I couldn't sleep last night. I wasn't thinking about the past controversies that happened in the blogosphere these last few days. I wasn't even thinking about baseball the last few days (that's what happens when both Chicago teams get eliminated from the playoffs before the weekend...sigh).
Anyway, the Game Show Network shows old time game show programs after 2:00 CST. If you've never seen these shows, they're a real treat, and what contrast to game shows you see now. If you've never heard of What's My Line, the concept is you have four spectacularly dressed people on a panel (celebrities of the time) and their goal is to guess the line of work a person does by asking him or her yes or no questions about what their job is. If the panel is stumped, if the panel gets ten "no" answers, or if the panel fails to guess the person's job, then the subject wins something (based on the scorecard used, $50.00 was the biggest prize a person could win). Now if the person is a well known celebrity, or at least somebody that the panel knows personally, the panel is blindfolded. In this particular episode, the blindfolds were used because the subjects in question were the personal secretaries of three of the panelists.
The next person to sign in (they literally have to sign their name on the Helene Curtis blackboard...even then there was corporate sponsorship) was none other than superstar pitcher Robin Roberts of the Philadelphia Phillies. Now the panel knew he was a baseball player, as I would assume most of the people living east of the Mississippi River (remember, no teams west of St. Louis back then) but apparently that's not why he was there. The host asked the producers to show on the screen what his line of work was...(PRESIDENT FOR A FROZEN SHRIMP COMPANY). And I thought, "Wow. He and Forrest Gump have something in common."
In all reality, Robin Roberts, when he wasn't mowing the opposition down during the baseball season, was also President of the Gold King Seafood Company, which specialized in frozen shrimp. The panel failed to guess what his line was, but they came pretty close at the end.
Somehow I fell asleep after that and woke up to an infomercial about a Magic Bullet. Must...get...one.
Sincerely,
JayBee Anama
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