Dan Marler's Blog: January 2020

When we were in high school my brother, Cam, and I would watch a TV game show called Match Game, hosted by Gene Rayburn, after we got home from school. Does anyone remember this show? It wasn’t incredibly compelling television but it beat doing homework and, at that time, it seemed to be the only interesting show on the tube. (We only had 4 or 5 working channels.)

The past few nights, while eating supper, I have watched Match Game, hosted by Gene Rayburn. Yes, I am talking about reruns of the original show from the mid-70s on some obscure Game Show cable channel.

What’s going on? It’s hard to believe, huh? I now have scores and scores of available channels but after flipping around the dial, once again, Match Game seems to be the only interesting show on the tube. (To be fair, Richard Dawson and Charles Nelson Reilly were pretty witty.)

The thinking in 1975 was that the year 2020 was supposed to involve zipping around in flying cars with wisecracking interplanetary sidekicks and, frankly, be much more exciting than this.

I’m laughing because I heard another news update regarding two of the most lucky, fortunate, privileged people on planet Earth complaining about their really tough life circumstances as royalty. Literal royalty.

I keep smiling and thinking: “This has to be a prank, right? Any minute now they’re going to laugh and say: Ha! We got you!”

And we’ll all crack up and say, “Ohhh, you tricksters! You really had us there! We totally fell for it!”

And then dozens of servants will come out of hiding places, chuckling, and whisk them back to the castle for champagne, caviar and freshly baked cookies.

As I get older I’ve noticed that the craziness we encounter in the process of simply observing real life is often funnier than the stuff professional entertainers come up with to make us laugh.

P.S. In my imagination, royalty would frequently enjoy freshly baked cookies. Come on, what’s the point of being part of a royal family if you didn’t have freshly baked cookies all the time?