Come on down!
Posted: November 12th, 2007 | Filed under: Baseball | 19 Comments »
OK: We’ve got an Outfield ATG coming up and also a “News on the March†segment where we break down some of the news in sports (and maybe the world). But for now, here’s a little post about speeding tickets and game shows.
I may have mentioned here once or twice that I was a game show junkie when I was younger. I believe this began with The Joker’s Wild, which was a great show if you happened to be, like, 5 years old, which I was at the time. The thing that was great about the Joker’s Wild: The questions were slightly easier than the things we were being asked in Kindergarten at the time. I never felt smarter in my entire life than when I was watching Joker’s Wild.
Jack Barry: “Joker! Joker! A triple!â€
Contestant: “I’ll take U.S. Presidents, Jack!â€
Jack Barry: “OK! This first U.S. president, whose name rhymes with Shmorge Quashington, was famous for his wooden teeth and for never telling a lie.â€
Contestant: ‘Aw geez Jack, I’m no history professor.â€
Jack Barry: “Yes, it’s a tough one. Take all the time you need.â€
I didn’t know it then, of course, but now it’s clear to see that The Joker’s Wild was an overreaction of producers Jack Barry and Dan Enright, who had been front and center during the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. Those two, you probably know, were behind the show 21, and they covertly gave contestants (most famously Charles Van Doren) the answers so that they could keep the show exciting and so Robert Redford could later do a movie about it. They got in a lot of trouble for that and were blackballed for a while. You can imagine that Barry and Enright came up with the idea of the Joker’s Wild and said, “OK, we’re going to make these questions SO easy, that nobody in their right mind will think we gave the answers in advance.
Contestant: “I’ll take Civil War, Jack.â€
Jack Barry: “For $50! When Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, he was standing on a famous battlefield in Pennsylvania. For $50, what battlefield was it�
Contestant: “Abraham who?â€
Those were also the days when pseudo celebrities, like Steve Garvey’s ex-wife and Foster Brooks and Paul Lynde, would do incredibly stupid and mesmerizing game shows like Password Plus and Hollywood Squares and Tattletales. My favorite of these shows was always the Pyramid, which I believe was called the “$10,000 Pyramid†when I first started watching. Great clues like: “What a Caesar Salad might say†and “Things you find in your nose.â€
And man was the Pyramid cheap. It looked like it had been put together by a high school for their prom. If I remember correctly, you needed to do all sorts of ridiculous and difficult thing to actually win $10,000 — I think you needed to win both rounds, solve both bonus puzzles, work three weeks in a coal mine, be related to Dick Clark and also invest wisely. Then game show prizes everywhere — even on so-called successful shows like “The Price is Right†— were, looking back, pathetic. They did seem impressive at the time, probably because of the way the announcer sold them.
You have won a three day, two night vacation in beautiful … RENO, NEVADA (crowd gasps, then cheers madly). That’s right, you and a special friend will be bussed from Los Angeles to Reno where you will spend two luxurious nights at the El Cow’Pati Hotel and Resort (crowd goes aw as blurry photo of resort comes up), complete with a free continental breakfast of toast and orange juice, vibrating beds and carpeting! Retail price: $5,392!
Those retail prices were beautiful, weren’t they? The best example of this astonishing game show cheapness was, of course, Wheel of Fortune. If you are old enough, you will remember that Wheel of Fortune did not give money or prizes back then. Well, they gave you money, but it was like Wheel of Fortune money, you had to use it to buy merchandise in the “Wheel of Fortune Gallery of Overpriced Crap.†It doesn’t really matter how much money you won when you are paying $1,265 for a lavender love-seat that looks it came right off the set of “Love, American Style†and $685 for a 15-inch bronze statue of Napoleon and, of course, whatever it cost for the famous ceramic dog. It was like going to a bad yard sale only you HAD to buy the junk. And there was no negotiating down the price. It would never have worked for my grandfather — he was the world’s best yard sale negotiation. I always imagined my grandfather on the show:
CHUCK WOOLERY: “OK, you solved the puzzle, and you have $1,048 to spend!â€
GRANDPA: “For $1, I’ll buy the trip to Bermuda.â€
WOOLERY: “Um, no, that’s $8,493.â€
GRANDPA: “No way. I’ll give you a $1 for it. Nobody’s going to buy it and, what, you’re going to be stuck with a trip to Bermuda? Who goes to Bermuda this time of year? Plus, you have a job, you don’t have time to go to Bermuda. Tell you what, you’re a nice man, you probably won’t be hosting this show much longer with that Sajak kid coming up, OK, I’ll give you a $1.50 for it.â€
WOOLERY: “No, that’s $8,493. But for $594 you can buy the large dollhouse.â€
GRANDPA.†Tell you what. I’ll give you $3 for both the dollhouse and the trip to Bermuda, even though I really don’t want that dollhouse. What am I going to do with a dollhouse? It looks very cheap. But I’ll take it off your hands, $3, and the trip to Bermuda, and you know what? I’ll give you $5 for stereo, even though you’re robbing me blind.â€
Now come the time where you ask: “What is the deal with the ridiculous game show talk?†Well, over the weekend I had this real life game show experience that brought it all back. It’s embarrassing, but I suspect none of you made it this far anyway.
I was driving back from a game, and there was a truck going slow in the left lane. Well, OK, it wasn’t going slow, it was going about the speed limit, but you know that’s slow, especially in the left lane, and I wanted to get home, and so I passed him in the right lane. And that’s when I figured out why the truck was going relatively slow. There was a police officer RIGHT behind me.
He pulled me over, of course, because in my life I have NEVER gotten away with speeding. I don’t say this as a complaint — I am, by nature, a very lucky person. But this luck comes with a price. If I drop something even five inches, anything, a phone, a computer, it will hit in precisely the wrong spot and break. I cannot tell you how many times a repair person has said to me, “Oh it hit in just the wrong place.†I am generally not a speeder — five to seven miles per hour over limit stretches my comfort zone — but If I am speeding anywhere in the world, there will be a police officer nearby. It’s just my way.
Anyway, the officer took me back to his car and — without going into details — he gave me two options. I could take a ticket, which I could pay and be done with. OR he would give me a different ticket that I could challenge in court and not have to pay. The drawback there, of course, is that I would have to show up in court.
And there it was: The game show decision. Pay now. Show up later. Suddenly I was like one of those quivering mother-in-laws on Let’s Make A Deal, looking to the crowd for an answer to the eternal question: Take what’s in the small box or what’s behind Curtain No. 3? (Answer: You always take what’s in the box). Of course, there was no crowd to help me, and I don’t believe I was allowed to phone a friend. I didn’t know what to do. I was stumped. I stared into the night, watched passing cars, thought about some of the pressing questions of our time. What do we do about health care in America? Do hybrid cars have enough power to speed on the highway? How did Mary Ann afford the three-hour tour? Are teams really going to pay a 32-year-old Torii Hunter $15 million per year for his 104 lifetime OPS+?
“I’m afraid I’m going to need your answer,†the officer said.
“All right,†I said. “The name of the battleground was Gettysburg.â€
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Question: What happened to those would-be contestants deemed too stupid even for Joker’s Wild?
Answer: They went on Tic-Tac-Dough.
Joker’s Wild was easy, but those questions were like nuclear engineering final exams compared to those on Tic-Tac-Dough. Tic-Tac-Dough (“TTD†to the cognoscenti) was apparently based on the premise that viewers willing to watch an entire television program based on tic-tac-toe were not looking to be intellectually challenged.
Two other high points of Tic-tac Dough:
1. As I recall, there was a dragon involved somehow. Again, the Tic-Tac-Dough audience apparently responded favorably to the idea that a big, scary cartoon dragon might show up and wreak havoc on, well, the tic-tac-toe game.
2. Wink Martindale. I am sure that no one under 30 would believe that there was an actual person named Wink Martindale, that he was, in fact, a television personality, and that this whole concept actually happened and was not an episode of The Simpsons.
Press Your Luck was always my favorite, until that ice cream truck driver figured out all the patterns and ruined the show.
He went on to ruin his life also.
I think you need to give the details about this ticket. What kind of ticket do you get to challenge and not have to pay? Did he say you’d have to wear a dress to court? I think you’re being punked.
Has anyone watched The Price is Right with Drew Carey as host? I like Drew, but that show is terrible now. I’m really shocked that Bob Barker had that much of an impact on it.
I watched all the game shows back in the 80’s. I was also under 10. Tic Tac Dough, Joker’s Wild, Classic Concentration, High Rollers, Bumper Stumpers, Scrabble, Wheel of Fortune, Let’s Make a Deal (I never understood why the people were in costume though), Price is Right, etc. There were so many I don’t think I could begin to recount them all. My favorites were Jeopardy and Press your Luck. And I hated shows like Sale of the Century. Wink Martindale is a gameshow god.
USA network was great back then. All they did was replay old game shows all day.
Great post, I was laughing my (censored) off. Thinking back on all those old game shows, isn’t it crazy how much money they’re giving away now?
I remember an old TV show in Holland called the $64,000 question. (Except it wasn’t in dollars, but in the local currency. Anyways…)
To win that 64K, contestants took a number of questions on a specialty of theirs. They would go up in price money for every right question, and every so often, they’d reach a “bank” plateau, so they’d always get that money. Yes, it was exactly like “Who wants to be a millionaire”, except a lot cheaper.
And it wasn’t multiple choice. And they had no lifelines.
In any case, one guy had as his specialty “Czar Nicholas II.” I’m not even kidding. And he knew everything. It was mesmerizing to watch. Nobody had any clue what the question was about, the host was butchering the pronounciation, but this guy knew the answer.
Finally, he made it to the 64K question. (the only contestant to EVER make it to that round.)
The host looks at him, and actually APOLOGIZES before asking the question. He said “Look, this question came from a book called xxxxxx. There are only two copies of it in the world. And this is the only book that mentions this particular fact.”
So he asked the question, and the guy nailed it. He had actually read one of the two copies of that book. In the Russian National Library.
In any case, everyone went nuts, it was frontpage news in all the newspapers. The guy won 64,000 bucks in local currency. Which was about 30,000 dollars at the time. And he had to pay taxes on it.
Nowadays, you go on a game show with a bald idiot for a host, and all you have to do is point at one scantily clad girl and voila, 3 million bucks! Screaming optional.
I think I liked the old gameshows better.
Always take the box it could even be a boat!
Oh and don’t forget Truth or Consequences.
You want easy? “Sale of the Century”
Joe,
If you were in Tennessee, there would have been a third option to get out of that ticket:
http://www.wsmv.com/news/14351455/detail.html
Joe,
I don’t know if you know my friend Andrew Baggarly, who these days covers the Giants for the San Jose _Mercury News_, but if you do, you should ask him about how he was rooked when he was on a kids’ game show called _Card Sharks_ back when he was ten years old or so.
Joe Po-
We meet again my friend, but this time the advantage is mine. In all of our previous meetings, you had already said your piece, and had gone on to do whatever Joe Posnanski does when he’s not blogging (if David Attenborough ever does a documentary series on you, I can guarantee beyond any shadow of a doubt that I will buy it). In all of our previous meetings, you did not know that I existed. This time, the roles are reversed, though you could get away easily enough with the ol’ “your email was immediately buried in my endless stream of fanmail, so my humblest apologies for not reading it.â€
Anyway, I’ve finally gotten around to sort of having an opinion on the whole A-Rod opt out unveiling in the midst of a cancer survivor winning the world series. It was Jon Heyman who broke the story right? No one seems to have an opinion on him. It is assumed that when news becomes known, it will be reported literally as fast as possible, lest someone else do the same thing first and get all the credit. We Americans (can I say things like that?) are big on assigning credit, and bless us for it (I don’t mean God please bless our creditory nature, I mean good for us). The sometimes cloying side effect is that people get very into I Did This, and leave behind This Occurred. A This Occurred mentality would have prompted Heyman to wait for a more appropriate time, and expect his fellow media folk to do the same, should the opt-out have gossiped (Borased) over to them in time to announce it. You wouldn’t tell your buddy that you got a raise while the J.D. Drew grandslam was in midair. You wouldn’t start bitching about work when Papelbon has one out to go. There are contexts in which it’s understood that you don’t say anything unless it’s really important, or at least relevant to the focus of the collective attention. The opt-out announcement wasn’t relevant to the game. Had A-Rod been in the game, it would have been relevant, because the Yankees would have to sub in a different third baseman. I realize it’s not possible (though never doubt Boras, I bet one day he invents the mid-season opt-out contract), but there’s something beautiful about the idea of A-Rod opting out of his contract in Game 4 of a World Series in which he is playing. Boras would hold out negotiations until just before the next inning, and then reveal a just-negotiated $6mil per hour contract with the Rockies.
Boras implied that his news was more important than the thing we were watching, by leaking it when he did, and Heyman reported the news. I can’t actually bring myself to blame Heyman either, but I wish that more news writers would consider their roles as storytellers instead of just information relay stations. I know that’s an oversimplification, but even a mediocre storyteller wouldn’t have revealed an unrelated twist with no immediate impact as far as actual games are concerned, while the climactic game of the season (well, that and games 5 and 7 of the ALCS) was taking place. Were I to make this point in a conversation, there would be quick replies of “but he was just doing his job,†and “if he didn’t someone else would have,†and “SI wouldn’t have been happy if he waited and then ESPN got it.†I know all that, and it’s why I most likely would have done the same thing in that situation. It’s more the mentality that drives a decision like that, that is worth our attention. A piece of information has a range of contexts that are appropriate. Rare is the news that can and should be said anytime anyplace. I can think of “FIRE!†and, um “TORNADO!†and “STAMPEDE!†But outside of really bad news that can be reported by shouting a single word, all news has socially understood restrictions on when and how it is said. Boras broke our rules, buy Heyman didn’t, even though all Heyman did was tell the same piece of news to many more people.
Instant news is one thing we’ve come to assume, but another is instant opinions. Writers, politicians and anyone we look to for opinions, are expected to have them within 2.5 seconds of hearing information. “Let me think about that for a while,†is not an acceptable answer. When was Game 4? Two weeks ago? That’s how long it took me to figure out my opinion in a satisfactory way. I had general sentiments pretty quickly, but it’s only crystallized into words now. Granted, if you think and write about these things for a living, the process should speed up some, but can we at least grant our public figures a good night’s sleep to think over a tough issue, before we start calling them stupid, ignorant or wishy-washy?
By the way, you seem a little traumatized by the Wahoo response, but I thought it the piece was wonderful. I even mentioned it in an email to my girlfriend who knows next to nothing about sports, and nothing at all about you. That sentence looks much weirder written down than in my head. My sincerest thank yous for reading and writing. Don’t forget to reuse and recycle. Till we meet again-
Owen Poindexter
Joe,
I loved those game shows too. I used to watch them all the time. One of my favorite prize moments was watching Pitfall–there was something about walking across this bridgelike structure with numbered spaces, and if you got something wrong, the bottom dropped out, and you fell down. Anyway, I remember a contestant from Hawaii winning a week’s vacation in–you guessed it–Hawaii, which as always included roundtrip airfare from Los Angeles. I love the idea of having to fly to and from LA on your own dime, just to take a free vacation in you home state.
I used to watch Joker’s Wild and Tic Tac Dough, but I really liked Match Game. I loved all the slightly risque questions, and that show had some of the best “celebrities”–it’s hard to top Charles Nelson Reilly.
Make Me Laugh was another great one. Winning money for keeping a straight face while some guy with a bag over his head told bad jokes. My sister and I used to watch that one all the time.
Don’t forget that the town Truth or Consequences, NM was named for the game show. It also happens to be not far from Roswell, NM and the site of the great alien crash cover-up conspiracy. I plan to ride my ethanol fueled landspeeder to Roswell next month to campaign there and take away some votes from Bill Richardson. I will also unveil more exciting news from my Intergalatic-Planetary Endorsements Committee. You won’t want to miss it! CON-SPAN (that’s Conspiracy-SPAN) has said they will televise it live.
Also, you must remember the show Press Your Luck and how one man memorized the sequence and won a large sum of money until the man shut him down. No Whammies indeed!
I’m so young that I grew up with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Greed.
Take the “Come back later option!” You could make a vacation out of it. It would almost be like you won the vacation on the COPS game show. You know its comming. Anywa, back to your regularly scheduled does of reality.
I grew up on the game shows as well. The best prize of all time was a sedan chair on “The Price is Right.” (And if I remember people actually oohed and aahed over it). I always wondered where people who won this thing actually kept it not to mention what purpose it served — it’s not exactly easy to find sedan chair bearers in the Yellow Pages.
For years, all my mother talked about was getting our family onto “The Family Feud”. I mean the old Richard Dawson version, not the one with the guy who hung himself, or the new lame version with Louie Anderson (who also looks like he’d like to hang himself now that I think about it).
The big debate in our house, should this actually occur, was which five of us would go on the show. My parents had five kids, the youngest of which was so far behind the rest of us that he was clearly out of the running, but that left four kids plus two parents. My younger sister, kid #4, was always desperate to know if our father, who thought all of this was foolishness, would continue to think so if my mom actually succeeded in getting us on the show. If so, she got to fill the last spot, but if he suddenly realized that he could win real money, she was out of luck.
Being kid #3, I knew I had a safe spot, even if only as the last person. But that person never got as much face time, and almost NEVER got to participate in the showdown, so I was also keenly interested in what my father thought of the whole idea. If he came, I would be tail-end Charley. If not, I might actually get to do the speed challenge showdown plunger thingy part of the show, which would have been incredibly cool. There were many conversations among mom and the first four kids about what dad thought about all of this and which of us would participate in the bonus round (besides Mom, of course – she was nails.)
Sadly, none of this ever came to fruition, though my younger sister, kid #4, apparently never lost the dream of being on a game show, because she tried out for “Wheel of Fortune” when they had auditions in KC a couple of years ago, and was actually selected to appear. She won $31,000 and a trip to Spain, while telling Pat Sajak that she had a tattoo and wondering if he had one he couldn’t show on television.
Mom was very proud.
Dad taped it.
I love Match Game. Of course, I grew up on Blankety Blank, the UK version. But I really enjoy the American version on GSN.
The Joker’s Wild had this big hokey lever that the contestant would pull to start the reels rolling but of course it wasn’t actually connected to anything…. I remember one time a contestant pulled the lever and it fell right over revealing an utter lack of connections, but the reels spun anyway and everyone pretended nothing untoward had happened. It was hilarious.
There was a piece on NPR a few years ago about “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” in foreign countries. As always, the top prize is a million of the local currency. So, for example, a million Zambian Kwachis is about a buck-forty-seven Canadian. As I recall, a Scandanavian version “Finland” attracted such staid, conservative contestants no one every played above the $30- or $40 grand level, just took the money and went home. In Russia, male contestants *never* used a lifeline…perhaps evidence of what ever they call machismo in Russia.
But no game was better than Art Flemming’s “Jeopardy.”