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Games--For Merv Griffin
for release 09-05-07
Washington DC
by Lighting Rod
There are two types of people in this world. There are the Wheel of Fortune people and the Jeopardy people. Merv Griffin was a genius. He got everybody.
Griffin took two of the most basic traditional games, Hanged Man and Trivia and put a showbiz twist on them, jazzed them up with lights and money and the rest is game show history.
Just like we are either Repubs or Demos, Red Staters or Blue Staters, men or women, gay or straight, smart or dumb, in the same way we are either Wheel of Fortune people or Jeopardy people. And never the twain shall meet. My informal survey has found that almost nobody is Bi-gamial. Rarely does a Wheel of Fortune person watch Jeopardy and visa versa. It's another manifestation of the polarity in our universe.
One of the emblems of a society is what games are popular. The Ancient Greeks were fond of nude wrestling and discus chucking. The Romans had a more sanguinary taste, they enjoyed fights to the death. The Arabs invented chess. The Scots gave us golf. England coined Rugby and then Americans, as usual, improved upon the theory and now we have the NFL.
You learn a great deal about people from what games they play and how well they play them. In jail they play dominoes. In Monte Carlo they play Baccarat. In Vegas they play Blackjack. In old folk's homes they play Mah Jong and Canasta. Tough guys play Poker. In Washington they play politics and the stakes are high.
This is why Merv Griffin was a genius and deserved to be richer than god. He covered all the bases. He was tuned to the dualities of our universe and of our society. He shot both high and low. Wheel of Fortune is for the dummies who depend on Luck. These are also the morons who buy lottery tickets. That's why WoF is the most popular game show in the world. Jeopardy, on the other hand, is for people who think that they are smarter than they actually are. They buy stocks instead of lottery tickets. They have some vague idea of what compound interest means. Merv was channeling H.L. Mencken--"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
NASCAR is much more popular than chess because it takes less mental involvement, which I prefer to call work. But even eclipsing NASCAR in the race for the entertainment dollar is the video game. I'm sure video games will be the emblem our contemporary society. We spend ten billion bucks a year on them. That's more than we spend on movies and records and sports events and cancer research combined. Video games.
The Poet's Eye sees that you can tell a great deal about a culture by what games it plays. Do we play Blame Games or Head Games or Gotcha Games or the Skill Game or the Luck Game? Do we masturbate in secret with our video games? It's all a game, just a game. Should I challenge George Bush to a game of Jeopardy or a game of Wheel of Fortune? What do you think, Merv?
So keep on playing those mind games together
Faith in the future, outta the now
You just cant beat on those mind guerrillas
Absolute elsewhere in the stones of your mind
Yeah were playing those mind games forever
Projecting our images in space and in time
--John Lennon