Wow. The sheer number almost kind of
blows my mind.
I spent a little time yesterday taping
the wrap-up show for the 42nd season of “High School Bowl”. In my six years of hosting the show it's the earliest we've
ever finished a season. Of course, it might also be the first time
in 42 years that the show didn't have a single cancellation because
of bad weather, so I'm pretty sure that played a huge role in the
timeliness. Unlike, say, last year, when we had to cancel six
straight shooting dates because of ice and/or cold, and were within
one day of having to do a show live on a Saturday night to stay on
schedule.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed THAT
never happens again.
Anyway, while I was sitting there
waiting to start I began to think. And that, as we all know, can be
a dangerous thing. But maybe not in this instance. Having hosted
the show for six years now, that means I've done 120 hours of the
series. Each hour has two games. If you subtract the six “year in
review” shows from the mix, that means I've how hosted 234 games of
“High School Bowl”.
234 games. Maybe one of these days
I'll even get it right.
8-)
I personally can't believe it's been
that many games. The science, though, is 100% correct. And if
there's one thing I've learned doing 234 games is that science is
always right. Of course, I'm also having a little trouble grasping
the concept I've been doing the show for six years now, as it seems
like it's been, at most, a year or two. But six?
Once again, the science doesn't lie.
I am, however, still saying the same
things about the show that I said after hosting the first few,
foremost among them that the kids who take part are smart. I mean,
they're really, really smart. I'd like to think I know a little
something after all the decades I've accumulated, but if we were
being honest I only know the answers to maybe a third of the
questions I ask. The rest I just sound like I know what I'm talking
about. But some of the young people who've come through the show the
answer to every single thing I've asked. And if they don't know it
outright, they're able to infer what the answer might be. And
they're doing this at the age when (joke coming here) I was still
learning to feed myself.
They're that smart.
Now that production of season 42 is in
the books we've already started talking about season 43, what we hope
to accomplish, and any changes that might need to be made. And I'm
sure that twelve or thirteen months from now, I'll be sitting here
and wondering to myself how it is that I'll have done 140 hours—273
games—of a TV show that I thought I had just started hosting a few
months prior.
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