Absolutely no trouble getting to or from work today. Took 4 minutes for the driver to arrive this morning and 4 this afternoon. The road was fine, despite the ongoing wind.
No trouble at work, either. Other than gathering the trash at one point, I spent the entire afternoon rounding up carts. Wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else. It was sunny and still insanely windy when I arrived and when I left. Around 12:30, it started to snow, and snow hard. It was still too warm for it to stick. It didn't even look that nice coming down. The wind blew it around too much for that. The clouds finally broke up around 1:30, and it hasn't done anything but blow since then.
(The kids were too cute when it snowed. I saw two boys catching snowflakes on their tongues and running around, trying to get the snowflakes. They gave me a good laugh as they darted around, trying to gather snowflakes with their hands, then their tongues.)
We weren't busy, either, especially later in the afternoon. Everyone is either waiting for their day off tomorrow, or were at home watching football. The games were a bit better this time. This time, the Packers blew the Cowboys off the field 48-32 and the Lions just barely sneaked past the Rams 24-23.
Went straight home, changed, and into tonight's Match Game Sunday classics. (I took a shower and had dinner later during the marathon.) Tonight, we looked at the show's humble beginnings in 1973. It began as a fairly staid affair in July, with Gene Rayburn asking simple fill-in-the-blank questions. By the time fall rolled around, the jokes were a lot rowdier, and so were the panelists. Their big lunch between tapings that usually included some kind of libation assured that after-lunch episodes would be especially insane.
Richard Dawson was there from the beginning, on the very first week with Vicki Lawrence, Anita Gillette, Jack Klugman, Jo Ann Pflug, and Michael Landon. Of that first crowd, only Landon, offended by the randier questions and stricter rules, would never return. Klugman, Gillette, and Lawrence would turn up at least two or three more times much later in the series, while Pflug, who always did handle Richard and host Gene Rayburn drooling over her very well, became a semi-regular.
The third week debuted Betty White, Bert Convy, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Klugman's wife Brett Somers. Klugman recommended Brett to get her out of the house, but I don't think he figured she'd get a career out of it. Brett proved so popular and played so well off Richard and the others, she became a regular by August. Reilly would be the third regular around November, though he didn't appear as often as Richard and Brett due to his many other commitments.
Some of the wildest episodes from the entire series happened before the show was even six months old. Bobby Van and his wife Elaine Joyce made their first appearances on a now-banned episode with a question on what Batman and Robin are doing together. Dick Gautier appeared with his wife Barbara Stuart and gave another sexuality-related answer that now has the episode banned from the air. Host Gene Rayburn's ugly green and red plaid suit was nearly as offensive. Comedian Jack Carter said it looked like "a station break in Poland." The panelists wouldn't even look at him when he came in.
"Mama" Cass Elliott became the only rock star to ever appear on the show a few weeks later. Bill Cullen also made his first appearance on her week, and Jack would sit next to Brett for the first of two times. Still another week had McLean Stevenson, who claimed none of the other men would lend him any clothes, turn up shirtless. He was also fond of running over to Gene, Richard, and any other available male panelist and giving them huge kisses and hickeys. There was also Charles appearing as Santa in the first Christmas episode, and the streamers and confetti thrown for the first New Year's.
Explore the beginnings of Match Game in these out of control episodes!
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