Brandon Notices

At the end of today's Wheel of Fortune, we got a rare glimpse of a hair-bankrupt Pat Sajak. At first, Vanna appeared not to believe him when he said that he was wearing a hairpiece, but when he made her take it off, it was quite a shocking sight to see! BALD SAJAK! I must say, this is the most shocking thing I've seen on Wheel since Alex Trebek hosted a game exactly eleven years ago!

It's 1995 or so. It's round three, the category is Where Are We?, and you've just solved the puzzle! Now all you have to do to win a cool $500 bonus is tell Pat where we are!


Hmmm... traps, holes, hazards, and greens? Well, it's obvious!

"Phoenix!"

No, that's not right. I can't believe he said "Phoenix"! He should have said "Golf course". It's not a big surprise that he didn't go on to the bonus round.

It's Teen Best Friends Week on Wheel of Fortune. The category of the first round puzzle was Slogan, and Pat explained before the round that the contestants who solve the puzzle could tell him what product or company the slogan was for to win a $3,000 bonus.

_AT FR_SH
(only vowels left)

I'm surprised and a little embarrassed that I thought the answer might be "Oat Fresh". The contestants apparently didn't know the answer; they asked to buy an E. There were two E's.

EAT FRESH

Pat asks them to solve it. So one of the girls on the team says, uncertainly, "Subway?" This is obviously not the correct solution to the puzzle. The other girl on the team gives a surprised gasp/laugh hybrid as the first girl continues, "Eat fresh?"

Pat's such a nice guy. He let them have it. I guess it could have been a little confusing for Pat to ask her to solve it when the correct solution is already on the board. It could be that she thought that Pat wanted the company with the given slogan.

I wonder if this is the first time this has happened.

Living Thing was the category of the third toss-up puzzle tonight on Wheel of Fortune. The yellow player buzzed in first when the puzzle looked like this:

ROBIN R_DBR_A_T

He muttered a guess like "robin redbrunt". The audience groaned a little at his dull guess. Not too much later, the blue player buzzed in when the puzzle looked like this:

ROBIN REDBREA_T

His guess was "robin redbreant". Pat laughed a little as he said no. The final letter, an S, popped up onto the board, and a short buzzer sounded that the round was over. The red player tried to signal in, but she was too slow. There wasn't enough time between Pat's "no" and the buzzer for her to signal in.

"Well," exclaimed Pat, "every now and then, we don't get it until... so I actually get to take the money home. It's a wonderful thing. No..., ah, so what we do is... we just move to whose turn it is to start the next round, just in order..."

I think this marks the first time that I've seen the contestants all miss the toss-up puzzle. Right after that, Pat spun $5,000 during the final spin, and the blue contestant got $36,000 in the speed-up round alone. But he missed the bonus puzzle. Oh well.

I was watching an episode of the cancelled game show Distraction not too long ago. Distraction is a funny show because the contestants have to answer questions while painful, humiliating stuff happens to them. In one of the rounds, the contestants were strapped into chairs and televisions positioned behind their chairs showed closeups of their eyes. The host explained, "Every time you blink, you will be electrocuted." Wow, I thought, that seems really harsh.

You see, a lot of people misuse the word "electrocute". Let me set the record straight: to electrocute someone is to KILL that person, using electricity. I invite you to take a look at the "-cute" part of the word, which you can also find in the word "execute".

So the host of the game show was just misusing the word, and nobody was killed, thank goodness. I bet that you've never been electrocuted, either. Sure, you may have had a big shock or two in your life, but you can't ever have been electrocuted if you can read this (unless ghosts have access to Firefox or something).

I'm at Jo-Ann with my sister and cousin and am really tempted to buy a 79-cent wooden A just so I can tell the cashier that "I'd like to buy a vowel." Is something wrong with me?

I'm sitting here, watching the new Family Feud. There's a number of changes. The biggest one, of course, is the new host. John O'Hurley has now usurped the role of host. And he's not too shabby. Sure, he has gray hair, but a lot of old people do. I'm glad that he knows the rules of the game; it would suck if he was all like, "Okay, um, now, let's see here... contestants, do you know how to play?" One thing that's a little irritating is that he seems to use his bold voice excessively; it becomes very painful to listen to. He also inflects his voice a lot. But at least he tries to be funny.

They've redecorated the set. It looks more like the original set than ever (with the family rooms behind the podiums, which are shaped like in the olden days), except with a lot of blue lighting. One change is that the big board is humongous; It's maybe 5 or 6 feet tall! And it's really low to the ground, meaning that they can frame the host and contestants into shots of the board. They replaced the old-fashioned incandescent egg carton scoreboards with TV screens displaying the scores--which is a little sad. Something that bugs me greatly is that the scores aren't displayed on the families' podiums anymore, which makes it a little hard to keep up to date with the scores because they don't zoom in on the new location of the scoreboards anymore.

I'm not 100% sure I like the new types of questions they're asking the contestants now. "Name a word that rhymes with orange." What? How can they do that? And what's with this question: "Name a celebrity you'd like to fuck." How inappropriate is that?! "Name a member of your family that you would kill for money." What kind of values are they trying to teach here?

Actually, I was kidding about the questions in the last paragraph. But still, there was a question a minute ago that I despised just as much as the one I ranted about a week or so ago. The question was "Which of the Seven Dwarfs best describes your wife in bed?" Of course, this is annoying to me because it's practically another multiple-choice question, with 7 choices. Worse yet, the top 5 answers were on the board, meaning that it would be impossible for a team to lose because there's the top 5 answers and the teams would be allowed to miss two without getting a third strike.

But, of course, this would only be true is the families knew all seven of the dwarfs. Sleepy, Grumpy, and Happy (the #1 Answer) popped up on the board pretty fast, and so did Dopey (huh?), but the contestants got three strikes due to answers such as "Mopey" and "Snoozy", and the other team couldn't steal with their guess of "Sneezy". The last answer was Bashful, but still, any team knowing all seven dwarfs could win that question without much problem. This would make it a trivia game, something that the Feud really isn't.

I miss Richard Karn.

It seems that each of the last few times I've watched The Price Is Right, there's been at least one idiot per show. I wish I could remember the examples of moronic, idiotic contestants on The Price Is Right from recent episodes, but here's one that's on the show right now.

There's a contestant, Victor, who is currently sitting in Contestant Row. They were bidding on some item last round, and he bid "thirty-nine ninety-five." So "3995" appears on his display and Bob Barker repeats, "Three thousand, nine-hundred ninety-five," and Victor says, "No, thirty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents." So the audience starts booing, as would I, and Bob explains to him that there's only whole-dollar amounts on the show for the history of the show and that this kid's been wasting his life (because he hasn't been watching the show?). Then he clears his board and asks if he wants to bid $40. Victor says no, and bids $60. Of course, he loses the round; the true value of the item was more than $1,000.

I find it distressing that contestants are being goofy. Are they doing this for attention? It kinda reduces the integrity of the show. Bogus. I'll keep my eye open for more examples.

I'm watching Family Feud right now, and I must say that something I just saw shocked and disappointed me. The question Richard Karn asked the contestants was, "Name who comes out on top in a divorce: the husband, the wife, or the lawyer?" Now, isn't there something fundamentally wrong with asking a multiple-choice question in this show? It ruins the free association that the show is so famous for. You never know what the survey may have said! But when the show forces options on the survey, isn't it kinda pointless?

Now, this was during the sudden death round, so it's not like all three choices were on the board. Only lawyer was up there (with 77 points), but still, the question wasn't very fair, and this was to decide the game, too. Poor Mary Beth buzzed in early, and said what I bet most of the survey would have said without the choices: "the wife." But that was wrong. Then Karn read the question in its entirity, including the choices.

After the other contestant got it right, Karn aplogized to the losing team, saying that it was really a "trick question"—is it the aim of Family Feud to trick its contestants? The game's about racking your brain to think about what other people think of, not to determine whether the show is going to try to trick you. Should Mary Beth have expected the survey to say lawyer? When I think of a divorce, I usually think of the couple splitting up, not about the lawyer getting involved. If anything, Karn should have read the choices in advance instead of trying to trick the contestants.

On a slightly different topic, those of you who watch the Feud regularly know that Richard Karn—mainly known for his role of Al on Home Improvement—is going to replaced by John O'Hurley on September 11—in ten days. This is too bad, because Karn is really the best guy for a show like this. I hope O'Hurley is dignified about the game, though, like he was with To Tell the Truth.

We didn't picnic at the park because it wasn't sunny enough for a picnic, so Granny, Gramps, Stephanie, and I ate inside Quiznos instead. I have leftovers! Leftovers are special for when you don't like to cook because "POP" into the microwave and it's ready to eat! So I have the leftover Quiznos sub, and some microwavable lasagna that I can heat up for lunches.

Kevin came over today (again). We played outside and played Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour on the GameCube. It's cool because you can transfer characters from the GBA version to the GCN version!

The weather has decreased in sunniness. It's bittersweet, I guess, in that it's not so hot, but then again, it's not as sunny...

I can't believe this guy! That Jeopardy! champion is still running strong! He's already won at least a half-million dollars! I wonder if he'll get to be a 20-day champion.

Well, I gotta get my sleep now. I don't want to end up staying awake till 2:30 AM and waking up at noon like last summer.

Super Millionaire begins tonight! Contestants will be playing for TEN MILLION DOLLARS! That sounds exciting! I can't wait to see that. There is supposed to be new sound effects/lifelines, so that sounds good. However, since contestants go down to $100,000 if they miss a question above that level (instead of the normal $32,000), I doubt very many contestants are going to try for $10,000,000 unless they are very greedy. I hope their contestants are very greedy. They also brought back the Fastest Finger question! That's my favorite part, so yay.

I forgot to tell everybody at lunch that I heard that the school plans to stop airing Channel One News after break and have 20 minutes of silent reading time instead. This might sound like a good thing, but I also heard that students will not be allowed to work on anything except for reading. That means we can't take advantage of Channel One News to finish homework!

Game Show Network stinks! Never watch it again! They're changing their schedule line-up in March! They plan to stop airing game shows! Isn't that dumb? Oh, they're also going to change their name. That means no more Whammy... AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH.