This is the spring semester of my senior year, and I am quite looking forward to May, because after that month I’ll be more graduated than a cylinder. Winter break was an entire month this year, but I didn’t have the capacity to do much other than go to work, so I was pretty bored. However, I will say that our TV at home had a bunch of new channels for me to watch, including GAS and Noggin. GAS is the unfortunately-named Nickelodeon games and sports channel, which means that they play a bunch of Nickelodeon games shows I remember watching in the late eighties and early 1990s. There’s absolutely no explanation for this channel existing. Here are some of the priceless shows I watched over break:

Legends of the Hidden Temple

This was the show where kids used to run through this big temple (not hidden at all) in order to find some sort of treasure, which they could later exchange for a trip to space camp. The only thing legendary about this show is how shitty it was.

Global G.U.T.S / Non-Global, Regular G.U.T.S

This show was a clever combination of bungee cords and the special Olympics. Contestants would strap on a bungee cord and shoot baskets, paddle down a pool, or just awkwardly bounce around in the air and wonder why they agreed to go on G.U.T.S. Global G.U.T.S was the international version of the show, which pitted children from different countries against each other in order to see which ethnicity was the best, presumably to satiate Nickelodeon executives’ sick gambling habits.

Get the Picture

Here contestants answered trivia questions in order to uncover a part of a picture that featured ether a random object or an obscure 80s celebrity. I like to call this show Turn the Channel.

Nick Arcade

In this show, children were asked to answer more trivia questions and guide a character called Mikey along a digital board. The winning team was then inserted into a ridiculous interactive video game. I used to watch this show when it was originally on, and believe me, nobody ever won that game. Not a single time. It didn’t matter, though, because back when this show was on, Nickelodeon was literally the only channel targeted towards children. If you wanted to watch television, you had to watch this crap. I envy today’s kids, who have the option to watch such great channels as GAS, instead of all those bad Nickelodeon game shows we had to watch.

Noggin is yet another Nickelodeon channel I watched over break, but I didn’t watch too much of it. However, one time I did watch a show on Noggin where they presented the top 24 celebrities, and they listed Mary Kate Olsen about five spaces ahead of Ashley Olsen. I kid you not. Even they were unable to satisfyingly rationalize this decision. I think they claimed that Mary Kate was better because she “enjoyed staying up later,” but seriously. Shut the fuck up, Noggin.