Bits and pieces of Pinoy culture

Family Feud will always be my all-time favorite game show and I had followed the American series, the Filipino version (with both Richard Gomez and Dingdong Dantes) and even played it on the computer.

But I’ve recently discovered another game show that now excites me no end: ABS-CBN’s Panahon Ko ‘to (Ang Game Show ng Buhay Ko), which premiered only late afternoon last Monday.

This is how the game is played: Hosts Luis Manzano and Billy Crawford go from decade to decade and ask trivial questions regarding a particular era. For example: In the ‘60s, who was the “N” who served as sidekick to radio host Johnny de Leon? Answer: Ngongo. For the benefit of the present generation, Ngongo was the hare-lipped radio personality who played on-air sounding board to Johnny de Leon, then a very popular broadcaster.

Of course, in today’s politically-correct (at least, we try) society, Ngongo will never have a showbiz career because we now disapprove of people with disabilities being made fun of especially in public — and rightly so. But that was acceptable in the past and I’m happy that we are learning through the years. 

From the ‘60s, Luis and Billy would travel through the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s — till the new millennium and back. Basically, that is how the elimination round is played. For the final leg of the game, the rules change: The contestant tries to guess the identity of a face hidden by patches that have numbers corresponding to questions asked by the hosts. With every correct answer, a patch would disappear and that would make it easier for the contestant to decipher whose image it is that is he/she is trying to guess since more of the face is revealed.

In Monday’s pilot telecast, the group that made it to the final round was composed of comediennes Joy Viado, Rubi Rubi and Kiray. Even if Joy was unable to get the jackpot prize (she failed to guess that the image hidden belonged to Shalani Soledad), she was still very impressive. She knew Ngongo and she even remembered his regular casual plug of the old cigarette brand Bataang Matamis that he pronounced Mataang Matamis since he was, well, hare-lipped).

 I actually wasn’t surprised anymore that Joy did extremely well in a game like that. When she, Alessandra de Rossi, Arnell Ignacio and myself were still doing the now-cancelled game show Now Na (on Q-11), she would always try to recall trivialities of the past to entertain everyone during breaks. She and Arnell would talk about Nutri-bun (that heavy bread distributed among school children to give them a feeling of being full — or busog — with just one piece) and Ipher (I don’t know if I spelled that correctly, but that was used by haircutters in the ‘70s to give the hair a layered look). Of course, I was aware what they were talking about, except that I shut up — afraid to give away my age. He-he-he.

But really, if you are good at trivia — and I am the king — you’d know Pinoy pop culture of any era. For instance, who else remembers that in the late ‘30s and ‘40s (and this was before the war — during the so-called peacetime), the popular term for a useless husband was parbol? That supposedly was another word for batugan, which is still in use to this day.

You may argue that the questions asked in this new game show are useless trivia, but they aren’t. I learned something new in that premiere episode alone. For instance, that was the first time I found out that the balikbayan box first came out in 1981 (I can only hope the show’s writers did their research well). I can believe that since somebody from showbiz once told me that when Maricel Soriano shot Pepe ‘n Pilar in California in 1982, she bought bundles and bundles of bed sheets and linen that all these purchases eventually ended up being shipped to Manila later — yes, in balikbayan boxes.

 Panahon Ko ‘to is my dream game show because it tests my skills at trivia. Useless information? Not necessarily. Regardless of what you may say, these are bits and pieces of knowledge that are all part of Filipino culture.