The Latest Hollywood Squares

From time to time I do like TV game shows. I like the current incarnation of Hollywood Squares with Drew Barrymore as the center square (as well as being one of the producers). For those who don't know Hollywood Squares is basically Tic-Tac-Toe fitted into a game show format. Two contestants compete against each other for a small sum of cash by playing tic-tac-toe with 9  Hollywood celebrities who are sitting at desks on a three level set. There is a host, in this incarnation Nate Burleson (most notably an ex NFL player?) who asks the celebrities questions. The celebrities usually give a joke answer to lighten the mood and then give their real answer to the question, the contestant then either agrees or disagrees with the celeb's answer if they are correct then their shape (X or O) gets the square. They usually have two rounds (games) and the contestant with the most accumulated cash wins and goes to a bonus round. In the bonus round the host makes a statement about each celeb to which the contestant either agrees that the statement is true or false, they have 60 seconds to answer this round robin of "fact" questions. Each celeb has an envelope with a card inside it, 8 of the celebs have a blank card and just 1 had a card that has $25,000 written on it. For each celeb the contestant matches with (gets the fact question correct) the celeb opens the envelope to reveal their card. If the celeb has the card with $25,000 on it the contestant wins the $25,000.

As a kid I enjoyed the original version that had Paul Lynde as the center square. I don't think any other version over the years has really compared to the charm of the original. A few years back (1990s? early 2000s?) there was an incarnation with Whoopi Goldberg as the center square that wasn't as good or as witty. At least this new incarnation has some of the old wit of the original somewhat.

As to Drew I have always liked her since she appeared in ET. As a child actor she was a cutie, then she became a troubled teen, a bit precocious and almost ruined her life with the alcohol and drugs. Still she has been a celebrity crush of mine for ages and still is.

Cable Television Rant and On-Demand

I just want to put in my .2¢ worth about Cable TV and in particular the "On-Demand" feature. I'm not talking about using Tivo or recording/viewing with a DVR. Nor am I talking about any Pay-Per-View stuff. Just the basic cable services and the On-Demand. I'm tempted to make this rant just a list of my complaints about the whole thing. So:

•  First you are paying a heck of a lot of money, for the privilege of getting specialized programing from satellite TV stations/Networks. You even have to pay for the regular broadcast stations that were at one time FREE, but now with everything being broadcast digitally and mostly in High-Definition or from satellites anyway there is no such thing FREE broadcast TV anymore.
• Even though there are hundreds or thousands of movies and television shows available with the On-Demand feature, there isn't much in the way of "on demand". Sure you can view them anytime you want (but within a 24 hour period before you have to look for that program again if you didn't watch it within that small window of time), HOWEVER, the selection isn't always great, and many programs are only available for a couple of months before they are removed from the listings. Then you have to wait who knows how many months before they bring them back. Some programs never make it to the On-Demand lists sometimes even very popular shows. Sometimes shows that used to be available On-Demand are no longer available. I'm talking shows that are still currently running not shows that were cancelled by their network. There does seem to be a limited amount of movies available for selection.
• Many of the networks now are disabling some of the playback features in order to force you to watch the commercials, you are already paying for the programing and now they are forcing the commercials on you. More and more of these networks have the fast-forward feature disabled. It is very annoying and one of the things that annoys me the most about cable. Plus most of the time the programing is just a straight copy of whatever was originally broadcast commercials and all including those "coming up next" promos. I could get the same thing with my old VHS recorder, but at least with that I can fast forward through the promos and commercials. It used to be the On-Demand programing was just the program itself with no commercials in between. If that isn't bad enough sometimes the commercials they do have are from just one or two sponsors and every break they show the same two commercials (like Hulu and some of those TV online services do every FIVE minutes) which since they disabled the fast-forward you have to sit through again, at least the mute button usually works.
• Oh and sometimes the playback for movies on demand and some of the broadcast shows for some reason block the closed captioning. So you have to rewind sometimes to catch dialogue you might not have heard or heard weird.

OK I think that is all for now. Just wanted to get some of that out.

Childhood Icons First thought.

Just a quick one, I think I will expand upon it tomorrow. This past week within the last 3 days 3 Entertainment Icons from my childhood passed away. Starting with Ed McMahon who for many years was Johnny Carson's Sidekick on NBCs The Tonight Show. They had started sometime before I was born or close enough so I grew up with the Tonight Show being a staple on late night television. I didn't always watch them, and some years the only time I watched them was when they would have the Mighty Carson Tonight Show Players to see their silly sketches with Johnny trying to do a character that was not very convincing. Ed passed away on Tuesday 23 June 2009. For several years he had some problem or another, the sad thing is some people upon hearing of his death said "I thought he was already dead". I guess that shows how bad some of his illnesses were.

Then there was Farrah Fawcett 62. Super Sex Symbol of the 1970s. I admit it she was the first of at least 3 reasons why I watched Charlie's Angels starting in 1976 (or was it 1975?). Her passing today (Thursday 25 June 2009) was not a total shock, but it still jarred the system. For the last couple of years she had been battling renal cancer, which a month or so ago had spread to her liver.

Then the Total Shocker Michael Jackson today suffered cardiac arrest and passed away. He was 50. The last few years its been odd thinking about his chronological age vs the age he seemed to act as. I'm not saying he was childish, he just didn't seem completely "grown up" either.