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Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Who wants to be the weakest link?

Brian is watching Turkish game shows. He does this to feel smart. To feel like he knows Turkish better than the Turks. He has serious pride issues. He imagines himself going on these game shows which are very similar to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and wowing the crowd of 5 people with his extreme knowledge.

So far they've asked questions like "What famous magician locked himself underwater and was from Hungary?" The answers to choose from were Harry Houdini, David Copperfield, and two people we never heard of. The poor guy trying to answer the question had to ask for the audiences' help and use his 50/50 chance which then narrowed it down to Harry and David. He thought and thought and thought. There were commercials involved. It went on forever. He finally went against the audience and chose Harry. Thank goodness that was over.

Next question. "In which form of art would you use the term pirouette?" The choices for answers...opera, ballet, painting, and sculpture. Seriously. It took the poor guy forever to narrow it down to opera or ballet...finally deciding to go with opera. Seriously!

Finally that show was over. Next game show...exact same thing except three players are pitted against each other...more like The Weakest Link. And on this show they take even longer to answer the questions. The question...Which one of these was not a historic business road? The silk road, the spice road, the kings road, or the Istanbul road. Yep...they got it wrong...guessing spice road.

I am begging him to turn the channel. If he doesn't I may have to cry like the one contestant who cried her way through the entire program. Her husband probably made her participate. Seriously.

Wait a minute...the host is now crying. He feels for the contestant. And now Brian sees a number to dial in so that he can apply to be on the show. But wait there's more...the host is bringing in the son of the poor woman who is in debt and needs the money. There are tears all around. Brian is even crying saying he would trade all his useless knowledge to know Turkish as well as these people. Good grief.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, Natalie! I have made several discoveries while reading your blog tonight! (Maybe I should read it at 3 A.M. more often!)
1. Brian must be related to us. We enjoy any kind of silly game show that revolves around mostly mindless trivia. Our current fav is 'Cash Cab' where an unsuspecting soul or souls climb into a NYC cab only to find that they are on a game show. Answer the questions correctly , win $. Answer 3 questions incorrectly and get tossed out onto the street!
2. You must be related to me...in a backward sort of way. You enjoy words and manage to put them together in amusing and poignant ways; I enjoys READING your words!!
I mean, I REALLY get a kick out of reading your ponderings and anecdotes!
3. After reading your blog for 'how many years, now?' I just figured out I can leave a comment. Scary, isn't it? Brad just shakes his head at my technological "difficulties". Me?
I just figure "better late than never"!!
4. I now see I may have commented in vain. I don't know what to do to get this 'published'! I guess I'll be anonymous! (But the Brad comment should help!! and tell Erica that Collin says, "Hello"!)

Anonymous said...

cheri - thanks for reading! i'm glad my musings are enjoyable to you. i think i would go crazy if i couldn't write down what i think, feel, or need to gripe about. blogging. it's a good thing. and as far as leaving comments go...if you leave an anonymous comment you can always sign your name to the comment therefore making it un-anonymous. or you can check the name/url option and put your name there. it will just say "cheri said" intead of "anonymous said". nobody would be able to trace you or anything. helpful hints to make commenting easier!

Anonymous said...

HA! This sounds like something worth watching (for a few minutes at least) just for the ridiculous nature of the shows. It makes me think of a little rant of my own. We have a show here called "Deal or no Deal", have you seen it? This is probably not going to be PC. The people always tell some sob story of how they are poor, gotta pay their million dollar student loans and buy their 100 year old grandma a house...stuff like that...and yet even though they have all these "needs", I quickly realize the reason that they are poor to begin with. They are not that smart...you see, most of the time they get up to where the banker is offering them over $100,000 at some point and then they throw it all away trying to be greedy when the odds are clearly stacked against them...but they keep right on saying "no deal" (which is usually accompanied by them dancing around the stage) and go for whatever higher dollar amount they have left. And then they get down to the final case and they open theirs and it contains $1 or $1000, but CLEARLY LESS than the $100,000 they could have walked away with seconds earlier. I have yet to see someone walk away. I'm sure it happens, but most of these people just don't get it. I've yet to see someone win the $1 million prize. Ok I'm getting down off my soapbox now.

Natalie said...

kristy - you know these shows wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't for the fact that they take so long to answer the questions. the show we were watching while i was writing my post was horrible. the poor lady was crying and the host was crying. she answered and then they talked about her life. and then they cried some more. it took like 20 minutes or longer to finally see if she got the answer right. and i'm not kidding. it might have even been longer than that. i was wishing i had timed it. i don't enjoy the shows anyway, but if i am going to watch them then please get a move on! oh, we saw deal or no deal when we were in the states. it was pretty funny to see them up there not taking huge amounts of money. i can't even imagine walking away from $100,000! at least we could understand the show. and there were no stupid questions that pretty much anyone should know the answers to. i think they just put the stupid people on tv. there are probably many smart people who try out for the show that don't get picked. that has to be it!

Bteacher99 said...

I need to try to find an email my mom sent me from "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" If I do, I'll try to set it up on my blog. Turkey doesn't have the only market for "take forever and still get it wrong" people. I really think this lady had to be a fake, because if she was real...the world is even scarier than before!

maris said...

you know the lady at the weakest link thing? i hated her.. last week at an episode of dr. who, there was a game channel in the future and big brother and weakest link were still popular. but instead of the mean lady there was an android that killed you if you were the weakest link. i liked the android better than the lady. anyways... just wanted to share my feelings about these games with you. and tell brian to get over it. didn't he give up tv for lent this year?

HeyJoe said...

I could SO kick Turk ass. That's it, I'm moving there.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I have nothing to say. I just wanted to see if I could publish!

Brian said...

You tease me by not putting the answers in. Kings road? (I'm guessing something to do with the crusades maybe?)

Natalie said...

brenda - i understand taking a long time on some questions. some questions are hard. there are some that we don't know the answers to. however, even if i don't know the answer i wouldn't be hemming and hawing taking forever to answer. either take the money or make a guess. just get it over with! i look forward to watching your video clip...if you find it!

derya - that lady is scary for sure! brian loved the android that killed the weakest link idea. pretty funny! he also said "it's lent?" you weren't here to remind him!

heyjoe - well if you are too smart i don't think they would let you on the show. i know some smart turks, but maybe the smart ones wouldn't be caught dead on a show like that. i'm not sure where they found the ones playing the game.

captecon - you got it!

brian - the answer to that question was istanbul road since it was the only one that wasn't important in ancient times. the kings road (or kings' highway) was a middle eastern trade route. the istanbul road is just a main route through turkey not an important historic hwy.