This morning the New York Times featured a story on competitive game play this morning, citing the pleasure a new combatant has found in churning through questions provided by Learned League, the Torquemada of Trivia sites, an outfit that snared me four years ago. Administered by a software engineer whose nom-de-torture is Thorsten A. Integrity, they describe the invitation only exercise in brain sharpening as, “The Greatest Trivia League in all the land. 

Here’s the breathy report from the NYT’s first time player:

“I got a Learned League invitation from a colleague a few weeks ago, and began playing last Monday, at the inception of the league’s 100th season. I spent far too many minutes this past week staring in agony at trivia questions and trying desperately to summon knowledge from the deepest parts of my brain.”

The article appeared on Monday. On the previous Friday I had grubbed my way to one correct answer out of the six questions.

Here’s one:

Q.Restylane, Perlane, Juvederm, and Belotero are among the popular brands of injectable dermal fillers made from what acid, which occurs naturally in skin and other tissues?

A.Hyaluronic Acid

It’s ok for me to reveal the answer to this question because yesterday’s daily “trivia” contest has closed. At this point I have two options:

1. Suggest that I answered or could have answered this question
2. Admit that I was and am – I’d say “clueless”  – but apparently “injectable dermal filler” is the clue, and let’s just pause to note that “injectable dermal filler” refers to shooting juice into the face in the hope of smoothing out the ravages of time and care. I won’t go into all the possible side effects and complications of a poke in the face, but I watch the nightly news and Jeopardy so I’ve seen countless references to hematoma,  stroke, and death whenever poking takes place, in the face or elsewhere.

So, the clever reader will correctly intuit that I failed to score that point yesterday and fell from 24th of 28 contestants to 26th. I’ve been paying to “compete” in this league for several years, enjoying many of the challenging quizzes, but not particularly concerned about how my performance on the six daily questions compared with the scores generated by anyone else. That’s still the case, but claiming only one correct response from the yesterday’s six challenges felt pretty crumby, not simply because it revealed the depth of my ignorance with regard to Brazilian Mixed Martial Artists and lack of appreciation of Spanish sheep-milk cheese, but because the fun I find in this pursuit arrives when I meet questions that are cleverly constructed. I love questions that might not offer an immediate answer but which can reveal a thought process that leads to an answer.

It happens that I dragged Hamlet (the play, not the Dane) into my classroom something like twenty times over my teaching career; I can’t quote entire scenes, but I can find my place reasonably quickly. The widely appreciated lines are so familiar that actors playing the role have to learn to ignore the voices in the audience spouting “To be or not to be …”. They know it’s coming, they can sense the audience preparing to add voice to the moment, there’s no stopping it, and yet, the interpretation of the role depends in part on the actor’s choices in taking on that soliloquy. 

Other lines are equally poignant, but less well known. Tuesday’s quiz included this question:

Q4. THEATRE – In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in Act 5, Scene 2 (the play’s final scene, just after Hamlet’s dying words), a character referred to as “Ambassador” states, “The sight is dismal, / And our affairs from England come too late. / The ears are senseless that should give us hearing / To tell him his commandment is fulfilled, / That [BLANK]. / Where should we have our thanks?” What statement, itself the title of a 1966 play, fills in the blank?

I found my place quickly but paused to admire the rope thrown to those who may not have been entirely familiar with the play but who had familiarity enough to recognize that the citing of another play opened other doors to memory. I’m guessing that even those who had not read or seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead might remember these two unfortunates sent to their death by Hamlet. The bodies do mount up as the play proceeds; If we consider Hamlet responsible for Ophelia’s checking out, he can be credited with removing nine of the ten major characters (including himself). Not Ted Bundy, but …

Today’s musings, however, have to do with the slippery satisfaction in messing around with trivial things. Look, I’m aware of the names I can’t remember, words I can’t find in conversation, the slow, steady incursion of fuzz and fur as I attempt to process the ordinary events of the day. I get it. I watch the sorts of shows that people my age watch; I’m pretty sure there are no real miracle cures, but I choose to believe that doing crosswords and paying to be stumped in trivia challenges keeps some of the lights on.

And … it’s fun when something I’d not thought about in years bubbles up as a trivia question. Thorsten Integrity may never ask me what the Cisco Kid’s horse’s name was, which baseball player has the record for hitting the most foul balls, what Scotland’s national animal is, what toy was invented in a search for a new form of rubber, who was the first woman to appear on a box of Wheaties, how much did Billie Jean King earn when she won at Wimbledon in 1967, but each one of those questions unleashes a torrent of other equally unimportant but emotionally satisfying shards of information.

So, the Cisco Kid’s horse was named Diablo, his sidekick, Pancho, rode Loco, Duncan Renaldo played Cisco, Leo Carrillo played Pancho, Leo Carrillo State Park is on the Pacific Highway, just west of Malibu near Neptune’s Net, the restaurant featured in Point Break. Mel Blank played Pancho on the radio.  Blank also voiced Barney Rubble, Captain Caveman, Cosmo Spacely, and Fruit Loops’ Toucan Sam as well as most of the characters in Warner Brothers cartoons. 

Brandon Belt of the Giants hold the MLB record for longest pitch at bat (21 pitches) during which time he hit 16 foul balls, but I grew up admiring Luke Appling, Hall of Fame shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, who routinely hit a dozen or more foul balls, ordinarily to wear down and annoy opposing pitchers like Dizzy Trout who got so flustered that after 14 foul balls he threw his glove at Appling and said, “Hit this, you &%$&”. Appling’s ability to put the ball where he wanted it to go allowed him to outwit the White Sox bean counters who didn’t want players to autograph and give away baseballs. Appling routinely hit first in batting practice and sliced a dozen foul balls into the stands to amuse spectators. When the Yankee bench was riding him, he hit eight foul balls into their dugout. Appling was left handed until his teenage years when he became right handed in order to be able to play shortstop.

Scotland’s national animal is the unicorn, the mythical creature which also shares the heraldic neighborhood with the non-mythical but equally happily crowned lion representing the United Kingdom. Wales is a constituent nation within the United Kingdom, but its heraldic champion, the dragon, is not featured in the UK’s crest. Wales is among the Six Nations competing in Rugby union, currently not faring well, but historically heroic. A match against New Zealand’s Original All Blacks in 1905 began with a haka, the traditional dance of the Maori people to which the Welch responded by singing their national anthem, the first time an anthem had been sung at an athletic event. 

Silly Putty emerged from attempts to find a substitute for rubber during World War II. The substance contains silicone polymers and can be stretched, bounced, and returned to its original shape. Generations of silly putterers have also used the substance to copy images from newspapers or comic books, generating hours of fun filled hi jinx as images are distorted. Silly Putty was used by astronauts to secure objects in zero gravity. On a personal note, it also tastes terrible.

Elinor Smith, an aviator known as the Flying Flapper of Freeport, was the first woman to appear on a box of Wheaties. The more celebrated Babe Didrikson Zaharias was the first female athlete to appear on a box of Wheaties. A remarkable athlete, after leaving high school Babe Didrikson won an AAU championship in track for her team, winning five of six events – notable, but more remarkable in that she was the only member of the team. She was an outstanding basketball player, pitched in three Major League Spring Training games, championship bowler, diver, and roller skater. She won two gold medals and a silver at the 1932 Olympic Games, ( 80 m hurdles, javelin, high jump) setting four world records and still the only Olympic athlete to win medals in separate running, throwing, and jumping events.

And then … she took up golf. She was the only woman to have played professional golf against men until Annika Sorenstam played in the Colonial in 2003 and was one of the founding members of the LPGA, winning more than 70 tournaments before falling ill with colon cancer, dying in 1953 at the age of 45. 

Billie Jean King won a voucher worth 45 Pounds when she won at Wimbledon in 1967. Last month Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabelenka each received more than two million dollars in winning the Australian Open. Parity in payment for women in tennis is largely the result of King’s work throughout the decades, beginning with the founding of the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation. Billie Jean King won 129 singles titles, and her career earnings totaled $1.966,487.00.

Virtually every broadcast of a major tennis event features the phrase King brought to competition in all sports at all levels, “Pressure is  a Privilege.” Last week Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA women’s scoring record in basketball. When questioned about the pressure she felt as the countdown to the record began, she responded simply, “Pressure is a Privilege”.

Take a deep breath … ok … shake it off …

I’ve been stupefied for months, whimsy-eviscerated, and slogging along in fear of a future I had hoped my children would not know. Stupefaction acknowledged, and malaise, paralysis, demoralization slightly sluffed aside, I’m determined to bring the Cogitator back to life, because, why not?

So, let’s start with “stupefied”, a handy word indicating befuddlement and the inability to think or feel properly. I first encountered the term as I first encountered most sophisticated concepts, in a comic strip. I learned a lot from Walt Kelly; Pogo offered wry satire as the anthropomorphic characters in the Okefenokee Swamp batted fairly large ideas around. The denizens of Al Capp’s Dogpatch, however, were for the most part caricatures of rural Southerners (i.e. Moonbeam McSwine, Sadie Hawkins, ), although other vivid characters also thrust their way into the public eye – Evil Eye Fleagle, General Bullmoose, Jubilation T. Cornpone, Pantless Perkins, and … Stupefyin’ Jones … a female character identified as “A Walking Aphrodisiac”. The slightest glimpse of this character caused men to be frozen in place, rooted to the ground, incapable of speech or gesture.

Stupefied.

So, it hasn’t been THAT bad around here, but bad enough to have forestalled following up on a subject suggested by my daughter, a world-class inventor of generative questions. She remembered an assignment I’d given a writing class years ago. I had challenged them to describe an imagined museum they would like to visit and to describe its collection in detail. I hadn’t intended the assignment as a means of profiling character, but some of the results did reveal more about the writers than they might have intended; I did not linger in the “Museum of Mistakes I Wish I could Forget”, for example, or do more than scan the “Museum of Things I wish I had Not Eaten”. A visit to the “Museum of Missing Memories” was interesting enough, but the inspiration for the assignment had come from a museum encounter of my own, years earlier, a completely unexpected tour of the “Toaster Museum” in Bellingham, Washington.

I’ve written about the museum in an earlier post, so I’ll spare the reader my gushing appreciation of the varieties of toasters assembled in three fairly large exhibition spaces. Cool toasters, but what struck me most forcibly were the Polaroid photographs of the curator/toaster fan with toasters he had admired but not been able to snag for the museum. 

I found myself in an unvarnished celebration of toasters, and, from my point of view, a celebration of whatever it is in the human spirit that responds to the call of beauty. I haven’t been doing nearly enough celebration recently, so I vowed to respond to my daughter’s latest challenge – Holidays that don’t exist but should.

The rules of engagement preclude reference to any of the widely unrecognized celebrations already on the calendar. I guess Polar Bear Day has gained some clout as bathers apparently do find themselves taking a plunge on January 1st; International Polar Bear Day, however, is right around the corner – February 27th. Saturday, January 27th, was Chocolate Cake Day (missed it!), only a few days before Data Privacy Day, but a full month before Public Sleeping Day (?). I have plans for Drive-In-Movie Day (June 6th) and Thrift Shop Day (August 17th), but I’ll give a pass to Rice Krispie Treat Day (September 18th) … too sweet for my taste.

So, what’s left to celebrate? 

Terrible TV Shows That Are Actually Kind Of Great Day

Terrible is in the mind of the beholder, and tastes differ, but when a show is palpably off-putting to even the most undiscerning of viewers, we have a winner. There are some concepts that ought to have brought a network some concern; were no execs sitting around a table when My Mother the Car was pitched? Shows don’t appear without a platform; someone said, “Sounds good. I’ll write a check.” No accounting for taste,but these are BUSINESS decisions. We’ll consider performances and “scripts” in a minute, but let’s take a look at a few concepts that seem questionable in retrospect. 

Concepts that actually weren’t that great –

Networks can be forgiven for leaping at pilots that feature an actress such as Patty Duke, recent winner of an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress as young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. Compelling, intelligent, radiant, a young Patty Duke must have seemed perfect for any role played by a teen actress. Producer Sidney Sheldon, who would later get away with an equally outlandish but successful concept in developing I Dream of Jeannie, was keen enough an observer of human behavior to notice that Duke often presented two distinct sides to her personality. His pitch? The Patty Duke Show, in which Duke played two IDENTICAL cousins. Get it? They look exactly alike (as cousins do), but one’s a “normal” flighty teen aged girl, the other a sophisticated “European” cousin. They are identical because their fathers were identical twins. See? There’s actually a third “identical”, a southern cousin, played by Duke in a blonde wig. 

Pastry Duke was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Just to put the truly terrible conceptual category to bed, we have to consider a show that most of us never had the chance (Thank God) to see:

Heil, Honey! I’m Home.

Produced in 1990 for the British Satellite Broadcasting and released (one episode) on Galaxy, Heil, Honey was a spoof of American sitcoms (particularly I Love Lucy) in which the Hitlers in 1938 find themselves living next to Jewish Neighbors, and comic hijinks ensue. Seemed like a good idea? The unscreened later episodes featured a cartoon intro patterned on the opening of Bewitched. Probably didn’t help much.

It is interesting to note that The Producers, Mel Brooks’ first film, is widely appreciated although on its release The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann observed that, “…Springtime for Hitler does not even rise to the level of tastelessness”. It helps, I think, that “Springtime” is a Jewish writer’s gag within a gag within a gag, ridiculing Hitler, and clearly intended as an overblown tribute to tastelessness. Brooks knows tasteless; it’s his stock in trade. Pretty sure Heil,Honey is more than one step beyond.

So, what I’m heading to belong in the “Guilty Pleasure” category. I’m happy to admit I’ve watched most episodes of Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, Family Affair, The Munsters, Batman,The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and many more intentionally vapid amusements. No, I’m about to drop into the nether regions of “reality” tv to endorse two absolutely unredeemable  shows that held me captive for most of their run.

There’s reality and then there’s reality. The major network versions include several shows that fall for me into the “Don’t Miss An Episode” category, most notably Survivor, Top Chef, The Great Pottery Throwdown, Alone, Next Level Chef, The Amazing Race, Taskmaster, The Big Brunch, and The Great British Baking Show. None of those, by the way, made the top ten in terms of viewership last season. Both iterations of Below Deck, on the other hand? Solid fan base.

• Side note: Jury Duty belongs in the “reality hoax” category and is one of the most engaging, inspiring, satisfying, and restorative shows I have ever seen.

The guilt that accompanies my less widely reputed favorite reality shows derives from what philosophers would term “the sleaze factor”. I have watched far too many unpleasant versions belonging to the “Celebrity” category, “celebrity” being a term that is used extremely loosely. No kudos here for Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab, Rock of Love with Bret Michaels, or Flavor of Love starring Flava Flav. Dance Moms? The Mole? Higher quality, but meh.

The two widely and properly undigested shows that remain indelibly in my memory are Meghan Wants a Millionaire and Tool Academy.

I have no memory of any of the other matchmaker reality jaunts, but Meghan’s search for love sticks with me, not because she (Meghan Hauserman who had washed out of Rock of Love with Bret Michaels) was a compelling or vivid character, but because the show only aired three episodes before it was discovered that one of the contending “millionaires” had murdered his wife and committed suicide in a hotel room in British Columbia after the show had filmed. 

There’s nothing extra goopy about the show when placed against the backdrop of other “mating” reality shows, but I can’t watch any subsequent shows pitting aspiring mates against each other without wondering if one of them bought a wood chipper and Googled “How Long Before A Dead Body Starts To Smell.”

Tool Academy stands on its own merits. The premise was that long suffering girlfriends sent their bad boy partners to this relationship boot camp. The insensitive, exquisitely crude louts were properly labeled as ‘tools’ in need of remedial socialization. In challenges designed to test their … humanity? … the tools learned to appreciate qualities the producers deemed essential. The tools had been given blazers when arriving, but had to earn the badges that moved them from tool to healthy romantic prospect. Each challenge offered a badge to be won: Honesty, Humility, Communication, Trust, Fidelity, Maturity, Commitment, Dedication, Appreciation, and Modesty. 

Not bad.

In fact, I can think of no higher praise for a show that I am reluctant to mention in the company of educated men and women.

Not bad.

So, the bells ring and the trumpets sound! It’s Terrible TV Shows That Are Actually Kind Of Great Day!!