Antiquarian me

Nothing like a big word in a blog entry title. I used the long a-word in my previous post when I wrote about my rambles through YouTube for game show pottery fragments.

Yesterday I spotted a few 1950s shards of What's My Line and I've Got a Secret, my favorite targets in these digs through the ruins. It's a harmless pastime, and a recent story from a Canadian town confirms that other folks indulge, too. The guy from the great white north seems mostly interested in old clips from The Price is Right, but there's no accounting for tastes.

As I close in on my sixtieth birthday this year, creeping fogeyism is taking its toll. The ancient days of early commercial TV - which just happen to coincide with my dimly remembered childhood - appear more and more fascinating to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hopelessly addicted to antiquities. I'm not a knee-jerk older-is-better guy like so many on the GSN Internet boards.

But the sometimes grainy black-and-white images somehow look better every year. There's a reason for that, and I try not to think about it too much.