siannan

There are no videos of Search for Science episodes available anywhere. Which is a damn shame, because getting to watch that was the best part of being home sick. Well, that and the I Dream of Jeannie reruns.

For some reason they ran the show during school hours. Kind of a dick move, considering it was the late 70s/early 80s and nobody had VCRs and Cable in the Classroom wasn't implemented. It had a cheesy Chromakey intro and then he would be standing there wearing a shortsleeved checked shirt and talking about the usual generic elementary school science experiment that he was gonna lay on the audience. Lightbulbs running on lemons, baking soda volcanos, you know.

One time he had a couple of nails hooked up to a 9-volt battery and stuck in a hotdog and was cooking it. My dad, retired science teacher extraordinaire, started to FLIP OUT. "HE SHOULDN'T BE SHOWING THAT! KIDS ARE GONNA BLOW UP THEIR HOUSES IF THEY TRY THAT! JEEZ!" I don't remember if he stomped off to call WNET (all your life is channel 13...) and complain. I remember being fascinated at the closeup of the hotdog as it swelled and blistered. I never liked hot dogs but I wanted one cooked on a Ray-O-Vac.

Then there was Julius Sumner Miller who I liked almost as much, but not quite, because he looked and sounded like Gargamel and that's kinda scary:

Always the pocket protector. ALWAYS.

Kids with cable would go on about Mister Wizard. He was cool, but he was no Bob Crumpler. Bob retired and owned a couple of McDonald's franchises. Which is fine, because he never talked about nutrition.