I had just enough time this morning for breakfast and an episode of Green Eggs and Ham before I left. Having escaped the two officers, Sam and Guy end up working at a carnival to make money for the next leg of their journey. EB and Michellee are also at the carnival after EB accused her mother of not knowing how to have fun. While mother and daughter do learn that even the wildest rides can be enjoyable, Guy accidentally wrecks the ride he was working on, ending with him and Sam getting fired. They barely manage to escape with the Chickagriffe, and thanks to EB's tiny coin, now have the money to mail themselves in a "Box" on the next leg of their journey.
Absolutely no difficulty with Uber today. Both the morning and afternoon drivers arrived in four minutes and got to and from the Acme in five. No traffic anywhere.
Wish work was that easy. I was supposed to be in the floral department, but the store is still getting ready for the arrival of those corporate bigwigs. They brought in managers from other stores to make bouquets and do the organizing. I tried to help, but I mostly felt like I was in the way. One manager would tell me to do something, and then another would tell me to do something else, and then another would want me to do something totally different. I tried to help with the balloons, but I'm still no good at twisting the smaller ones, and I just couldn't seem to put them where anyone wanted them. I was overwhelmed and frustrated the entire four hours. And I stayed a little later to figure out where to put a box of unused animal vases, which meant I was late getting out.
Went straight into doing my taxes when I got home. This is a very simple process for me. I own no property, have no dependents, and work at one part-time job. Turbo Tax did most of the work. I'm getting about $940 back after paying them, a little less than last year. I'm actually getting a little bit more from the state, about $69. The entire process took less than an hour.
Did some stuff online for a while, then broke for dinner and Match Game '79. Daryl started things off nervously helping the contestant with "__ Fare" on the Head to Head. There's more trouble later when a lot of panelists complain about Ira not matching "baby" and "litters." The second begins with Gene "playing" his microphone like a flute in honor of a high school marching band in the audience and Daryl showing off his long Pinnochio putty nose. Gene spends the rest of the episode playing around with a saw someone left on the set.
Finished the night at YouTube with picture and puzzle game shows. The big winner among puzzle-based shows is Concentration. This one began in 1958 as a cross between Memory and a rebus board. Contestants choose two numbers from the board; if the prizes underneath match, they reveal two more pieces of the rebus. Once they reveal enough, they can guess the rebus and win the prizes. The original show went from 1958 to 1974 and remains one of the longest-running shows on daytime TV. I went with one of the earliest episodes known to exist from around 1959 featuring original host Hugh Downs.
Other puzzle shows from the 60's didn't have nearly that much luck. The Face Is Familiar from 1966 has two celebrities helping their partners unscramble photos in order to guess the famous celebrity or guess whose eyes or nose appears onscreen. Kind of fun to play along if you know the era. Too bad this was only a summer replacement show with four episodes existing today, including the premiere I have here.
Later puzzle shows got a lot wilder. Whew! from 1979 incorporated strategy and trivia into its complicated game that had one person placing blocks on a huge board, and the other having to place the right word in a question as they go up the rows. The strategically-placed blocks make people lose time. Winners go on to the "Gauntlet," a row of 10 Hanna Barbara-designed cardboard villains holding monitors with replace-the-word questions. If a person can run the gauntlet and get the answers, they win $25,000. Despite being a heck of a lot of fun to watch, this doesn't seem to have ever worked, on CBS during its original run or during its brief run on Buzzr. It's a creative game that deserves a lot more than either network gave it.
The syndicated Catch Phrase from 1985 is another puzzle show I wish had gone over better. In this variation on Concentration, people had to guess what a robot was doing on a computer screen. If they could guess the catch phrase, they'd be able to ask for numbers on a larger screen that would reveal a Super Catch Phrase. The bonus game had them guessing five Catch Phrases in a row on a bingo-type board. This one was a far bigger hit in England. It started there in 1986 and has run off and on ever since.
Kids got in on the puzzles with the Nickelodeon show Get the Picture from 1991. This variation on connect-the-dots had kids guessing trivia in order to connect the dots and guess the photo. "Power Surges" have picture guessing games or physical stunts that are worth extra money. The second round was more like Catch Phrase, with the kids choosing squares. I vaguely remember seeing this one on Nickelodeon when it was new. I liked it, but it wasn't my favorite, and it still comes off as a little dry today despite the goofy stunts.
Pictureka, which aired on what was then known as the Hub in 2010, is a far more fun variation on this. Two kids and a parent chase after pictures hidden among other objects in a stadium. This was so cute. I wish Nickelodeon or someone else would take another crack at it. It was fun to watch the moms and their kids run around that studio, looking for penguin stand-up artwork and other hidden pictures.
Of course, there's other types of puzzles. Win, Lose, or Draw is also based on a board game. It simply had two celebrities and a contestant drawing pictures in order to get those sitting down to guess the subject. This game and its variations were huge in the late 80's, and the game shows also went over well. Original host Bert Convy is in the episode I have here, along with Normal Fell, Jennifer Savidge, actual artist Dick Gautier, and Anne Bloom of Not Necessarily the News.
Fast Draw was the earliest known celebrity art show from 1968. Here, two celebrities stand behind a drawing board and try to get their contestant partner to guess what they're drawing. Fast paced and fun, I'm surprised this one didn't make it out of '68. Long-time Jeopardy announcer Johnny Gilbert gets a rare shot at hosting here.
Beat the midwinter blues solving puzzles and figuring out what that drawing represents in these challenging games!
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