The Matches are Right

Really needed to sleep in today after a long weekend. After I awoke, I had breakfast, then made gingerbread from the last of the holiday mixes from the Acme. This time, I stuck to putting it in a small square pan. Added brown sugar for more flavor and buttermilk to make it moist. Oh, yum! It came out beautifully, just sweet and spicy enough.

Watched The Easter Bunny Is Coming to Town while I ate and baked. In the third and last of the Rankin Bass spring specials, Sunny the bunny is found by the orphans of Kidville and raised as one of their own. He insists on taking their eggs over the Big Rock Mountain and selling them in gloomy Town. Dour Lady Lily Longtooth is in charge of Town and bullies her nephew King Bruce mercilessly. Sunny and the kids continually create new Easter delights to get around her strict laws and grouchy bear Gadzooks...and inadvertently develop traditions that'll outlast Lady Lily's rules in the process.

Headed out to work shortly after the cartoon ended. It was busy all afternoon. It's the beginning of the month and a week before an Easter where dinner will be more important than ever. I had a hard time keeping up with the carts, sweeping, and emptying the front trash can. They wanted repaired carts brought from around back, too. I did have help from a high school boy later, but even then, I was still dead tired when I got off work. It doesn't help that people still aren't walking the right way and take more than one of hard-to-find items like toilet paper.

Wasn't up to doing much more than changing and going right into the next Match Game Marathon when I got home. Bob Barker is today known for being the host of The Price Is Right for thirty years and the trouble he got into with several of his models towards the end of his run. He was also a frequent panelist on Match Game, where he made jokes about giving refrigerators to the audience and joined Gene in ogling attractive panelists and contestants.

He was, in fact, on Match Game from its second week, and while he didn't appear as often as some of the semi-regulars, he had his own share of memorable moments. He and Gene had fun whispering to Loni Anderson in 1978 and drooling over Brianne Leary in her newsgirl outfit in '79. Bob and Gene joked about appearing in their own show together in one syndicated episode from 1980. Another had Bob trying to figure out how he can answer the contestants in a broken chair.

Come on down and enjoy Bob's skirt-chasing, car-auctioning antics! Tomorrow, the next Match Game semi-regular in the spotlight will be everyone's favorite slightly daffy, super-sweet blonde Joyce Bulifant!

The Best of Bob Barker on Match Game Marathon 1973 - 1980