Obscure makes me happy...

[lordandrei]

Yes, I was raised on television. I had one in my room as a kid. This probably had short and long range bad effects on me.

That being said... I am always happy to discover something obscure. Even more so because I've made one of my first posts to WikipediaWhen I was a kid... (Let's avoid the references to when the rocks were soft) there were 3 main

Comments

[bayareajenn]

I loved the Battle of the Network Stars! I saw it again on tv a couple years ago. I think it was on Spike TV when the station first came out. They ran a marathon of them. I couldn't get enough. Simon Says was always the best. Disney runs a version of it over the summer with their stars. How I wish the networks would bring back the event.

[chite]

I think i might have told you this in the past, but when I was very young, but old enough to remember, my parents, grandparents, and I would spend parts of our summers at the Pines (one of the only ones not linked to anything in the article about the Borscht Belt)

I *hated* it. Because my parents and grandparents got to do fun stuff and eat really good food, and I had to go to the kid's camp and eat hotdogs. One dinner per trip, they would allow me to eat dinner with the adults.

Now that I'm a parent, I cannot *wait* to go on some trip where I can dump my kid into the "kid's camp."

What none of the articles mention is that the Simon Says shows became the only exercise anyone got during their stay at the resort. Pretty much, all there was to do was eat, and change clothes for the next meal.

Oh, yeah... the hell that was the Borscht Belt

[lordandrei]

I spent more than one traumatic week up there. My maternal grandparents would often go to the Homowack. Of which someone recently actually wrote:

Rumor has it that the Homowack has been sold to investors connected to the Skvere chassidim, and they will continue running it as a hotel.... Still OU, but no more mixed swimming, OK most of us who read chowhound don't look so great in a bathing suit anyway!

But will they start serving some geshmakke treats... overnight kugel? Ptsha for kiddush? Heimishe soup instead of the pale yellow soup base ersatz chicken soup with jarred matzo balls? Three types of gefilte fish..... Toi'amehoo on Friday afternoon? There is a heimishe caterer in New Square who makes fabulous heimishe food, and even the more elegant salads the balebattish party planners require.

Now that would make it a hotel worth going to.You have to wonder about a hotel whose saving grace is an "Automatic" Bowling Alley

simon says...

[ichae]

That was definitely an interesting video after not having played "Simon says" for 20 years. However after watching that video it seems clear to me that the "trick" of getting people out in this game is exploiting ambiguousness and limited brain processing speed. For instance, at one point he says, "Simon says 'Stop clapping hands down'" and then proceeds to call out everyone who put their hands down. But there literally was no pause in that sentence to indicate it was more then one command, or that "hands down" was not subordinate to "Simon says". And it goes on and on. He says things really fast which, even when he does leave a pause makes the actual pause short enough that autonomic responses try to kick in before the brain has a time to override with the realization that... "hey, Simon didn't say that!" Which I suppose is why it is so entertaining to play...