{"id":747,"date":"2002-12-06T23:32:15","date_gmt":"2002-12-07T07:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2002\/12\/06\/747.html"},"modified":"2002-12-06T23:32:15","modified_gmt":"2002-12-07T07:32:15","slug":"two-things-i-dont-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2002\/12\/06\/two-things-i-dont-understand\/","title":{"rendered":"Two things I don’t understand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I've never really understood the appeal of Iron Chef,<\/cite> but I gather\n that that's largely because I don't cook and am not fond of watching things\n to make fun of them. I've seen people who apparently mostly appreciate the\n show's cheesiness, and others who love the food it shows, and others who both\n mock it and admire it. But the show never really made much sense to me.<\/p>\n

I've also never understood the appeal of TV-based drinking games. I can understand,\n though I don't play, skill- and chance-based drinking games, in which part\n of the point is that you grow progressively too drunk to play; but I don't\n get passive drinking games where everyone present drinks if such-and-such thing\n occurs. What's the appeal? Why not just drink?<\/p>\n

I guess there's a sort of shared acknowledgment of common events and in-jokes;\n perhaps somewhat the same thing that makes people quote Monty Python at length.\n And I can certainly enjoy reading the rules for such drinking games, for shows\n I've watched; for example, I was always kinda amused by the concept of "Hi,\n Bob!", wherein you watch episodes of the original Bob Newhart<\/cite> show\n and take a drink every time anyone says "Hi, Bob!"; I gather that this happened\n very frequently (though mostly I watched the later series Newhart,<\/cite> which\n didn't have so many "Hi, Bob"s). And I'm amused by the rules for a Star\n Trek (TOS) game<\/a>, 'cause I'm familiar enough with the series to enjoy the\n references. And I'm even amused by the idea of a meta-drinking\n game<\/a>, especially after reading a few sets of rules. (The creators of that\n are apparently also responsible for an article on the topic "How\n Long Would It Take to Kill Bill Gates with an Axe?<\/a>", based on the premise\n that most of Gates's experience points come from the wealth he's amassed, which\n makes him about 300,000th level. They don't say what his character class is,\n though.)<\/p>\n

But I really don't get a drinking game that specifies taking a drink for something\n that happens in every episode of a show. Such as the quasi-official Iron\n Chef Drinking Game<\/a>, in which you're supposed to drink "When the quote is\n shown at opening of show." (Or am I misinterpreting \"when\"? Maybe a quote is shown only sometimes? Clearly I shouldn't try to understand drinking games for shows I don't watch.)<\/p>\n

Ah, well; nobody ever said pop culture had to make sense.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never really understood the appeal of Iron Chef, but I gather that that’s largely because I don’t cook and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}