Brandon Notices

I heard my cat meowing loudly and urgently at the bottom of the stairs, so I ran down to see what he needed. He was walking in circles in front of the closed basement door. I began opening the door so he could enter. Before opening it more than 6 inches, he began to wedge his way through, then continued into the room and rushed hurriedly to the big bowl of water in front of the fish tank and began lapping up the water. The odd thing is that just a minute ago, he was here, upstairs, in the dining room within five feet of his regular water bowl. My cat is weird.

Tonight, I went to my high school's Bingo Night with my family and cousin Kevin (but Stephanie went to sit with her own friends). I was mildly surprised to see Brandon Johnson there; he sat next to me. We also had the pleasure of sitting next to Khader too. I went to Bingo Night two years ago. It's lots of fun. I wanted to go last year but it was the night before my SATs. This year was very much the same. They had pizza—I had pepperoni—and some popcorn.

I was upset by something, though. They didn't have a blackout round! How angering. It was so tense the last time I was there—very exciting. But not this year. There were several groups of high school kids there who kept making shreiking noises at the wrong times, and the bingo caller kept pausing to say, "Do we have a bingo?" It was a bit annoying. I wasn't incredibly mad that I won nothing—it's fun to play bingo. But still, I was upset by the poor sportsmanship of many of the bingo players, booing players who had shouted "Bingo!" Come on, guys, be good sports!

Oh, we won some stuff this year! I personally didn't win anything, Khader won the very first game (regular 5-in-a-row bingo) and got some peppermint patties. Mom won a raffle and got some "relaxation" stuff (mostly cookies and some kind of pillow footwear). And Kevin won the "I"-or-"G"-row game and won a gift certificate to Sparta's Pizza.

I brought my bingo cards home and counted them. Counting the free spaces and wild spaces that could have helped me win bingos, I marked 250 squares. I mismarked one square—I marked 61 when I thought she had said 51.

We've been listening to Halloween music all night thanks to our digital cable's Music Choice channel, Sounds of the Seasons, which all month long has constantly been piping Halloween music into my house. I'd been having a smashing time all night on this Halloween night until about 15 minutes ago, at 9:30 PM, when Deck the Halls suddenly started playing in place of Halloween music. Then after that, we heard The Jackson 5 sing Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Angry and confused, Kevin and I walked into the living room to make sure that they weren't just fooling us. After all, it's just 9:30. But no, they've changed their programming to Christmas songs already!

The reason for this is obvious to me. Music Choice is based in the East Coast (Pennsylvania, it looks like), where Halloween has been already over for 45 minutes. But what about EVERYBODY BUT YOU, East Coast? You know, we're still trying to celebrate Halloween! It's only 9:30! The night's only beginning! But you've killed the Halloween mood.

I microwaved this donut to make it warmer. It's a custard-filled, chocolate-iced donut I got from Safeway two days ago. The problem with me having heated it is that the icing has liquefied, and I can't pick up the donut without getting melted icing on my hands. And the icing is running off the side of the donut. So now I have to eat it with a fork.

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.

I found something in my MySpace blog settings that upset me a little:



Why do several of the options give me the choices "NO" or "NO"? Why not "YES"? What if I want to say yes? Why even give me the option if you won't let me say anything other than "NO"? Come on, MySpace, what's your deal?

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.