Like a good kid, I was watching the Game Show Network about a week ago and Match Game '73 came on.
For those of you not familliar with the Match game, the host gives a phrase with a blank in it and the contestants try to match it with what the celebrity panel says. In this game, one of the clues was “Belgian _____.”
I immediately thought waffles. But the contestant said “burp” and so did every single celebrity (exept two, who I am pretty sure said “belch”). I’ve searched google, wikipedia, urban dictionary and some of the other resources listed in the thread near the top of this page. The only thing I could find was a post on a message board at the following link: http://forums.thelastfreecity.com/viewtopic.php?t=2319
I’m not sure if this is even referring to the same thing. Since I wasn’t around in 1973, I asked my parents, my uncles and aunts, my friends, their parents, and now you guys. This has been bugging me for awhile now. Thanks for the help!
I have not watched the Match Game since Gene Rayburn was the host (actually, I guess he was the host of Match Game '73, but I haven’t seen it since '73). But maybe we can dope this out if you can provide any more context info.
Did you see this phrase in writing? That is, is it possible that the phrase was not “Belgian” but “belch and”?
If it’s definitely Belgian, is it definitely supposed to be a phrase, or could it be some other match-up that plays on the similarity between “Belgian” and “belch and”?
What’s the objective? To get a “right” answer or just match as many celebrities as possible?
What were some of the other questions and answers? Just to give us the flavor of the show.
(I couldn’t do any better than you on the search except I found one reference to a dog that did a Belgian burp but you couldn’t tell from the context what the hell they meant.)
The phrase itself wasn’t in writing, but when they asked this particular question Gene said, “Give your answer to the following sentence, ’ Belgian Blank ’ .” Which makes me think that it is a phrase of some type and not something else.
The object is to match the celebrities and not get a “right” answer because many times there are multiple answers to the questions. For example, yesterday I was watching the show and the question was, “The cowboy sold his horse but said he was going to keep his spurs because he could still use them on his _____ .” As a matter of fact it is on right now. The question is “Name something that has gas.” And another one is “Bed _____.” One my friend remembers is “on valentines day morning shy sally was suprised to wake up to her boyfriends ______” A lot of the questions have sexual/dirty undertones but are answered in a clean way.
Folks on that show tended to blurt out the first thing they thought of. The ones who said “burp” probably either a) actually heard it as “belch and …” or b) couldn’t think of “waffle” and so pretended they heard it as “belch and …”
Reminds me of a time in high school (hm, also early '70s – coincidence? I think not!) when we were playing free association, and I said to another kid “Hominy…” and instead of “grits,” he said “four.”
That wouldn’t explain why two of the people had belch as their answer. If they thought the phrase was “Belch and ____” wouldn’t they not say “Belch” again?
My mom remembers Belgian waffles from her growing-up days in Bridgeport (in a restaurant family) long before 1964. Is it possible they came over at that other World’s Fair in New York…along about 1939?
As for burping and Belgians, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned that they’re some of the world’s greatest lovers of beer!