That wonderful shopping round

Remember the interview with Pat Sajak when he fessed up to imbibing a few margaritas during long-ago Wheel of Fortune tapings? Well, if you don't remember it, you're not a game show fan (so what are you doing here?) or you've got a really bad memory.

An overlooked part of the interview was Pat's trashing of the shopping round, which used to litter Wheel like a non-housebroken dog. You know, that thrilling interlude when housewives would slowly pick prizes from the stage. Then Charlie O'Donnell would read War and Peace sized reams of advertising copy.

I bring this up because a thread on Matt Ottinger's board recently got into old Wheel, including the dreaded shopping round. One poster actually had the guts to admit that the old version of Wheel got tedious because of the round. "I found the shopping to be deadly dull. Glad they got rid of it." Admitting that an old version of any show might somehow be inferior to the current version is almost heresy on Matt's super-traditionalist board.

Oh, somebody else suggested a change to the current version's bonus round. To which one of the board's loudest posters elegantly replied that the current bonus round was better, and if you think otherwise, you can "go screw yourselves." Just another day at Game Show Forum.