Early morning and I turn over to Whose Line Is It Anyway and there is a game starting where Colin and Ryan play 2 cowboys out on the range tending to their cattle and setting up camp for the night using cheerleaders as props.
The girls get to be horses, six guns, **bed rolls ** and Colin’s chaps and coat. Two girls (and these are not ugly girls) cling to his legs, their heads on his groin. Ryan asks, “Is it safe to go out there?” and Colin replies, “I’m out there already.”
My shock and outrage turned out to be a little misplaced as the high school cheerleaders turned out to be from Loyola Marymount University.
This began, I believe, when Hugh Hefner was in attendance with two Playboy Playmates. (Ava Fabian and… uh, I forget the other. Mmm, Ava.)
I haven’t watched the show in years so I don’t know if Living Props is now regularly performed with women as the props, or if it’s just… you know, a once-in-a-while schtick.
Aside from once or twice when the other cast members were used, I think the one with Richard Simmons is the only time I’ve seen the game played without women as both props. Women also seem to show up more often than men on the Sound Effects game, and the one where one of the cast has to make up a song about someone.
The strangest thing I ever saw on television was the World Street-Fighting Championship. I was at a friend’s house in Toronto back in around 1981, waiting to leave for an engagement. His family had the TV on, and this just happened to be on it. I saw two nasty-looking guys come out of the corners of a boxing ring, ready to do damage to one another. Thing was, one of the guys was quite a bit over 6 feet tall and built like a refrigerator. He closed the massive fist on his massive arm, and plowed his opponent once in the face. He went down. It was over. How did this get approved for broadcast? I’ve never seen anything else like it.
The flat-out wierdest thing I have ever seen on TV was last years Christmas Special for long running Irish chat show The Late Late Show. Every year at Christmas they have a “Toy Show”, showing all the cool toys for Christmas, along with lots of musical and comedy acts, and they always kick off the show with a panto-style extravaganza. Last years opening showed a group of kids being picked on by BeetleJuice, until they are saved by Darth Vader on horseback, riding into the studio with an army of pirates and ninjas, and the ninjas had a huge fire-breathing mechanical dragon that spewed flames everywhere. Vader! On a horse! With pirates! And Ninjas, and dragons! Versus BeetleJuice! Someone in RTE had definatley had too much eggnog.