(pp. 19-20)
Any training regimen for a “Price is Right” contestant hopeful includes TiVoing all the episodes, learning the names and current schedules of Barker’s Beauties, and obsessively playing The Price is Right DVD edition board game. With a DVD player and a wipe-off bid board, you can live out a virtual episode, from the opening bid to the Showcase Showdown. Get out the glitter paint to complete the scene in your rumpus room.
Question: which country is home to the game shows Bumper Stumpers, Front Page Challenge, and Smart Ask? Answer: the Great White North, of course! Test your knowledge of our homegrown shows by taking this quiz.
Prime yourself on the history of the game show with Olaf Hoerschelmann’s Rules of the Game: Quiz Shows and American Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006). Get into the gritty bits with Prime Time and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s TV Quiz Scandal: a D.A.’s Account by Joseph Stone and Tim Yohn (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers 1992). Stone, the District Attorney who investigated the fixing of The $64,000 Question, gives his take on the incident as well as other 1950s game show scandals. Robert Redford’s 1994 film, Quiz Show, deals with the rigging of Twenty-One.
“Let There Be Light”
Naomi Buck
(pp. 22-25)
Create your own Rattenberg-style lighting installations! Perhaps erecting giant mirrors to bounce sunlight across a river is a little elaborate, but what about shining some light on your backyard water feature? The second edition of Janet Lennox Moyer’s The Landscape Lighting Book (Hoboken: J. Wiley & Sons, 2005) is the essential resource for lighting design projects. With photos, drawings, and diagrams aplenty, it’s full of illuminating ideas for your garden or lawn.
The Lichtlabor project won’t be Tyrol’s only contemporary architectural landmark. Austria West: Tyrol Voralberg, New Architecture (Boston: Birkhauser, 2003) explores the challenges of alpine building in Austria’s two westernmost states. In this book, written to accompany a traveling exhibition on the subject, author Liesbeth Waechter-Bohm considers the impression that the previous decade’s building has made on the Inn valley and the unique character of that region’s design.
The city of Springfield, home to the Simpson family, also had to contend with the loss of the sun. When nuclear plant owner Montgomery Burns schemes to build a giant moveable disc that would immerse the town in perpetual darkness (thus increasing the citizens’ electricity use and making Burns even richer) the townsfolk are moved to action. The classic two-part “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” episode of The Simpsons is available on DVD. However, episode one concludes The Simpsons: The Complete Sixth Season (Fox Video, 2005). To get your hands on the dramatic conclusion, you’ll also need The Simpsons: The Complete Seventh Season.
Comments