{"id":147,"date":"2007-05-18T21:59:50","date_gmt":"2007-05-19T05:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=147"},"modified":"2007-05-18T21:59:50","modified_gmt":"2007-05-19T05:59:50","slug":"back-with-more-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"Back with more stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently had occasion to explain <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gong_show\">The Gong Show<\/a> to a younger colleague and I got to thinking about it.\u00c2\u00a0 It really was a beautiful thing in ways that aren&#8217;t readily apparent from the many clips on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\">Youtube.<\/a> And there&#8217;s some great stuff on Youtube:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_76E8N4PHO0\">Gene Gene the Dancing Machine<\/a><\/li>\n<li>One of the many <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=XxX7NXeXy-o\">censor-baiting acts<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xSQidNrAa94\">Pie abuse<\/a><\/li>\n<li>and just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_76E8N4PHO0\">weirdness<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But the real delight of the Gong Show can&#8217;t be captured on Youtube.\u00c2\u00a0 Cool as it is, Youtube is a place where you go looking for weirdness.\u00c2\u00a0 The Gong Show just sort of wandered in and was weird.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It was completely out of context in a TV time full of game shows and soap operas.\u00c2\u00a0 Those shows took foolish things seriously;\u00c2\u00a0 the Gong Show was foolish, but consciously so, and never, never pretended to be anything but a goofy waste of time.\u00c2\u00a0 It was surprisingly sensible in its way.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the contrast was jarring.\u00c2\u00a0 You&#8217;d be bopping around the wasteland of noontime TV looking for something to watch while you gulped down some snack and there it was.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, you could miss it if you weren&#8217;t paying attention; it was camouflaged as a game show, and a hokey one at that.\u00c2\u00a0 But eventually you&#8217;d notice something off &#8211; what was that prize total? did that judge take her top off? &#8211; and realize that there was something seriously, delightfully wrong with these people.<\/p>\n<p>Not only was the show bizarre, but it had it&#8217;s own set of off-kilter in-jokes.\u00c2\u00a0 Why was there a rack full of hats there?\u00c2\u00a0 What&#8217;re they throwing at that Gene guy?\u00c2\u00a0 Nothing was ever explained, it just was.\u00c2\u00a0 It was easily as confusing as the real world, but a ton more fun.\u00c2\u00a0 Finding it was like finding the Phantom Tollbooth.<\/p>\n<p>I first saw it because my friend LJ described it to me and I didn&#8217;t believe such a show could exist.\u00c2\u00a0 Later I had the pleasure of showing it to others.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the kind of thing that you wanted to share, partially to be sure it wasn&#8217;t a mirage.\u00c2\u00a0 If they see it too, maybe it&#8217;s really there.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not there anymore, of course.\u00c2\u00a0 But I still meet people who were on that same highway with me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently had occasion to explain The Gong Show to a younger colleague and I got to thinking about it.\u00c2\u00a0 It really was a beautiful thing in ways that aren&#8217;t readily apparent from the many clips on Youtube. And there&#8217;s some great stuff on Youtube: Gene Gene the Dancing Machine One of the many censor-baiting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}