It's either truth or consequences, there's no other way

[austin_dern]

If there's one thing the Internet reveals it's that there's always a sadder, more generally depressing Internet community waiting to be discovered. Now, in recent months I've been watching The Price Is Right through the benefits of its online streaming video at CBS Master Command. As a thing that exists on the Internet, it's now got comment threads, and like most of them they're pretty sad. For the most part, after all, there's not much to write about The Price Is Right: maybe someone will manage a perfect bid, or do something hilarious during Ten Chances, or actually win Check Game, but otherwise it's an extremely transient sort of entertainment. There's just not much room for discussion after the show's done.

And yet I've grown fascinated with the awful comments posted there. None of them are daily, but many are close, for example the announcement that Drew Carey sucks and is getting the show cancelled, and for a while there somebody was posting every day 'Bob Barker (1923 - 2008) RIP', followed by someone following up by announcing the first person is a sick liar. Another person (I assume) keeps insisting that in next week's shows will be ``Drew entering from the audience'' --- rather than from behind the doors as normal --- because the logistical requirements of Triple Play force him. (Triple Play has three cars on stage to start with, and yet, Carey's entered through the doors anyway when that's been played.)

Another has the habit of providing a running commentary that goes like, ``ooh what is the first item up for bids it is a hot tub the first contestant bids 2800 the second bids 3400 the third bids 1299 the fourth bids 1 and it is 5800 the second wins and goes on stage and what will she play it is check game'' ... a stream that often gets answered with cries to stop spoiling episodes. I don't think that counts as spoiling, since you have to scroll past the video to see the comments, and you have to work at it to piece information out of that captioning.

I'm still left amazed at the ineptitude of this level of trolling, and that it draws such responses. I've actually and sadly gotten hooked on these sorry threads.

Trivia: By 11 February 1957, Twenty-One contestent Charles Van Doren had built his bank roll up to $138,000. Source: Quiz Craze, Thomas A DeLong.

Currently Reading: 1939: The Lost World Of The Fair, David Gelernter. The book mentions Borden's exhibit, featuring ``cows of the future'' in the amusing quip of a diary entry that might even have existed, and the Rotolactor, featuring as the name implies dozens of cows being milked on a merry-go-round sort of contraption. Purely coincidentally, as we were driving somewhere, my father mentioned a spot where Borden (used to?) have an experimental farm, and that back when I was a kid and my siblings younger yet our parents would sometimes take us there to see the Rotolactor, which apparently fascinated us. I think I dimly remember this. Now I'm struck almost silent (for me) by the thought I saw a piece of the 1939 World's Fair, even if it was probably just another Rotolactor, of which they probably made plenty, and probably not even the same model of the thing.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

For a while now I've actually been having the DVR record The Price Is Right and keep the last three episodes. I never watch it, mind you, but I'm prepared. This way if I ever watch it with you guys again, I won't have to lag horribly behind everyone as it makes a poor attempt at streaming.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, now, we've got to have a viewing night for that again sometime soon. It's too easy to get caught up in the sweep of days and run out of time for fun stuff like that.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Where your parents took you - was that Plainsboro (http://walkergordononline.com/history.asp)? That's not the one from the Fair, but was the original Rotolactor, the first ever built. Borden really did believe that these were the future of dairy farming, and not just a publicity stunt.

There are little bits and pieces of the Fair left here and there, if you look for them :)

[xolo.livejournal.com]

And BTW, if you like the Fair: http://www.worldsfaircommunity.org

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you. That's an interesting-looking board.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

It used to be so much better - they lost almost five years of posts, and had to start over :/

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yipes. Yeah, that's horrible.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the location. The town of the famous Doctor Gregory House Medical Malpractice Center.

I'm surprised to learn that this was the first and the Fair just had a duplicate. Also I'm surprised that I can run across a Modern Mechanix story showing off the Rotolactor in all its early 30s glory.

I know there's pieces of the Fair if I go looking for them --- the Livesavers mushroom is sitting there on Coney Island, after all --- but to think I'd stumbled over one without knowing it is starting, like finding out one of your elementary school teachers was an astronaut.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

30s stuff fascinates me. They so intended to reform the world, and make everything over into the image of cleanliness and scientific order, and it all ended in the worst disaster the world ever saw. The world I grew up in was shaped, in large part, by the effort to learn from the failings of the 1930s.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

The architectural and the graphic design of then most captivate me. The attempt to produce, like, streamlined post offices and modern-design parkway curbs managed something really lastingly beautiful.