mostly david ephgrave

Only 37 out of 100 people surveyed for tonight's episode of Pointless knew the actress who played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz was Judy Garland.  37 out of 100.  When given 100 seconds.  Dorothy.  JUDY GARLAND.  Fuck's sake. It's been a long time coming, but it's finally official: I despair in humanity, now it seems the vast majority of the great unwashed feel no need to retain any information about anything. If there's one role that's most associated with Judy Garland, it's Dorothy, in much the same way that Dorothy will always be synonymous with Judy; it's the sort of thing you should be able to recall without effort. In fact, it may as well go hand in hand with, "Who's the prime minister?" for emergency questions to test for senility, as I would argue if you don't know it, you either (1) live in a country that has more bigger problems to attend to, or (2) you're an idiot. The film The Wizard of Oz is so iconic it pretty...

I once had a friend who thought The Wizard of Oz's opening sequence was black-and-white because there was something wrong with her video cassette. It wasn’t until she watched my copy that she realised her mistake. Even though I was only ten, this rang alarm bells. Didn’t she question why the fault corresponded perfectly with each time Dorothy was in Kansas? Didn’t she notice how it neatly bookended the film? While I was too young to know a metaphor by name, I understood the concept. It wasn’t rocket science. This wasn’t why we lost contact. I was more forgiving than that. The fact I thought I loved her helped me overlook it (I was a very passionate ten-year-old). I gave her a Valentine's card, took her on a date to see Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, but ended up being dumped for a boy who wore a Global Hypercolor T-shirt. I couldn’t compete with that. When I was hot it just showed up in sweat patches.