Roger O Green

JEOPARDY! plus 180 months

The WTEN cameraman was following me around the room, and that he particularly concentrated on my feet because he was fascinated by my red Chuck Taylor sneakers.

Monday, November 9, 1998 was the first of my two appearances on the TV game show JEOPARDY! I wrote about this at TREMENDOUS length when I first started blogging in 2005: Parts 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 and 10 and 11.

I’ll try an abridged version here.

I took a mini-test in Albany in late April 1998, passed it, and was supposed to take a bus to Boston on May 14 to take the REAL test. But I had a NON-REFUNDABLE train ticket to visit Detroit and Cleveland that week.

I called WTEN, the local affiliate that carries the show, who gave me the number of Susanne Thurber, the “talent coordinator” for JEOPARDY!, in Los Angeles. She informed me about tests in Washington, DC the following week.

In DC, I went to a hotel conference room, where 45 or 50 people were seated for the test. We wrote the responses (no, they didn’t have to be in a form of a question) on a sheet of paper. There would be 50 questions in 50 categories.

Eight of us passed the test. We played a few mock games, complete with a buzzer. You don’t click once, you click repeatedly until someone’s name is called.

Thursday, August 13, I’m sitting at work, when our secretary buzzes my phone. “It’s JEOPARDY!” The next thing I hear is: “Roger Green? ” “Yes?” “I’m Grant Loud from JEOPARDY! This is the call!”

Grant explained that this would be a special series of programs filmed in Boston. They were taking only people who resided in the original 13 colonies for this week of programs. Would I be available on September 17 and 18? Yes! On September 17, my friend Judy Doyle and her son Max picked me up with my requisite three suits, five ties, two shirts, and my new shoes.

We get to the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, a very nice hotel. It was oddly shaped to fit the space that was available, I gather.

It turns out that President Clinton and other dignitaries were going to be at the hotel for a fancy (read: high-priced) fund-raising dinner. Eventually, I could look down from my upper story room and see several hundred protesters, split about 50/50 anti-Clinton, and anti-Ken Starr, the special prosecutor, who put all of the lurid details about Bill and Monica Lewinsky on the Internet. The added security made it difficult for us to get back into the hotel, once we left for dinner. (Host Alex Trebek had the same difficulty, I later learn.)

The contestants were to meet in the hotel lobby with our change of clothes at 11:30 a.m. We rode in two vans for the two or three-block trip to the Wang Center. Among other things, she noted that the place was much larger (seating capacity 3200) than the small theater where the show is filmed (250).

Boston was really psyched to have JEOPARDY! in town. The Globe, the Herald, and even the Christian Science Monitor were there, interviewing Susanne, Trebek, head writer Gary Johnson, and others.

There was a cameraman from WTEN wishing me “good luck.” They were because it was relatively close by AND because a guy from Albany was there. The WTEN cameraman was following me around the room, and that he particularly concentrated on my feet because he was fascinated by my red Chuck Taylor sneakers. (I REALLY know this, because, a few months later he gave me his raw footage of my feet and other things he filmed.)

My interview with Bianca de la Garza from Channel 10 takes place. Then Sharman Saccetti of Channel 18 in Elmira was there to interview me, probably because the station that carries JEOPARDY! in the Binghamton market, my hometown, is located 60 miles away in Elmira. Then Channel 2 Plattsburgh wanted to talk with me. Why? I don’t know. I must have been the contestant geographically closest to them.

Finally, with Susanne Thurber practically dragging me off the stage to end interview #3, we return downstairs. It was determined who the contestants who would face defending champion Tom: Amy Roeder, an actress from Merrimack, NH, and me!

I am still feeling very relaxed. Then Johnny Gilbert says, “A business librarian from Albany, NY, Roger Green.”
And my mouth goes dry.

(Tomorrow, the thrilling conclusion.)

Joni Mitchell is 70

I’m pretty sure I heard the CSNY version of ‘Woodstock’ first, but I prefer this more plaintive version by Joni Mitchell

Back when the Okie and I were married, I had the date of August 22, 1974, circled on our calendar for three months. We were going to see Joni Mitchell at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

Comes the day, and Uthaclena and his girlfriend at the time were sitting in the front of the car, and the Okie and I rode in the back. The Okie took this opportunity to berate me for virtually everything I ever did wrong in our two years of marriage to that point, including things we had previously discussed and I THOUGHT had been long resolved. All the way from New Paltz to Saratoga Springs, some 105 miles and close to two hours away, to the SPAC parking lot, to our seats, when I figured it would finally stop; it did not, even as Tom Scott and the L.A. Express began to play.

Finally, I walked away and found a vacant seat in the theater. I had to move a couple of times because there were people wandering around with flashlights making sure the lawn-seat folks didn’t sneak into the amphitheater.

I went back to our seats at intermission, and she was crying greatly because they were going to boot her out of the concert. Someone had said she was sitting in his seat, and I had BOTH of our tickets; the staff had misread the other guy’s ticket, and the situation was resolved.

We listened to the rest of the concert and then returned home in stony silence.

She moved to Philadelphia a couple of months later, and at some point in the next year, one of us filed for divorce, while we exchanged rancorous correspondence.

Funny thing, though; over the next few years, we managed a truce, then pleasant conversations on the phone or by mail over the next few years.

In 1981, I went to visit her in Philadelphia. We talked, had a nice time. By coincidence, there was a concert nearby and we attended. It was, of course, Joni Mitchell.
***
Lyrics, plus snippets of all of her songs can be found at jonimitchell.com

Favorite songs -album on which it first appeared:

20. Shadows and Light – The Hissing of Summer Lawns
A moody song, even more so on the live album named for this tune.

19. Come In From The Cold [LISTEN] – Night Ride Home
“Back in 1957
We had to dance a foot apart”

18. Ray’s Dad’s Cadillac [LISTEN] – Night Ride Home
I may like this for the pair of possessives in the title.

17. Woman Of Heart And Mind [LISTEN] – For the Roses
The contrast of the music and some of the lyrics makes it very effective.

16. Trouble Child [LISTEN] – Court and Spark
Nice bass line, plus I like the way it segues into Twisted

15. All I Want [LISTEN]– Blue
“I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Traveling, traveling, traveling”
And I definitely got that sensation.

14. Free Man in Paris [LISTEN] – Court and Spark
“I felt unfettered and alive”
That’s how it made me feel.

13. You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio [LISTEN] – For the Roses
The radio references I found quite clever, such as:
“If there’s no good reception for me
Then tune me out, ’cause honey
Who needs the static”

12. Raised on a Robbery [LISTEN] – Court and Spark
Atypical for Joni, this rocks.

11. Help Me [LISTEN] – Court and Spark
And in a coda to the main story above, my rebound relationship after the Okie, I made an unfortunate reference to this song. The relationship lasted six weeks and I wasn’t in another for nearly three years.

10. The Jungle Line [LISTEN] – The Hissing of Summer Lawns
I first heard this album at the house of my friend Jon and his girlfriend at the time, Sue. She was a huge Joni fan but wasn’t sure she liked this particular album. I said, “Well, then, give it to me.” I liked it, especially this song. She ended up keeping it.

9. Blue [LISTEN] – Blue
My late friend Donna George’s nickname for herself was Blue.

8. Court and Spark [LISTEN] – Court and Spark
I often go back and forth trying to decide whether Court and Spark [LISTEN], or Blue is my favorite Joni album.

7. Woodstock [LISTEN] – Ladies of the Canyon
I’m pretty sure I heard CSNY’s take first, but I prefer this more plaintive version.

6. The Circle Game [LISTEN] – Ladies of the Canyon
This is an early song that became a hit for Tom Rush, but I always preferred Joni’s.

5. Twisted [LISTEN]– Court and Spark
This is that Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross song from 1962 that was such a hoot when done by Joni, plus Cheech and Chong.
“So why should I feel sorry
If they just couldn’t understand
The idiomatic logic
That went on in my head”

4. Big Yellow Taxi [LISTEN] – Ladies of the Canyon
“They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot.”
Still true, unfortunately.
Love the giggle when she ends the song.

3. The Same Situation [LISTEN] – Court and Spark
Always thought this was one of the most devastating lyrics ever:
“You’ve had lots of lovely women
Now you turn your gaze to me
Weighing the beauty and the imperfection
To see if I’m worthy”

2. A Case of You [LISTEN] – Blue
“Oh I could drink a case of you darling
And I would still be on my feet
I would still be on my feet.”
I love the guitar here.

1. River [LISTEN]– Blue
One of Donna George’s favorite songs. She was a huge music fan, so I was truly mystified one day when she said she had never heard the ‘Jingle Bells’ motif in this song until I mentioned it in passing.
***
Watch: Joni Mitchell in a Rare, Career-Spanning Interview from June 2013 (105 minutes)

The no-sex zone

The trouble with the virginity pledge is that while it may be an “effective means of delaying sexual intercourse initiation among those inclined to pledge…; pledging does not appear to affect sexual safety among pledgers who fail to remain abstinent.”

“According to a fascinating and bewildering investigation in the Guardian by Abigail Haworth Japanese young people are losing interest not just in marriage but in romantic relationships. “Some have even given up on sex. The national press is calling it sekkusu shinai shokogun, or celibacy syndrome.” This is, of course, having a terrible impact on the nation’s birth rate.

Reading this, naturally, the first thing I think of is the song Turning Japanese by the Vapors, which has the lines:
No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it’s dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a cyclone Ranger

LISTEN to Turning Japanese HERE

“Songwriter David Fenton explains: ‘Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn’t expect to.'” He denies that it contains either the sexual or racial connotations to which it has been attributed. “It could have been (turning) Portuguese, Lebanese, anything that fitted with that phrase. It has nothing to do with the Japanese,” the guitar lick and the video image notwithstanding.

That story about the young Japanese came out around the same time as I noticed articles on Facebook from some Christian pastors suggesting that sex is not meant for enjoyment, but that one ought to read a book or see a movie if one wants to have fun.
It’s ironic that young Japanese have inadvertently adopted the credo of ministers half a world away. (Perhaps they should read this – WARNING: explicit – article about the joys of premarital sex.)

Of course, part of the argument against premarital sex, beyond the religious, has to do with an unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Even now, About half of the of the 6.7 million pregnancies in the U.S. each year are unplanned… and “women with incomes at or below the federal poverty line are five times more likely than those at the highest income levels to become pregnant by accident.”

When it comes to sex, ignorance is NOT bliss.

Q is for Queen City: Charlotte, NC

Charlotte, NC also grew as a function of alcohol: “Prior to 1978, single drinks could not be served in North Carolina. People who wanted a glass of wine with dinner at a restaurant would have to bring their own bottle.”

There are a number of cities nicknamed Queen City; I knew about Cincinnati, OH, and a few others. However, I’m going to talk about Charlotte, NC, in no small part because I have been there several times.

Back in 1973 or early 1974, my father lost his job with Associated Building Contractors in Johnson City, NY, next to Binghamton. He saw this an opportunity to go wherever he could find a job anywhere in the country. He looked everywhere from Syracuse to San Francisco. Ultimately, he found a position at J.A. Jones Construction in Charlotte, as the safety coordinator. He went down first, then my “baby” sister Marcia, and finally my mother. Both of my parents were born in Binghamton, but Mom was less than enthused about moving to the South.

My father, while liking Charlotte well enough, referred to it often as a “big old country town,” where a train might stop traffic within the city limits. It was big and getting bigger, in large part because of annexation. Cities in North Carolina and other predominantly southern states were allowed to annex unincorporated territory adjacent to them as long as the municipalities met minimal criteria of “urbanness”, two people per square mile, and provided police, fire, and water services. This action was taken to require those living on the fringe of the city to be added to the tax base, a luxury most Rust Belt cities can’t do because of fairly fixed borders.

There were annexations in 1972, 1974, and 1977. I was in graduate school in Public Administration at UAlbany in 1979-80, and actually did research on the effect that the rapid growth had on the city. What I’ve noticed since, though, is that the growth has continued: “Until 1978, Charlotte – like many other mid-sized southern cities – was struggling to grow, reeling from the decline of the textile industry. But that year, Charlotte began its transformation into the second-largest banking center in the United States. The city’s population has more than doubled, from 315,474 in 1980 to an estimated 751,087 in 2011.”

It also grew as a function of alcohol: “Prior to 1978, single drinks could not be served in North Carolina. People who wanted a glass of wine with dinner at a restaurant would have to bring their own bottle. Bars simply didn’t exist.

“After state voters passed what became known as the ‘liquor by the drink’ law, Charlotte’s hospitality industry began to grow. Around the same time, the first wave of northern immigrants arrived… In 1978, IBM moved 1,000 families from upstate New York. That was the first big influx.” Before that, “You couldn’t buy pasta. You couldn’t buy a bagel in Charlotte. The IBMers really began to change the community.” True enough; the pizza was TERRIBLE when my parents moved there.

Transportation has also played a part. The airport has become a hub. Charlotte now has light rail; when the family relocated there, the bus system was, to be generous, inadequate. This is still true once one gets out of the core downtown, though: “It’s also very easy to get lost: everything looks very similar.” That’s comforting to read because it almost always happens to me. Charlotte is changing all the time.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

Election Day (tomorrow)

Tomorrow, Albany will almost certainly elect its first woman mayor in its long history.

I was at my allergist’s office last month for my every-28-day injection, and she asked if I wanted a reminder card. “Nah, just tell me the date.” “November 5.” “Oh, that’s Election Day, easy to remember.”

This led me to mention that Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, so it will fall on November 2 through 8, but NOT on the 1st. When asked WHY, I admitted that I didn’t know, but that it was probably tied to the fact that it was All Saints Day, and/or it’s easy to forget that a new month has started.

So what IS the real story why Congress (in 1845) select the first Tuesday in November as Election Day?

From Information Please:
“. . . For much of our history, America was a predominantly agrarian society. Law makers therefore took into account that November was perhaps the most convenient month for farmers and rural workers to be able to travel to the polls. The fall harvest was over… but in the majority of the nation the weather was still mild enough to permit travel over unimproved roads.

“Why Tuesday? Since most residents of rural America had to travel a significant distance to the county seat in order to vote, Monday was not considered reasonable since many people would need to begin travel on Sunday. This would, of course, have conflicted with Church services and Sunday worship.

“Why the first Tuesday after the first Monday?… First, November 1st is All Saints Day, a Holy Day of Obligation for Roman Catholics. Second, most merchants were in the habit of doing their books from the preceding month on the 1st. Apparently, Congress was worried that the economic success or failure of the previous month might prove an undue influence on the vote!”

From the Wikipedia:
“The actual reasons, as shown in records of Congressional debate on the bill in December 1844, were fairly prosaic. The bill initially set the day for choosing presidential electors on “the first Tuesday in November,” in years divisible by four (1848, 1852, etc.). But it was pointed out that in some years the period between the first Tuesday in November and the first Wednesday in December (when the electors are required to meet in their state capitals to vote) would be more than 34 days, in violation of the existing Electoral College law. So, the bill was reworded to move the date for choosing presidential electors to the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, a date scheme already used in New York.”

As I’ve noted, I ALWAYS vote. ALWAYS. Tomorrow, Albany will almost certainly elect its first woman mayor in its long history. I must say that I didn’t vote for Kathy Sheehan in the primary, and that one of her campaign workers inadvertently talked me into that position. I said to the volunteer that I was voting for this guy Darius Shahinfar for city treasurer in the primary, and he told me something I already knew, which was that Kathy, the current treasurer, was aligned politically with Darius, so they’d sure to get along. But given the long-time shenanigans of the Albany Democratic machine, maybe having someone NOT aligned would be better.

I was reminded that when I was growing up, in New York State, there was often a Republican governor and a Democratic comptroller, or vice versa. Since there IS no functional Republican party in the city of Albany, the primary IS the race. I voted for Corey Ellis for mayor in the primary. But Sheehan (and Shahinfar) won the primary, as expected. And the city has a bunch of economic woes, caused in no small part by 20 years of one mayor, and not long before that, 41 years of another mayor.