This episode of a long-lost local Baton Rouge game show may or may not tell you all you need to know about my Louisiana hometown.
I was a student at LSU when this episode of We Play Baton Rouge ran on Channel 2 in 1982. Though I am loathe to endorse the consumption of illegal narcotics, it is my understanding that this vehicle for WBRZ weatherman Pat Shingleton (who's still there) was best experienced stoned out of your ever-lovin' gourd.
I mean, at the beginning of the show, Contestant No. 1 bumps into his "car" on the set -- and it falls off the concrete blocks. Then, after the first commercial break, the contestants have managed to switch places. And coming back from a break toward the end of the show, Pat thanks announcer Gary King . . . who hasn't said a word. THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:Imagine how funny that stuff might've been back in the day if you'd been ingesting substances known to cause normal people to laugh at a bag of Doritos.
Now, the object of the game was to "navigate" local streets to arrive -- wait for it -- at the Highland Road studios of Channel 2. Unfortunately, Baton Rouge isn't known for its efficient street-grid layout . . . or much of a street grid at all.
This ultimately led to the demise of We Play Baton Rouge, which apparently was canceled by WBRZ because most of the contestants kept getting caught in traffic on Perkins Road. Which happens a lot to cars in Baton Rouge when you add tires and subtract concrete blocks.
If you're from my Louisiana hometown and are of a certain age, this is gonna take you back big time.
And if you heard the most recent episode of 3 Chords & the Truth, you'll experience déja vu all over again with this musical tribute to Count Macabre, the 1960s weekdayhorror host on Channel 2 in Baton Rouge, WBRZ. Remember, boys and girls, Baton Rouge is a zoo. But you didn't need the good count to tell you that, did you?
Happy Halloween . . . both from your Mighty Favog and from the murky recesses of television history.
Here's a bit of Monday's Channel 2 news from home -- "home" being Baton Rouge. Some other news involved downtown Baton Rouge becoming something of a free-fire zone -- toll so far, two dead, one wounded -- a local school system allegedly in violation of state contract-bidding laws, the question of whether or not Hawker-Beechcraft will up and move its aircraft plant to the city from Wichita, the state's ongoing fiscal nightmare and the ongoing dismantling of Louisiana State University and the rest of higher education.
THIS is what people care about, however, and thus it led the evening newscast:
ABANDON HOPE all ye who enter Louisiana.
Or, as Kenny Rogers says, "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away and know when to run."
Forget that lede.Baton Rouge is home in the sense I was born and grew up there. In that, I had no choice. I do, however, retain just enough affection for the home of my youth to be furious at what I observe from the safe distance of 1,100 miles. And though Baton Rouge is "home," I live in Omaha now -- a Nebraskan by choice for more than two decades. There are reasons for that (see above).
And I am home. Unabashedly, unequivocally and without quotation marks.
UPDATE: Originally had the wrong clip for the second video. That's fixed now.
The irony is this, from the pages of the Broadcasting Yearbook, is a pluperfect 1958 map of what, decades later, would come to be known as "Cancer Alley."
The further irony is that folks in many of the worst-affected communities in the area aren't worth advertisers' time, not having a pot to piss in and barely a window to piss out.