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Aug. 2nd, 2005 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apocalypsosOkay ... so. The Family Feud thing.
First off, before I even tell you guys what happened, it was me, my parents, my pervy cousin Laurie, and my uncle (and Laurie's dad) Richie, who by the way is just as pervy as his daughter. For starters, my cousin has been excitedly tossing us "sample questions" for days. "Name something you eat with a spoon," etc. The one she's been throwing us all the time (mostly to set up dirty punchlines) is, "Name a sport you play with a ball."
So, what was the first question that the very first two teams to play got? Yup -- "Name a sport you play with a ball."
Laurie kept making comments afterward that we so should have gotten that question, until I pointed out that her immediate reaction to hearing it was to curl up and shriek with laughter.
Anyway, eventually we got up there (but not without a lot of whining out of me -- I was already terrified of being on a stage without being all hormonal to back it up) and my uncle and cousin decide we're naming our team the Shickaleenias. So now you're saying to yourself, "What the hell's a Shickaleenia?" Well, it's actually a word my uncle Richie made up so he could get away with referring to a woman's vagina in polite conversation without anybody knowing. So, for all intents and purposes, we were the Vaginas. I believe you can find that in the first lesson of How To Be Publicly Humiliated (If Only To A Select Few).
I thought it was going to be awful (especially since my body's nervous reaction to being near any stage whatsoever is to immediately need to go to the bathroom) so I crammed myself at the far end so I'd get the last question. So we get to the last question, and I go up to the podium, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to vomit before I hear those blessed words:
"Name a famous mystery writer."
And simultaneously I gasped, slammed down the buzzer, said "Agatha Christie," looked around at the other people on the stage and their dazed expressions, and realized that I was quite possibly the only person on the stage who had ever read a book for recreation. Or possibly at all.
Now, THAT'S a superpower I can get behind having.
Unfortunately, it turns out that one hundred average Americans don't read mysteries (or if they do, they're sure as hell not reading anything that's not written in the last fifty years), so when I told my family to go with "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," his name wasn't up there. He was trounced by Dick Francis, Mary Higgins Clark, and Sydney Sheldon. No offense to any of them (because honestly, why I wasn't going with more recent writers anyway was beyond me), but I mostly just want to hit things, like my forehead against a wall. I turned out to be a ringer and I wasn't even a good one, damn it. Grrr.
In other news, do you know why my dad is cool? Because I came home and jogged upstairs to my brother's room to use his computer, and turned on the TV to see Empire Records is on. So I'm watching, and a few minutes later, I hear my dad call from downstairs:
Dad: Oh, Jennifer?
Me: Yes?
Dad: It's Rex Manning Day!
Me: I know!
HEEEEEEE.
Also, my new favorite saying comes from my brother, who said before he left the house this afternoon, "I'm going to make like a fetus and head out." *snerk*
EDIT: I should also point out that there's nothing like playing Family Feud in a public place to learn that what one hundred average Americans can come up with is a hell of a lot of shitty answers. I don't think there was a round of that game where we didn't say at least once, "... the hell?!"
First off, before I even tell you guys what happened, it was me, my parents, my pervy cousin Laurie, and my uncle (and Laurie's dad) Richie, who by the way is just as pervy as his daughter. For starters, my cousin has been excitedly tossing us "sample questions" for days. "Name something you eat with a spoon," etc. The one she's been throwing us all the time (mostly to set up dirty punchlines) is, "Name a sport you play with a ball."
So, what was the first question that the very first two teams to play got? Yup -- "Name a sport you play with a ball."
Laurie kept making comments afterward that we so should have gotten that question, until I pointed out that her immediate reaction to hearing it was to curl up and shriek with laughter.
Anyway, eventually we got up there (but not without a lot of whining out of me -- I was already terrified of being on a stage without being all hormonal to back it up) and my uncle and cousin decide we're naming our team the Shickaleenias. So now you're saying to yourself, "What the hell's a Shickaleenia?" Well, it's actually a word my uncle Richie made up so he could get away with referring to a woman's vagina in polite conversation without anybody knowing. So, for all intents and purposes, we were the Vaginas. I believe you can find that in the first lesson of How To Be Publicly Humiliated (If Only To A Select Few).
I thought it was going to be awful (especially since my body's nervous reaction to being near any stage whatsoever is to immediately need to go to the bathroom) so I crammed myself at the far end so I'd get the last question. So we get to the last question, and I go up to the podium, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to vomit before I hear those blessed words:
"Name a famous mystery writer."
And simultaneously I gasped, slammed down the buzzer, said "Agatha Christie," looked around at the other people on the stage and their dazed expressions, and realized that I was quite possibly the only person on the stage who had ever read a book for recreation. Or possibly at all.
Now, THAT'S a superpower I can get behind having.
Unfortunately, it turns out that one hundred average Americans don't read mysteries (or if they do, they're sure as hell not reading anything that's not written in the last fifty years), so when I told my family to go with "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," his name wasn't up there. He was trounced by Dick Francis, Mary Higgins Clark, and Sydney Sheldon. No offense to any of them (because honestly, why I wasn't going with more recent writers anyway was beyond me), but I mostly just want to hit things, like my forehead against a wall. I turned out to be a ringer and I wasn't even a good one, damn it. Grrr.
In other news, do you know why my dad is cool? Because I came home and jogged upstairs to my brother's room to use his computer, and turned on the TV to see Empire Records is on. So I'm watching, and a few minutes later, I hear my dad call from downstairs:
Dad: Oh, Jennifer?
Me: Yes?
Dad: It's Rex Manning Day!
Me: I know!
HEEEEEEE.
Also, my new favorite saying comes from my brother, who said before he left the house this afternoon, "I'm going to make like a fetus and head out." *snerk*
EDIT: I should also point out that there's nothing like playing Family Feud in a public place to learn that what one hundred average Americans can come up with is a hell of a lot of shitty answers. I don't think there was a round of that game where we didn't say at least once, "... the hell?!"
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:15 am (UTC)Sorry, just had to be said.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:20 am (UTC)One of the correct answers was Stephen King. So a guy mainly known for horror made the list and the guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes didn't. *headdesk*
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:25 am (UTC)I think I'd have had to challenge that. "No, I'm sorry, he does not write Mysteries. Isn't one of the requirements that they actually answer the question? If a bunch of surveyees had replied to "Name a plastic kitchen utensil" with "Fish", would you have put THAT up on the board?
::fucking illiterates, I swear, grumblegrumble::
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:58 am (UTC)I think I would have burst out laughing. And pointing.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:29 am (UTC)Head/Desk OTP 4eva, yo.
Now, Mary Higgins Clark did write mysteries, but Sidney Sheldon did not, and neither did Stephen King. Wah.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:25 am (UTC)Though if they had asked me for a mystery writer, you're damned skippy I would have said Agatha Christie.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 12:04 pm (UTC)Women writers, unite!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 03:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 03:44 am (UTC)At least say that Agatha Christie was number one, right?
mainstream mystery writers or not
Date: 2005-08-03 04:17 am (UTC)been Agatha Christie. Read some of the more well known titles such as "Death on a Nile," Elephants Can Remember" and "Five Little Indians' however there were two different movies using the alternate title "And Then There Were None."
Second response "Mary Higgins Clark, mainly because my mother reads
those books.
Having shelved books at Barnes and Nobles I think John Grisham would
probably come up somewhere in that list of 100 average Americans
would have read him.
Not sure how Sydney Sheldon fits in, but okay.
Stephen King, ah, no, I don't think so.
Patricia Cornwell
Tony Hillerman
Martha Grimes
Sue Grafton, alaphately titled books, for the record, I can't
stand her, but that's beside the point.
Janet Evanovich, don't understand why she's so popular.
There are all sorts of cozy mysteries on the shevles these days,
ranging from anything from cats to quilts, go figure.
You'd be amazed at how well this sell, but then I'm a newbie
in this genre, so if any of the others mentioned above are
ones you read and like, you are certainly welcome to disagree with me.
Mystery Authors I LIKE and Read
I really like a not as well known author John Dunning.
and another I like translated from the original Spanish
is Arturo Pereze-Reverte.
Daniel Silva
Agatha Christie
But please, Tolkien. He's an epic fantasy writer, by some lights
the grandaddy of the genre.
Random thoughts late at night.
Take care, Karrenia
Re: mainstream mystery writers or not
Date: 2005-08-03 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 08:04 am (UTC)Huh. Guess I really am a nerd.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-05 07:34 pm (UTC)HEE! I love that movie.
Also? How could they not have Conan Doyle???