Groundhogs and Matches

Began the morning with breakfast and Strawberry Shortcake and the Winter That Would Not End. I found this album version of the picture book my sisters and I loved in the early 80's at the Barrington Antique Center about a decade ago. Strawberry and her friends try to find the thief who stole the Snow Crystal when winter seems to go on for too long. It's too bad the specials didn't go in for the charming rural fairy tale of the original two books. This ends up being really sweet, with the lovely rustic artworks from the books on the disc.

My arms and wrist are still really sore, so I called Uber one more time. No trouble getting anywhere in the morning. The driver came in less than 2 minutes and got me to work in 5. Had a harder time when I got off at 3:30. The first driver canceled, and it took the second 9 minutes to come. And he ran into traffic on the White Horse Pike. Thankfully, it cleared out once we got past Cuthbert and took a little over 5 minutes.

No trouble at work, either. It wasn't bad when I arrived, but it started picking up around noon. Thankfully, this time I had the Sunday bagger and afternoon bagger helping me...and they're both college students who don't double as cashiers. I gathered the trash, but they did the sweeping and put away cold items. I was in and out with no problems whatsoever. 

Spent the rest of a gloomy, gray, cold afternoon eating dinner and watching tonight's Match Game marathon. There were even more episodes that are skipped, banned, or just plain rare than we saw last night. Some of them have answers that would never fly today, like Brett and Dick Gautier's naughty word for gays that that they used in two shows and Bobby Van and Elaine Joyce's response to what Batman and Robin were doing as a couple. Others just have bad tapes, like the Friday episode of the second week of '73 with Michael Lerned and Richard Thomas, who are both drowned out by loud buzzing on the end. 

Gene had the bad habit of letting out racial epithets that he probably thought were funny, but came off as more than a little offensive even then. Greg Morris tossed it right back at him in 1975 and Jimmie Walker was too full of himself to pay attention to it in 1981, but I'm not sure how happy a contestant was about the language later in '81. Buzzr doesn't appreciate midget jokes and, until the last few months, tended to skip or censor any episode that mentioned them. Game Show Network skipped some especially offensive Eskimo jokes in the syndicated era.  

See how standards have changed in the past 50 years in these thought-provoking and still often hilarious rarities! 

Match Game Sunday Classics - Rare, Skipped, and Banned Episodes (Best of the Best) (Part 2)

Oh, and considering what the weather was like here, I'm a bit surprised to hear that Phil the groundhog saw his shadow. It was cold enough today for me to believe that six more weeks of winter prediction, even if it is supposed to warm up later in the week.