
The Showcase Showdown. The saddest moment of every day of my childhood.
Now, let me explain this to you youngsters out there. Back in the olden times, there was no cable, except the ones buried in your backyard that shocked your Uncle Jed every time he got a hankering for some digging.
So, on that happy, happy day where you finally get chicken pox and you don’t have to go to mean old nasty school where they make you draw all day, feed you lunch and let you run around outside for an hour, sniff, just a moment, sniff. I’ll be ok. I’m ok.
Ok, so you still wake up at seven, because you haven’t learned any better and you run downstairs. But, you’re trapped. You look longingly outside and realize you can’t go play in the dirt or ride your bike or blow up Ewok action figures with your leftover bottle rockets (because dammit, they deserve it.)
No. You’re “contagious” whatever that means. Well Aunt Lucy was “contagious,” but that didn’t stop her from going to every bar in the tri-state area, why can’t I go outside?
The Fruity Pebbles only manage to cheer you up slightly. Mom’s listening to her “albums” and some goofy looking guy is singing or crooning or whatever it is that sounds like a dying goat. And then you look at the glorious box in the family room and park your ass in a recliner, an action that almost seems too natural, as though you exist at all times in your life at that moment. Of course, then you remember that there is no such thing as a remote control in your house, so you get up and turn on the television and run back to sit down.
News. Morning news. Why chicken pox, why? POXXXXXXXXXX!
All the other channels (and by all, I mean three because as I said above, there is no cable) are the same, But, nine a.m. finally arrives after what seems like two hours and game shows start. Glorious, glorious game shows. Finally, life is at its pinnacle after twelve long years. No school and big celebrities like Tom Poston helping the common man win money.
The next two hours pass in a state of bliss with laughs courtesy of Dick Clark, Peter Tomarken and Bob Barker until that final moment. The Showcase. And it has all slipped through your fingers, trapped inside with nothing left but………SOAP OPERAS…NOOOOOOOO!!
Thank God for books.
After 72 years on the air, CBS announced plans to cancel the soap opera “Guiding Light”. The show was canceled by Les Moonves’s evil twin, who posed as his brother after faking his death in a plane crash and kidnapping the real Les Moonves. (more…)