Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 102

Fantastic Language Features Missing in English

I do not want the absolute direction one. I'm not good at east, west, north, south.

The Worst Advertising Has to Offer

As bad as advertising is during regular viewing hours, it’s a billion times worse during the daytime. While I was up in Minnesota, helping my dad clean out the house, I worked with the television on. Most of the ads were geared to retired folks or (apparently) people who are entitled to some kind of compensation.
At home, I just hit the mute button and ignore the crap. It wasn’t so easy in Minnesota because I was trying to work and repeatedly reaching for the remote wasn’t conducive to progress.
It wasn’t only on that game show channel I found either. I’d discovered another station, one that did a weekend binge of Black Sheep Squadron with Robert Conrad, and it was every bit as bad with one added commercial for some replica watch. Gah!
How bad were the ads? After a few days, I started muttering STFU every time a commercial break started. Luckily, my dad wasn’t in the same room I was in most of the time, and when he was, he doesn’t hear real well. :-)
I’m not sure about this, but I wonder if they alternate ads from big pharma with lawyer ads to sue big pharma for bad drugs? It sure seemed that way.

In the Bag

One of the things that took a lot of time for me to get used to when I first moved to Georgia was grocery shopping. The store I went to in Minnesota didn’t bag the groceries—that was self-service. In Atlanta, however, they do bag for you. Heck, one store even takes your groceries out to your car with you!
So we’re back in Minnesota, and because my dad had been down visiting me for four months, there was no food in the house. We were forced to immediately go shopping. Usually, when I visit, he goes to the store without me, but his car wouldn’t start after sitting in the garage unused for so long and I went with, grocery list in hand.
My dad abandoned me while I was waiting in the check-out line, so I’m standing there oblivious when it finally struck me like a lightning bolt from the blue—I had to bag my groceries!
I stepped up to the task, though, and I like the way I bag even if I used more bags than the kids in Georgia use when they do it. My dad arrived when I was nearly done. Just in time to put the last item in a bag and walk out with me.
It’s amazing what four years does to your memory banks. I went from shocked in Georgia back then to shocked in Minnesota now. :-)

The Trouble With Transporters

This makes me sad. I like the concept of the transporter.

Buried Treasures

I wrote this post while I was up in Minnesota, helping my dad go through his house.



As I write this, my dad and I have already made three trips to a charity to donate things. Three trips with my car packed full—not only the way back, but also the back seat. Most of what we’ve come across hasn’t been anything I’ve been interested in, but I’ve also discovered some treasures.
The most exciting find was old cards. Cards from when I was adopted, cards from my first birthday, cards for other important events. Just priceless!
I don’t keep cards so no one is going to find anything like this in my house. Sorta sad, but clutter.
We’ve also found some pictures, although nothing that’s blown my socks off yet, but it’s been fun to see photos of when my mom and dad were younger and when I was little. We’ve also come across pictures of people neither my dad nor I recognized and that was kind of sad. We had a 8x10 photo of a couple with a baby and my dad could only come up with the guess that one of them was some sort of cousin to my mom. That’s sad.
I also found a couple of super cool purses my mom used to carry. I guess this was back before she got into the boring mom purses that I remember. She also put aside a few dresses that she told my dad she wanted me to have.
Mostly, though, sorting through the house has been hard work. My parents honestly threw nothing away and my dad and I are paying the price for it now. Big time. And even though I threw out a ton of stuff a few years ago before I moved to Atlanta, it still makes me want to sort through my stuff and get rid of more because wow.

Last Thoughts on Old Game Shows

I'd actually planned to leave the vintage game show discussion after my last post, but I had a few last thoughts I wanted to mention.

One of the weirdest things about watching these old shows is realizing how many of these people are dead. Richard Dawson, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly, Gene Rayburn, Bert Convy, and a bunch of celebrities from Tattletales like Alejandro Rey, Robert Culp, and Christopher George to name just a few.

Some of them I discovered were dead as I searched for them online. For Rey, it was to discover who he was. For some of the others, I was curious if they were still married to the spouse they appeared with on the show.

That leads me to weird thing number two--Watching Tattletales and knowing who was divorced. Watching James Brolin with his then-wife, Jane, was painful. Not because I knew the marriage hadn't survived, but because they did really poorly on the show. It was like they didn't know each other at all. Also, James Brolin was seriously hot back then. Wow!

Then there was Robert Culp and his then-wife, Sheila. They were so sweet together, seemed so in love, and seemed to know each other so well. I actually searched online for him because I wanted to read about them still being married. Um, yeah, no. They weren't. Their marriage only lasted 5 years, I think.

Linda Day George and Chris George seemed like a likely couple to divorce. He was the one who kept calling her a "dingbat" when they missed a question on the show. To my surprise, they stayed married until his death. I never would have guessed that given his disrespect of her.

I still wish more game shows today were like the old ones, except without the sexism, racism, and homophobia. I loved the humor and fun they had on the shows, something that seems sorely lacking in our current-day fare.

Ten Best Cat Commercials

Some of these are funny.

Sexism in the 1970s

While I was up in Minnesota, I had a TV channel on called Buzzr while I was sorting through boxes of my parents’ stuff. I got to watch a lot of Match Game, Tattletales, and Family Feud (the old version with Richard Dawson) and the one thing that jumped out at me was the casual sexism.
Women were still referred to as “girls,” but while the language used definitely underlined things, it was the attitude that annoyed me. All these assumptions made about women and no one blinked at them, not the contestants, not the celebrities, not the hosts or the audience. It wasn’t constant, but it was frequent and oh, boy was it eye opening.
On Tattletales, one celebrity kept calling his wife a “dingbat” when they missed a question. Really. He took no responsibility for getting it wrong and the part that left me livid—he called his wife a name on national television. How much more disrespectful can it get?
I get annoyed today with the attitude and frequently think that I can’t believe people still talk/behave this way to and about women in 2016. And we do have a long way left to go, no doubt. But after watching these old game shows…we have come a long way. And that is totally sad that we were ever that bad. It’s hard to believe.
It was an OMG, seriously? experience for me. Most of the shows were early/mid 1970s, but one of them aired as late as 1978. Wow.

Old Game Shows

While I was up in Minnesota, helping my Dad clean out the house, I discovered a channel called Buzzr which showed old game shows. I think it might be a local Minneapolis channel, but I can’t swear to that because I only saw the local info flash once. So while I was going through boxes, I got to watch cool shows like Match Game, Tattletales, Password, and the original Family Feud with Richard Dawson.
Game shows were so much more fun back in the 1970s than they’ve been in the past twenty years. The hosts had personalities and were actually funny! The celebrity guests were fun and quipping with each other and the contestants. And the dollar amounts won were ridiculously low. :-) Yes, I do realize that inflation has changed the value of money in the past 40 years, but it was still pretty amazing to watch people get all excited over winning $500.
Then there were the hair styles and the clothes. OMG! Ugly! So many Farrah Fawcett circa Charlie’s Angels haircuts. And I’m sorry, but the clothes were all hideous. Fashion went through its own Dark Ages in the 70s.
 I was actually kind of surprised by how much fun the celebrities were on these shows. Match Game where they’re quipping with each other and the contestants. Super Password where they’re trying so hard to win that money for their contestant partner. It was a kick and it made me miss this particular aspect of recent game shows.
The other celebrity thing was I didn’t know who so many of them were! Alejandro Ray? Bobby Van? Joyce Bulifant? I’m not even sure I’ve spelled their names correctly because all I could say was who?
But wow, these shows are so much more fun than any game show we’ve had in the past twenty years—maybe even longer than that. Not that these shows were perfect by any means. They were of their time and that means racism, sexism, and homophobia were obvious. I’ll talk more about the sexism in my next blog post.

What Would A World Without Mosquitoes Look Like?

Interesting.