I may have shared this before (probably with Cally for a The Muggo bit) so pardon the repetition. When I came to the US at seven years old, I knew somewhere between one and four words of English and my parents were only moderately more fluent.
Lucky for me, this is a great country with great people, great teachers and great institutions of learning. And even greater television.
I am pretty sure between the fall of 1983 and the summer of 1985, I watched 2,148 hours of television. It all started on the very first day we landed in Chicago and stayed at some random Pole’s house while my dad was processing some paperwork. I got up early, probably woke the guy or his wife up, and rather than make me go back to bed, they did a wonderful thing. They turned on their color television, tuned it to WGN and let me sit and stare at what felt like three hours of The Bozo the Clown Show. It was heaven. Probably my favorites were Cartoon Express, Super Friends, Green Acres, Get Smart, My Favorite Martian, Gilligan’s Island and The Munsters. Can anyone guess we got the USA Channel?
So this morning at Dazed and Confused I thought it would be fun to share my passion for American TV with the PAX. Following 98 minutes of prep, the perfect playlist was saved and downloaded and I was ready to roll.
5:21 AM: roll up to A-Team, site of Dazed and Confused. Put on socks and shoes.
5:23 AM: gather up my speaker, my phone, my gloves, my deck of pain and my watch and, looking like Nevin Johnson, saunter to the flag. Hit play on Track 1: Fox on the Run / Sweet.
5:27 AM: meeting some of the PAX (one of whom I have forgotten… he is a Repect… someone help me out), Track 2 comes on: Low Rider / War.
5:30 AM: mosey to the parking lot
5:32 AM: Track 3: Paranoid / Black Sabbath. Perfect for warm-ups.
GM x7, IW x20, Sir Fazio F x5, R x5, Overhead clap x5, SSH x20, PJ x20, Merkins x10
5:36 AM: Warm ups over. Track 4: Slow Ride.
Time for TV Land to start.
The default exercise is the burpee. All PAX will do burpees for the next 35 minutes. EXCEPT… any PAX naming the TV show theme song can call something else for the duration of the track. Do that exercise (or the default burpees) until the end. Then go back to burpees.
Themes:
- Game of Thrones
- Fresh Prince of Bel-Air —– perfectly in-cadence American Hammers
- Cheers
- The Andy Griffith Show
- Mr Rogers
- Addams Family
- Gunsmoke —– No one got this one.
- Mash
- Twilight Zone
- Sanford and Son
- The Munsters
- Leave it to Beaver —- Pickle
- Gilligan’s Island
- WKRP in Cincinnati
- Lone Ranger —- Homer to Marges were interestingly called
- Dallas —– Theisman screwed the pooch yelling out A-Team. Penalty Wolverines for the biggest Cowboys fan in CARPEx
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents
- Three’s Company —– Crimson knew this one on note two
- Rocky and Bullwinkle —– we missed it while running the pickle
- Little House on the Prairie —– Theisman with the redemption pull
- The Saint —– Intimidator dug deep for this one
- Charlies Angels —– inappropriate things were said
- Odd Couple
- Magnum PI
- Greatest American Hero ——- Star Plank Side Crunches in honor of Hi-Liter
- Laverne and Shirley
- I Dream of Jeanie
- Miami Vice
- Sesame Street
Track 34: finish this up with Mary to School’s Out / Alice Cooper. LBCs x20, Left Oblique x25, Superman x20, Right Oblique x25, Flutter Kicks to the end.
End. 45:03. Perfect
COT:
- 15
- Announcements: Green Mile. 10-year
- Prayers: Dylan. Crimson’s coworker. One Direction
NMS:
- Solid mix of PAX today. Only one theme stumped the crew. A few PAX were thoroughly stumped throughout though. I don’t think Trident’s mom let him watch TV growing up
- Crimson, Intimidator and Bubba owned this. Lots of variety of exercises to boot
- Hipster seemed like a good dude. Happy to meet a new PAX
- Logged zero Geocaches on the way home
- Honked at the DZ crew as I drove by. Looked like Franklin pulled a crowd
- Disco would have been happy. Lots of burpees were done. Even in the breaks.