Jeopardy Masters

Beatrice and Benedict

I received this question last month from my friend Catbird.

What do you think of the Jeopardy Masters?

At the time I was asked this, I had seen ZERO episodes because I was either preparing to go to France or was there or was recovering from being there.

Honestly, I wasn’t all that excited. Seeing these same six people AGAIN was not that interesting to me. But seeing the relationships that developed among the six, especially between Sam Buttrey and Matt Amodio, was fascinating. When Mattea Roach’s father, Phillip, died at the age of 57 from a brain aneurysm, their tribute to dad was touching.

I do NOT want to see where the DDs are, BTW, and I think this is going away, except maybe on an app.

In general, I like it, but sometimes I start wondering if SONY recognizes J as its one sure thing and is squeezing every last bit of revenue out of it.

I think this may be the case. But JEOPARDY Masters had good ratings for ABC. Moreover, extending the brand made sense with the proliferation of social media with Inside Jeopardy.

 I also wonder what the story is with Mayim Bialik: After all that fuss about sexual harassment, did she get the host job, or not?

She and Ken Jennings, to the best of my knowledge, will continue to share the hosting duties.

Why does KJ get all the special (and probably higher-ratings) shows?

MB got the Celebrity JEOPARDY shows that did fine in the ratings.

Does “creepy guy” MR still haunt J culture?

The former executive producer and, briefly, host,  Michael Richards, is gone, gone, GONE.

Is she too Jewish? Is it her two X chromosomes? 

Maybe, and maybe.

KJ is better

But I contend that Ken Jennings is also better at the job because he’s a student of the show. He prepares like Trebek prepared.

The time for the host to acknowledge the correct answer still takes longer with her. She STILL doesn’t tell the contestant with a low or negative score that they can bet up to the maximum value of the clue on the board, $1000 in the first round, and $2000 in Double JEOPARDY.

And she made an egregious error in the game on May 31. in the category of Presidential Doin’s:

“Had a cold, went out to buy veggies anyway; got pneumonia, died before 31st full day on the job.” She accepted Harrison; it was William Henry Harrison, but it could have been Benjamin Harrison.

But a few minutes later:

“Made Henry Clay Secretary of State; 2 years after the White House, settled into a new House (of Representatives).” To their response of Adams, she correctly requested more information. John Adams was wrong; John Quincy Adams was correct.

One ALWAYS asks which president when it’s Adams, Harrison, Johnson, or Roosevelt. It’s JEOPARDY Hosting 101.

Is KJ  being greedy?

IDK what this means.

Sometimes I overthink things.

What’s your take on the current incarnation of J?

They’re bringing back all of the Season 39 winners that didn’t make it to the ToC to have some play-in thing so that someone WILL make it to the ToC. It diminishes the product, IMO.

I will always root against the person who’s been on for more than five days. But I still watch, and ASAP because my newsfeed often tells me info first thing the next morning.

Billy Shakes

Kelly took great umbrage regarding a ruling in the Final JEOPARDY of May 23.

“The names of these two lovers are taken from Latin words meaning ‘blessed.’

“Ben… got the right characters: Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. But wait! He spelled them Beatrice and Benedict, which was enough for the judges to rule him incorrect. His wager was big enough to drop him into second place, and off the show (until he comes back for the Tournament of Champions, so all isn’t lost for Ben).”

I disagreed with him in the comments. Still, he responded that “Maybe that’s how they’ve always done it, but honestly, as a casual viewer, I still think it’s BS.”

So I asked a list of former JEOPARDY contestants, who are not casual viewers, the question. I mean, I know this like I know that in baseball with two outs the run does not count if the batter is put out at first, EVEN if the runner crosses the plate before the batter makes the out. It just IS.

The responses:

Of course, it was decided correctly.

Absolutely correct. It wasn’t that it was a spelling error…he changed the name.

Decided correctly. Changed the name AND the pronunciation.
The ruling was correct. That’s how Shakespeare spelled it, so you can’t allow any variations. If you do, where does it stop?
Agreed – as soon as it showed up, I said out loud, “No, that’s not right.” I can see if he hadn’t spelled it with the ‘k’ at the end, but adding a ‘t’ makes it a different name.
Given that the show has also noted the decision was correct, I stand by my thoughts on this.
Conversely, I KNOW Kelly could have answered this item: Stephen Sondheim composed most of the score of “A Little Night Music” in 3/4 time, also known as this dance “time.”
It was one of 23 clues that were Triple Stumpers on June 7, 2023. No one answered them correctly. It WAS painful.
BTW, “What is waltz time?”

Lydster got a summer job

better than refolding clothes

Yay. Our daughter got a summer job!

When she was home for spring break, her mother suggested to her that she ought to apply for jobs for the summer. This mildly bugged the Daughter because she was already thinking about doing this.

Apparently, a lot of this process is now done online. She may have started the process slightly early, but it’s better than the opposite, when her search last year was too late to secure employment at all.

She was able to get a job at a clothing store in a local mall where she has shopped in the past. This was, as you might imagine, both a benefit and a curse. It was beneficial because she was familiar with the merchandise. The problem is that she had to restrain herself from buying a whole wardrobe with her employee discount.

I understand this tendency. When I worked at FantaCo in the 1980s, I was more likely to pick up more comic book issues and books than I would have if I were buying at retail.

Our daughter likes her job. She gives us the blow-by-blow of her day, both the occasionally annoying customer and her success in selling the product. Because she is the only non-manager employee who is over 18, she was able to pick up additional hours that the high schoolers working there could not.

New attitude

The job has totally changed her perspective. Before, when she and I, or she and her mother, would go into a store and needed to ask a question, she always wanted her parent to ask. Now, at work, she enjoys being the one answering questions, in part because she appreciates the break from refolding clothes that customers tried on but did not purchase.

More interestingly, she’s been nagging her bestie, K to get a job over the summer. I told my daughter I would hire K to work on some projects, but that idea was rejected. “She needs to work with people she doesn’t know!”

She likes ringing in sales, something she had never done before, and learning what to look for regarding potential shoplifters.

Style

My daughter has always had a strong sense of style. I discovered this even more on Father’s Day. The three of us and my MIL were going to Catskill to meet my BIL, his wife and one of their daughters. My daughter overslept and didn’t have to put on makeup.

My daughter and I sat in the back seat while she explained her cosmetic choices.  The colors on her face match her daily wardrobe in very subtle ways. She explained the use of concealer and the other items in her packet. It was far more interesting to me than I would have imagined.

Most awarded songs #12

to a real hound dog

We’ve hit the TOP 40 of the most awarded songs #12. They’ve been cited by the Grammys and the Oscars, not to mention Rolling Stone magazine, RIAA, ASCAP, CMA, NPR, and so forth.

40. Superstition  – Stevie Wonder. The lead single from the Talking Book album, the first of four albums over five years was at the height of Stevie’s creativity. Jeff Beck plays guitar.

39. Piano Man – Billy Joel. I saw Billy Joel at Elting Gym in New Paltz in 1974. This song and Captain Jack were the only songs of his I knew well at the time. Piano Man was based on his experience as a piano-lounge singer for six months in 1972–73 after his commercially disastrous first album, Cold Spring Harbor. It has of course become his signature tune.

38.  Tutti-Frutti – Little Richard. “Got a gal, named Daisy, she almost drives me crazy. She knows how to love me, yes indeed. Boy you don’t know what she do to me.” This makes the nonsense lyrics – “A wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom” – even more suggestive. Songfacts notes the chorus was “Tutti Frutti, Good Booty,” until it was changed. This song went to #17 in 1956. The version by Pat Boone went to #12 the same year, proving the public is NOT always right.

37. Behind Closed Doors – Charlie Rich. One of my sisters says, quite often, “You don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.” But it has a very different meaning than the lyrics to this song.

36. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana. Seriously, I thought this was a bit of a joke when I first heard it. “A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido.” What? And now I own four Nirvana albums. Related, Smells Like Nirvana is my favorite Weird Al parody.

I found my thrill

35.  Blueberry Hill – Fats Domino.  The song was recorded by several artists from the time it was written by Vincent Rose and John L. Rooney in 1940. Sammy Kaye, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, and Louis Armstrong were among those who recorded it before Antoine Dominique Domino Jr.

34. Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys. The title of this expensive and expansive “pocket symphony” derived from Brian Wilson’s “fascination with cosmic vibrations, as his mother would tell him as a child that dogs sometimes bark at people in response to their ‘bad vibrations’.”

33.  The Twist– Chubby Checker. I wrote a whole post about this significant song.

32. Killing Me Softly With His Song – Roberta Flack. Lori Lieberman says she co-wrote this song while seeing Don McLean perform. Charles Gimbel and Norman Fox say they wrote it for Lieberman.

31. Hound Dog – Elvis Presley. Elvis had to sing this song to an actual basset hound on “The Steve Allen Show” in July 1956. The song was written by Leiber and Stoller and originally done by Big Mama Thorton in 1952.

Things I learned from visiting France

très grand chat domestique

Here are some things I learned from visiting France in May 2023. You world travelers likely already know some of these things.

Let me lay out the four places we stayed. We spent two nights at (#1) the Hotel Paris – Andre Latin Hotel, then two more at (#2) the Hotel Kyriad Auray (2), one night at (#3) Les Chtis Bretons, near Le Temple in Trédion (3), and the final night at (#4) Millennium CDG in Roissy en France. These were very different experiences.

Power

When we got into room #1, I couldn’t get the lights to work. I asked the person at the front desk, and they asked if I had put the key card in the slot; of course, that’s how we got in.

No, the slot INSIDE the room. When the key is in that slot, the lights work. It’s a measure to keep people from wasting electricity. We also had to give the key to the front desk when we went out, then get it back upon our return.

It was good that we had three adapter plugs for European sockets.  Ours were called Travel Smart by Conair. We used all three. One was to charge my laptop, and another was for the white noise machine; we didn’t use it the first night, and we slept poorly even though I’d been up over 36 hours.

The third plug was to charge our phones and my watch. On May 9, days before our May 14 departure, I bought a SooPii 60W 6-Port Charging Station for Multiple Devices. It was advantageous.

I changed my phone carrier from Boost Mobile to TMobile nine days before departure. My phone worked everywhere we went in France except place #3, only five kilometers from the chateau, where we DID have connectivity.

I also got a Glocal Me hotspot and a 5G SIM card. This was not successful. So my wife could only use her phone when we were on Amtrak, the planes, three hotels, and the TGV TRAIN. Fortunately, our Wordle streaks remained intact.

Media

I briefly checked out the television at hotels #1 and #2. Hotel #1 in Paris had a variety of channels, some in English, primarily BBC 4 and its spinoffs. There were also channels from Tunisia and, I believe, Iran.

The TV at Hotel #2 in Auray was all in French. The only English I heard was from Cannes. Michael Douglas was accepting an award, which was translated. But some offerings were American programs dubbed into English, including Grey’s Anatomy, Friends, and The A-Team. 

Radio was quite eclectic throughout the country. On the tour bus in Paris, between descriptions of the sites, the music ranged from Middle Eastern to the Parisian dance halls to hip hop lite. 

Breakfast

Food was abundant at Hotels #1, #2, and #4. They all served croissants and had machines dispensing coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Mainly #2 and #4 seemed heated toward their perception of the American palate. Carrot cake and brownies for breakfast? I LOVE carrot cake but wasn’t ready for it at 8:30 a.m.

In the lobby of Hotel #2 was perhaps the largest domesticated cat I’ve ever seen. It would wander among the diners, walking under the chairs. When it was petted, it would linger for a time. 

Driving

Driving in the countryside, from Auray to Erdeven to  Trédion, wasn’t too demanding for my wife. However, there were a LOT of traffic circles, and the signage was not sufficiently large to know which way to go.

We were dependent on the GPS. I would navigate because it was hard for my wife to drive and figure out where to go. “In 500 meters, take the 12 o’clock, ” I’d say. (Or “nine o’clock” or “three o’clock.”) 

In particular, when we went from Erdeven, where the wedding took place, to  Trédion, where the reception was 45 minutes away, was held, we would have never found the place. We were directed to caravan with other vehicles, but by the third circle, we’d lost the car we were supposed to follow.

Conversely, driving in Paris appeared to be insane, with bicycles and motorcycles cutting in between lanes. The fact that we never saw an accident was remarkable. The motorcycles rode on the lines between lanes. My wife was happy not to be behind the wheel there.

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