G’day, boys ‘n’ gulls! Byron the Quokka here, with your weekend television offerings by Quokka University. And look at that TV Guide page I posted. At least you can read our listings! Like f’rinstance…
4:30 a.m. Ch. 03 YOUR FAVORITE CLASSIC TEST PATTERNS–(what do you expect for 4:30 in the morning?)
This is what used to be on TV in the wee hours of the morning. Yes, the programming day had a beginning and an end! There were actually hours with nothing on. Nothing except these. Makes you wonder, eh?
6 a.m. Ch. 08 SUNRISE SYMPOSIUM–Pseudo-intellectual claptrap
If it wasn’t so early in the morning you’d easily catch out the “panel” as just another bunch of fat-heads. But at 6 a.m., who’s alert enough to catch on? Today: Prof. Anton Gesundheit (voodoo, Canola College) leads the panel in a discussion of “Are We Providing the Intellectual Window-Dressing the World Needs?” No one seems to know!
6:17 a.m. Ch. 41 MY FRIEND FLOOKA–A boy and his… what?
Forget Lassie and Fury! Flooka is a Brachiosaurus, 25 feet high, 65 feet long, and absolutely devoted to his human friend, Yongari (named for a movie monster–what were his parents thinking?). This week: Yongari (Fong Hsueh-Ding) gets caught in quicksand. Will Flooka, with a brain no bigger than a ping-pong ball, be able to figure out how to rescue him? Gramps: Justin Trudeau. Fudgie the Whale: Gertrude Stein.
I’m stopping here, folks, because I found a classic test pattern and wanted you to see it. Some of you weren’t born in time to see some of these.
I always wondered what the guy in the head-dress was all about. We don’t have anyone like that on Rotnest Island.
Oh, well–Byron the Quokka, signing off.
I can hardly wait to watch those classic test patterns. Even without the guy in the headdress they were more worth watching than what’s on TV today.
And yes, I’m old enough to have seen them at the time. In fact, I’m old enough to remember when almost no one had a TV. My aunt Sylvia got one in the late 1940s, the only one in our neighborhood. Her living room got very crowded with my cousins’ friends during some of the cartoons and professional wrassling (to be distinguished from wrestling, which is a genuine sport).
Our whole third grade class got invited to a kid’s house to watch color TV–the only one we knew of. Everything looked sort of greenish. Even Howdy Doody.
Just one more mystery, eh Pard?
SUNRISE SYMPOSIUM–Pseudo-intellectual claptrap – doesn’t sound very original since we have the Good Morning Show with George Stefanopoulos who sounds just like Prof. Anton Gesundheit. MY FRIEND FLOOKA–A boy and his… what? – Isn’t Yongari with and Indian chief head dress featured on the TV pattern? I’ve always thought it was 🙂
The original horror film was “Yongari, Monster of the Deep.”