute to the song's soundtrack.  After all, Liv Tyler is the daughter of lead singer Steven Tyler.

Liv Tyler even appears in the music video for the song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", which was directed by Francis Lawrence and was filmed entirely at the Minneapolis Armory.

Now, the music video did air in the way that the director intended it to be aired.  However, one thing did have to be altered due to a real-life event.  Have you ever wondered why Steven Tyler had so many close-up shots while everyone else in the band was given at least one or two far away shots?  Well, I always thought it was to lead up to the end of the video where a tearful Liv Tyler touches the screen where Steven's image is displayed (which simulates a scene that happens towards the end of "Armageddon").  But in reality, Steven suffered a knee injury the day before the video was filmed, and to ease the pain, it was decided that Steven's shots would be close-ups because he had to sit down frequently on the set, and because his movement was severely limited.

And it seemed to work.  I suppose it helped too that the song was a slow ballad as opposed to a head-banging rock classic.

But the music video for "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" became the second most played music video of 1998 (just behind Brandy and Monica's collaboration for "The Boy is Mine").  It won an MTV Music Video Award in 1998 for "Best Video from a Film", and the song was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.  Unfortunately, it lost to "When You Believe" by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston.

On the flipside, the song was also nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song!  Fortunately, it lost to "I Wanna Be Mike Ovitz!"

So, that's the story of "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", a song that became the very first #1 hit for Aerosmith.  A number one hit that took almost three decades for the band to get.

Wouldn't you say it was worth the wait?

Saturday, September 06, 2014

Cloak & Dagger

Hello, everyone!  Another weekend is upon us, and because of that, we have another movie discussion on the way in a little feature I like to call "Saturday Night At The Movies"!



And if you've been following along with the blog over the course of the last few weeks, we're currently doing a special 10-part series.  I found the above compilation of family films at work, bought it, and started to watch them all, reviewing each and every one as I go.  Some have been clunkers, but others have been brilliant.  And when it comes to today's film, I would consider it to be one of the brilliant ones.  Of course, that is simply my opinion, and you might not agree.  But of the 10 films that are on this compilation, I consider it to be one of the better ones.

I suppose that part of the reason why I liked this movie so much is because the main plot revolved around an activity that I enjoyed as a kid, and for that matter, still enjoy today - even though the games that are released today aren't nearly as fun to play as the ones prior.

I'm talking about the world of fantasy role playing games.

If you're a self-confessed video game nerd as I consider myself to be, it's likely that you've immersed yourself into the world of fantasy gaming, be it playing "World of Warcraft" with thousands of your closest online pals, to exploring Hyrule as Link in the countless "Legend of Zelda" games that have been released over the last two and a half decades.



My very first experience with fantasy role playing games came from a game known as "StarTropics" for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  It was part platform, part RPG, but 100% fun.  I definitely think that game sparked my love of fantasy role playing games. 



After I received my Super Nintendo, one of the first games that I remember playing over and over again was "Final Fantasy IV", and that was the game that probably sparked my love of all Final Fantasy games for the next ten years at least.  It's just a shame that the last half-decent "Final Fantasy" game that I played was "Final Fantasy X", and that game came out over a decade ago - well, unless you count the remastered version that was released for the PlayStation 3 a few months ago.  Any of the ones that have followed have been bland and boring.  I still get upset realizing how much time I spent playing "Final Fantasy XII" hoping that it would pick up and get better only for it to be one gigantic epic fail.

Thank goodness I can download some of the older "Final Fantasy" games on my iPad.

Anyway, role playing games were all the rage in 1984, when today's feature film was released.  Now, granted, the video game console industry hadn't quite exploded in popularity, as the NES - which revolutionized the video cartridge - wasn't released in North America until 1985.  However, role playing games were still very popular.  Instead of playing electronic games, people used pads of paper, pencils, game boards, and in some cases, action figures.  After all, "Dungeons and Dragons" was just as incredibly popular as "Cabbage Patch Kids" and "Transformers" back in the early to mid 1980s.  Seriously, just Google search "Dungeons and Dragons" and see just how much of a craze it really was! 

Today's film is linked to one of these fantasy role playing games.  In it, a young boy develops a love for the game to fill the void of having no mother and a father who is too busy with work to spend any time with him.  Little did he know that his love of the game would trigger an event that puts him right in the middle of a real life adventure where he is entrusted with a valuable object that could be catastrophic if it ever fell in the wrong hands.



It's a movie that is called "Cloak & Dagger", and it starred Dabney Coleman and Henry Thomas (yes, the same boy who played Elliot on "E.T.").  Released in theatres on July 13, 1984, the Richard Franklin directed film made almost ten million dollars at the box office, and received fair to positive reviews.  I would agree that the film is a pleasant surprise on this compilation, and I enjoyed watching it.

I promise I won't go overboard on the plot summary for this movie, because I don't want to reveal the ending, and because I really want to have all of you check out this movie because it really is a lot of fun.



Okay, so as I explained a few paragraphs above, "Cloak & Dagger" is a movie which features a young boy named Davey Osborne (Thomas) who is trying to adjust to life in San Antonio, Texas.  But it is not easy for him.  His mother has recently passed away and his father Hal (Coleman) is so preoccupied with his job that Davey isn't getting much attention from him at all.

The only solace that Davey gets is by playing the fantasy role playing game "Cloak & Dagger", a spy game which exists on two different formats - role playing and video game.

Because he is so preoccupied with the game, he doesn't leave much room for friendships.  In fact, his only two friends in the world are a young girl named Kim (Christina Nigra), and a man named Jack Flack - who happens to be an imaginary friend.  Truth is that Jack Flack happens to be the main protagonist of Cloak & Dagger, and Davey imagines Jack to be just like his father - only a more interesting version.

NOTE:  Jack Flack is also played by Dabney Coleman.

So, the movie starts off innocently enough, with both Davey and Kim hanging out at the mall's video game store.  Both of the kids are asked by the store owner to run an errand for him, and while they are doing this errand, Davey happens to bear witness to a brutal killing.  Davey, not knowing what to do, approaches the victim who hands him a copy of an Atari 5200 video game cartridge with the Cloak & Dagger label on it, informing him that the video game cartridge actually holds top-secret military information.  Information that could cause the United States a lot of trouble if it ever fell into enemy hands.

Wow...no pressure for an eleven-year-old child, huh?

Of course, Davey immediately takes the game cartridge to the police station, but honestly if you were a police officer and a child came up to you and said that a video game held top secret information, would you believe them? 

So, this leads to a group of spies headed by the nefarious Dr. Rice (Michael Murphy) to pursue a frightened Davey around the city of San Antonio, wanting to get their hands on the game at all costs.  And naturally, Jack Flack pops into Davey's life to try and protect him from danger.  But when his real friends find themselves in trouble, and Jack Flack constantly steers Davey into making some poor choices, Davey must decide if Jack is still the hero that he believed him to be, or whether he is tethered to him, holding him back from expressing his true feelings.

I'll leave it at that while you enjoy some trivia about the movie.

1 - Much of the movie was filmed mostly in San Antonio, Texas - Henry Thomas' home town.



2 - Contrary to what the game depicted, there is no such game as Cloak & Dagger for the Atari 5200.  However, an arcade version was manufactured.

3 - John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan - who played an elderly couple in the movie - were husband and wife in real life.

4 - Christina Nigra would later star as Evie's best friend on the sitcom "Out of This World".

5 - The Gamekeeper store that you see in the film really did exist.  It was a store located in the Glendale Galleria in Glendale, California.

6 - Because the Cloak & Dagger game wasn't officially released on consoles, the film simply plastered labels on pre-existing Atari 5200 games.

7 - Dabney Coleman may have gotten along with his co-stars, but he reportedly feuded with director Richard Franklin while the film was being shot.

8 - Originally, this film was released as a double-bill alongside 1984's "The Last Starfighter".  It was given its own opening a month later on August 10, 1984.

9 - Though this film shares the same espionage theme as the 1946 film of the same name, the 1984 version is not a remake of that film.

10 - This was the only family film directed by Richard Franklin.  Other films he made before his death in 2007 included sequels to "Psycho" and "F/X", as well as "Hotel Sorrento" and "Brilliant Lies".

And so wraps up another film.  Seven down, three to go.  And coming up next week, we take a look at what happens when a rock and roll musician inherits an entire kingdom!

Friday, September 05, 2014

Can We Talk? My Memories of Joan Rivers

I know that this is supposed to be the time of the week where we get into a really flavourful discussion about pasta, chocolate, donuts, and Kentucky Fried Chicken in the topic known as FOODIE FRIDAY.

But, given the recent news coming out of the world of Hollywood, I didn't think that it would be all that appropriate to discuss. 



Instead, this is going to be a post about the late Joan Rivers, who passed away on September 4, 2014 at the age of 81.  By now, you've heard all about how she died.  On August 28, Rivers went to a clinic outside of New York City to undergo a surgical procedure on her vocal cords, and during the procedure she experienced complications and had to be put in a medically induced coma.  Though it was touch and go for the next few days, Rivers died at 1:17 pm EST.

With the death of Joan Rivers, millions of people all over world will forever remember her contributions to the world of comedy.  She was a real trailblazer in stand up comedy, paving the way for women comedians everywhere.  When she spoke, she always said things the way that she saw them, and her brutal honesty on certain subjects caused just as much controversy as it did laughs on some occasions.  But through it all, Joan Rivers didn't care what others thought of her.  If she liked you, she would let you know it.  If she hated your guts, she'd tell you to your face.  And whether you loved her or didn't like her at all, you have to at least give it to the woman...she did speak her mind no matter what.  Perhaps that was why she got to cover so many red carpet events with her only daughter, Melissa.  Maybe that was the reason why she often sat in for Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show" (well, before their famous falling out in the 1980s).  It could even be the reason why she even had her own show on E! entitled "Fashion Police", where she often shared her views on what the celebrities were wearing, and questioned some of the bad choices they made.



Certainly, Joan Rivers made an lasting impression in the world of comedy, and certainly many are grieving the loss of a true legend.

And in this blog entry, I share some of the memories that I have of Joan.

Granted, I never met her in real life.  I haven't had the pleasure of meeting any celebrities at all.  But, I imagine that had I had the fortune to meet her, I think we would have exchanged pleasantries and she totally would have trashed my clothes because that was how she rolled (and honestly I wouldn't have been offended because I don't really feel like I have a good sense of style anyway, so she probably would have been telling the truth).

But Joan Rivers certainly made a little bit of an impression on my own life.  Oh, sure, I didn't become a stand-up comedian or anything like that (though I have always wanted to try performing at an open mic night or something like that).  But let's just say that the first time I remember having a memory of Joan Rivers was during my childhood.  And, it happens to be quite a funny one at that.

So, this story will be going back to when I was about seven years old.  Being the youngest child in the family, I was always sneaking around the house, trying to find out what places I could invade without getting caught by my parents or older siblings.  As it so happened, one of my sisters was sleeping over at someone's house at the time, so her room was wide open for me to invade.  Granted, I never really did much snooping in there (I wasn't one of those kids who purposely looked for people's diaries or anything like that).  I just liked to hang out in her room because it was much larger than mine (my room was the size of a shoebox back in those days, and ironically enough when she left home, I ended up with her room).

Besides, she had a stereo that could play cassette tapes, and it was the best way to listen to those children's books on tape that I liked back then.

(Yes.  I said cassette tapes.  We didn't own a CD player until at least the 1990s.)

So, anyway, I had gone into her room while she was out, and I had some books and tapes to listen to, but somehow I tripped over something and somehow my tapes got mixed up with her music tapes.  And because I had listened to my tapes for my books so much, the writing on the tapes had faded, and I couldn't tell which one was which.  So, I grabbed a black coloured tape from the pile and played it thinking that it was the tape for one of the books.

So imagine my surprise when I pushed play, and here was this raspy voiced woman screaming and shouting and all sorts of things that were not meant for the average seven year old to hear on the tape!  I honestly don't even remember what the tape's content was.  All I knew was that I didn't have a book like that!  This was just some crazy lady that talked about how God divides or something like that!



(To this day, I have no idea how my sister even ended up with a copy of Joan Rivers' 1984 comedy album "What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most?", but nevertheless, it was there, and I was hearing it all.)

Now, this attracted the attention of the eldest sister, who had heard the commotion, and immediately ran towards the stereo and shut the tape off, thinking that I was emotionally scarred for life and shooed me out of the room so she could hide all the albums with questionable content on them so that I would never hear them again! 

Truth be told, I didn't understand what was so bad about it.  Well, that is until I heard the album in its entirety and understood completely.  Joan Rivers was a respected and witty comedienne, but I was definitely not ready to handle her at age seven, that's for darn sure!

But over the years, I did eventually see the woman whose comedy album caused such a kerfuffle on that particularly warm weekend.  In fact, one of the first times that I saw Joan Rivers on television was when she was the center square on the 1980s revival of "Hollywood Squares".  Here's an episode of the show from 1987.



Now, mind you, "Hollywood Squares" was considerably tamer than Joan's stand-up material, and granted, I was still too young to understand any of the funny jabs that she was saying, but all I remember was that I liked her.  She had a distinctive voice that I found very interesting, and she definitely looked like she was having a good time no matter what she was doing. 

And, over the years, Joan would make quite a few appearances in my childhood through television and film.  Again, I was too young to remember her having her own talk show called "The Joan Rivers Show", but I can remember skimming across it while channel surfing.  I was definitely too young to remember when she was a huge part of "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson", but from what I hear, she and Johnny were brilliant together, and she was basically the "yang" to Johnny's "yin". 



Though, that friendship would be broken beyond repair when Joan was offered her own late night show in 1986 which aired in direct opposition to Johnny's show - and perhaps what hurt Johnny more than having to compete against Joan was the fact that he heard of the show from FOX executives, and not from Joan herself.  The two never spoke again, and Johnny passed away in 2005 without ever reconciling with Joan.



She also was a part of many childhood memories, although I never realized that it was her until later.  She made an appearance on the 1984 film "The Muppets Take Manhattan", but I had no idea that it was Joan Rivers until...well..."Tape Gate '88".  She was also a part of Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special, which I remember taping and watching over and over again until the tape got eaten by our ever-so-volatile VCR.  And she also did a voice on "Shrek 2" playing - what else? - a red carpet correspondent for Far Far Away Land!

And, I suppose one reason why Joan Rivers not only survived, but thrived in a male dominated industry as stand-up comedy was because she wasn't afraid to make fun of herself, nor was she one to hold her tongue.  If she had something to say, you better believe that she'll say it, such as in this clip from "Celebrity Apprentice 2", in which she and her daughter Melissa were contestants.



Joan won, by the way.

And regarding her multiple plastic surgeries?  Well, the first one took place in 1965 when she had an eye lift done in hopes that it would further her career, but since then, she's made no apologies over the work that she had done over the years, and even wrote them into her act.  After all, in her world, nobody was off limits - especially herself.

And as we say farewell to a real comedy legend, we must also remember that because of her, many women have managed to achieve their dreams of being stand-up comics and have gone on to great success.  Whether it be Roseanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell, Margaret Cho, Elayne Boosler, Kathy Griffin, Sandra Bernhard, Sarah Silverman, and countless other female comics in the world today, Rivers was one of the main trailblazers (the other being the late Phyllis Diller) for female comediennes to find their voices.  And, I think a lot of people will remember her for being exactly that.



Rest in peace, Joan Rivers.

Thursday, September 04, 2014

Forgotten Game Shows of the Past...

Hey, guys!  Are you ready for another edition of Tube Talk Thursday?  I hope you are, because for today's topic, I've selected another interesting topic that just came to me in the blink of an eye.

I'll admit that this week, I was having a bit of trouble coming up with a decent topic for Tube Talk Thursday.  For some reason, I was drawing a blank for something to talk about.  I even scrolled through the cable networks in hopes that something would cause me to go "now, that's an idea for a topic if ever I've heard one."

And, wouldn't you know it?  The Game Show Network has inspired today's post.



Well, okay.  It's not the REAL Game Show Network that most of us are accustomed to.  It's actually the Canadian version known as GAME TV.  It's a network that airs both game shows and reality shows.  It's probably the only place where you can watch reruns of "Supermarket Sweep" alongside "Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model".

Well, picture it.  It's eleven o'clock at night.  I'm still wide awake, and I can't sleep.  So, being one who doesn't like watching the eleven o'clock news as I find it too depressing so late at night, I'm channel surfing to try and find something that is a little bit more upbeat.  It then comes to my attention that there's not a whole lot that is on at eleven o'clock in the evening other than news programs.



I find myself pausing at the GAME TV network, where a game show is on called "Split Second".  I instantly recognize the host as being Monty Hall, the man who brought "Let's Make A Deal" to television screens over fifty years ago.  Only on this show, there were no crazy costumes - just big eighties hair and bad eighties fashions.  It was a show that gave contestants three questions, and they had to answer the questions in split second timing, as the faster you answered, the more money you could make.  The grand prize was a car from 1987.  Because we all know how great cars from the 1980s really were.

Then again, the show did air in two separate instances.  Once from March 20, 1972 to June 27, 1975, and the second from December 15, 1986 until September 11, 1987.  I'm only assuming that the show that I watched came from the 1986 version.

But, of course, the show is new to me.  I was in kindergarten when the show was airing, and I likely missed each episode because I was in school.  So watching this show gave me the inspiration behind today's blog.

Game shows from the 1980s and early 1990s that are considered forgotten.  Shows that only aired a couple of years, or shows that even lasted a handful of episodes that never quite received the same love that "Wheel of Fortune", "The Price Is Right", and "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" did.  But for whatever reason, I somehow remember them all, and I'm hoping that by talking about some of these lost game shows, it will jog your memory a bit.

Now, keep in mind that I grew up in and still reside in Canada, so some of you might not remember these programs.  That said, here's a list, along with some video clips of the game shows to refresh your memory, or introduce you to these shows.



MONOPOLY
June 16, 1990 - September 1, 1990

Yes, I know what you're saying.  When the heck did the popular board game become a game show?  Well, it was the summer of 1990, and I definitely remember this game show quite vividly.  As someone who loved playing (yet always lost at this game), it was fun to see a life sized Monopoly board and people getting excited about getting properties around the board.  The one catch was that two contestants couldn't share the same coloured property.  The red contestant couldn't have Park Place and the green contestant couldn't have Boardwalk.  Contestants had to have a full monopoly.  Each property was worth the same value that the properties of the game were worth, and if a contestant won the property by answering a trivia question, they would win the dollar amount the property was worth.  The second round was where the contestants actually played the game and tried to build hotels and houses, and go around the board by rolling giant dice.  That part of the game was always my favourite.

Unfortunately, the show only lasted twelve episodes before being pulled by ABC due to lack of ratings.  At least they tried.  And, at least the producers never tried to come up with a "Connect Four" game show.



BUMPER STUMPERS
June 29, 1987 - December 28, 1990

Okay, so this is a show that began airing right around the time in which people were discovering their love for vanity license plates.  And, that was the whole premise of the program.  Contestants were shown a license plate that might belong to a particular type of person, and they had to try and figure out what the plate said.  Here.  I'll give an example for you.

Suppose you were trying to find a license plate that belonged to Katy Perry.  Which one would you choose of the two?

RKURBOD
URAFRWK

If you picked the second plate which reads as "You're a Firework", congratulations, you win!  The first one reads as "Rock Your Body", which would more than likely be a Justin Timberlake license plate.

Anyway, an interesting piece of trivia about this game show was that although it aired in both Canada and the United States, the show was filmed entirely in Canada, and was hosted by a Canadian (Quebec-born Al Dubois).  Wink Martindale - who some may call the king of game shows - created this program, which ran for three and a half years.  Interestingly enough, on GAME TV, this show follows "Split Second" on the schedule.



COUCH POTATOES
January 23, 1989 - September 8, 1989

Okay, so this show was one that I absolutely loved, even though I was too young to understand some of the pop culture references.  Essentially, this show was one that celebrated the joys of channel surfing and sitting on the couch watching television.  Even the set was designed to look like a rec room of sorts!

Yes, 1989 was a year in which everyone seemed to be getting cable television.  In fact, I think that was the year that my family started subscribing to cable!  So, naturally, game shows began flooding the cable market.

Hosted by "Double Dare" host Marc Summers, "Couch Potatoes" pitted two teams of three against each other in a battle to the death with television show knowledge.  Each team named themselves after a television show, so for instance, you might have "Charlie's Angels" battling against "The A-Team".  It was really interesting to see what would happen.

The final round was especially fast and furious.  You had the standard UHF dial with each channel from 2-13 having a picture of a television show that you had to identify.  If you reached a certain amount of points, you won the game, but keep in mind that one of the channels on the bonus round was a "PAY TV" square.  Land on this square, you lost your points.  And, by the way.  You only had 30 seconds to play.  Talk about pressure!



RODEO DRIVE
February 5, 1990 - August 31, 1990

Interestingly enough, this show debuted the same day that the revival of "Supermarket Sweep" did in the United States.  "Supermarket Sweep" lasted five years on the air initially.  This show barely lasted seven months.

It's not as though comedienne Louise DuArt didn't try to make the show interesting.  I thought she did a good job.  And it's not that the premise of the show, which was trying to recreate celebrity gossip by answering questions about it was necessarily a bad one.  It's just that the show was so confusing that I found it hard to follow.  Watch the episode up above and see what I mean.

Okay, so those are four examples.  Can you name any more?

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Tales From an Eighth Grade Somebody

Okay, so welcome to another edition of WHO AM I WEDNESDAY, and I thought that for this week, I would make this post "back to school" themed.

So, yes.  This diary entry will be all about some memory from my school years.  In fact, I'm going to be talking about a particular grade from my school years that really sort of shaped the way that I looked at things.

This is my diary post - "Tales From an Eighth Grade Somebody".

September 3, 2014

For some reason, I'm beginning to feel really old.



I can't believe that it has been twenty years since I began my eighth grade year.  It doesn't seem like it's been that long.  I mean, it was just yesterday that I was heading inside of my eighth grade classroom in my New Balance sneakers, husky sized jeans, and an Anaheim Mighty Ducks baseball cap on top of my head.

And, yes.  I was a husky kid.  Hell, I'm a husky adult.  That much hasn't changed.

But I would have to say that the eighth grade was a year of real transition.  The 1994/1995 school year was such that I went through some great changes, both physically and emotionally.

I'll spare you the descriptions of my physical changes though.  Nobody needs to hear the full description of the summer that puberty gave me a bitch slap into young adulthood.

But, I will say that looking back on eighth grade, it was a rather interesting year. 

First of all, I found myself even surprised that I was finishing off the year at the elementary school where I had spent the previous eight and a quarter years (I transferred from another school during my kindergarten year), because after the living, breathing hell that was seventh grade, my parents had seriously considered switching me out of school to attend a different one.

Seventh grade was a year in which I was literally my own island in a group of kids.  None of the kids in my class really liked me, and with a couple of exceptions, I really didn't like many of them either.  It was the year in which I probably went home feeling depressed each and every day, and it was a year in which despite my teacher's best efforts to incorporate me more into the classroom activities, I still found myself to be a real outsider.  The majority of the kids I did like were in the other class, and I really struggled with the school curriculum a lot.

Translation:  Seventh grade algebra sucked.

It also didn't help matters much that in seventh grade, four of the meanest bullies all happened to be in the same class as I was.  It was nine and a half months of pure torture. 

I understood why my parents wanted me to switch schools that year.  Hell, I was ready to get out of there.  Do you want to know why I couldn't?

School zoning.

You see, I lived down the street from my elementary school.  All other elementary schools in the area were at least twelve to fourteen blocks away - none of which were in my assigned district.  Oh, sure, my parents could have relocated to another neighbourhood, or fought to have me reinstated at a different school, but in the end, there was not much that could be done.  I was forced to stay at a school that I really didn't like very much for my final year of elementary school.

Worst yet...my assigned teacher for that year was the seventh grade gym teacher that kicked me out of the class for standing up for myself.  Maybe doing it in the middle of class wasn't the best idea, but hey, I hated gym class anyway.  I didn't really care.

Confession:  I threw up the day before the first day of eighth grade due to nerves over facing the same people.  Nobody ever knew that until now.

But, here's the ironic thing.  Despite all of the fear and the anxiety that I had going into eighth grade, it ended up being one of my favourite years of elementary school.  And I think a large part of that came from three major surprises that took place at the beginning of the year.

Surprise #1:  For the first time in my school's history, all the classrooms were Grade 7/Grade 8 split classrooms.  This meant that in my classroom there were fourteen Grade 7 students and fourteen Grade 8 students.  This was absolutely perfect for me.  Unlike many of my fellow 1981 classmates, I got along with most of the ones from 1982.  I actually kind of wished that I had been born in 1982 instead while I was in school because I loved those guys.  So, having some pals in my class from Grade 7 was a nice bonus.

Of course, this leads to Surprise #2.  While I did have some trouble getting along with many of my fellow Grade 8's, interestingly enough, the kids who were in my grade were all kids I didn't really mind too much.  Those four boys who used to taunt me were scattered in the other two classrooms (something that they did right for a change), and I think that the others were all right people.  In fact, most of the ones who were in my eighth grade class I still keep in touch with on Facebook today.  So, in retrospect, the classroom assignment was a good one.

And, this led to Surprise #3!  The teacher that I dreaded having turned out to be a lot of fun - well, when we weren't doing gym class, that is.  I honestly don't know if he actually really liked me or not, but I can safely say that I got a lot out of his class, and I began to see him in a different light.  I mean, sure, I don't think I'll ever be his favourite pupil or anything like that, but I also don't think that he played favourites.  He was there to do a job, which was to teach us all the things that we needed to know to get out of elementary school and enter the brave new world known as high school.

But the ways in which he taught us were probably some of the most creative ways that I've ever seen any teacher teach.  The first month of school, we actually had to build a model of ourselves to display in our classrooms for school open house using old clothes, and stuffed newspaper, to simulate us being at our desks learning.  It was fantastic, and a lot of fun.

I also seem to remember art class being especially creative.  I think if I looked back on when I first became interested in art, it really began during my later years of elementary school.  Sixth grade was the year that planted the seed, and eighth grade was the year in which my love of art really sprouted.  We made simulated stained glass windows for Christmas, made lino art for another class, and we even turned our class photos into pictures of toys to put underneath our "class Christmas tree".

The teacher also found ways to make learning other subjects fun.  We performed science experiments in class (though I hated the ones involving balloons because I don't like the popping sound, and the kids used to make fun of me for it).  We played Scrabble during English class (which I believe I reigned supreme on most of the time).  I even remember the time in which we learned about the stock market and we all teamed up to create our own businesses to set up in the gym.  That event was always a lot of fun.  Sure, it was marred by the fact that a kid stole some of our team's money (ON MY BIRTHDAY, MIGHT I ADD), and because of that we were in the bottom half of the class.  Thankfully we weren't graded on that assignment or else I would have gotten my first "F"!

Come to think of it, my final report card was brilliant that year.  I ended up getting NEARLY straight A's in that class with one notable exception.

Okay, so as a gym teacher, my 8th grade teacher was still not very cool.  A C minus in gym?  Really?  I mean, at least I tried to sink baskets in basketball.  It took me fifty-nine times, but I still sunk a basket!

And, of course, I'll always remember my 8th grade graduation for a couple of reasons.  One, because I won the Faculty Award for Excellence in English.  And two, because I had my very first date that night.  Of course, I never saw the girl again after graduation, but there was that one special night.

But do you want to know the reason why I loved eighth grade so much?  It was the first year that I could remember in a long time where I didn't feel intimidated to go to school (well, aside from the first day, that is).  It was the first year in which I didn't go home feeling defeated each day (though there were some moments that really sucked).  And, while the year was filled with some personal drama (having your mom and sister hospitalized during your fourteenth birthday will do that to you - and I hope you're reading this I.B. - the boy who stole the stock market money on my birthday - and I hope you feel GUILTY about it too!)...it was also filled with fun and joy.  And for the first time in a long time, I ended a school year on a happy note.

Of course, it just happened to be the year that I graduated, but still...eighth grade was the year that I realized that maybe I could make the best of an uncertain situation and thrive from it.

Mind you, that illusion was shattered by high school...but hey, I'll take whatever I can get.