Takin' the good, takin' the bad

Great show last night. Great categories and contestants that made funny noises. One without the other is a good thing but together, why that is a great thing!
So to the chase I cut.
First round categories to name but a few:
80s TV, Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains, and The "Fac"s of Life
And then in Double Jeopardy we got the first category:
Brit-pourri.

It was an obvious Glen and Liza night.

Hope your night at the cottage was as meaningful.

And speaking of meaningful - - the next entry will take the blog to a place it hasn't been before. It will be about last night BUT it will be about Last Night's Dinner.

I hope fellow posters will follow suite one day soon and tell us New Yorkers about your last night's dinner!

And I wish to thank myself

While much has happened in the past week on our beloved Jeopardy nothing compares to this.
Kindly scroll to the end of the article.

Reporting to you live (ish) from New York City

Well, I knew the first Jeopardy with more than half of this blogs' bloggers NOT in America (Glen in London, Jess in America, and Liza in the air) would have a hidden message or two for me. I didn't expect it to be so obvious.
Before the first commercial Alex muttered,
"We'll come back, which is what we always do"
That was the way the teevee was telling me - don't worry Jess, they'll come back - like they always do.
Like when Liza went to London with Carey for the first time. We were living on Bleecker Street and she did come back! Thankfully, so she could be there when our landlord said goodbye when we left (for good) and told us he loved us!

Or at Planet Rose and Glen went to the bar to get us drinks - and he came back!


Better yet, during the commercial - which I mostly fast forwarded through (thanks Tivo) - I caught a commercial with Alex talking about a new Jeopardy contest - tickets to see it live in LA. What a day! I entered, of course. You can enter each night for the next 7 or so. All you need to know is the Final Jeopardy category (not answer or question). I can post this each night so a certain somebodies (oh, hello there) can enter as well using a certain somebodies (i.e. mine or the Shevitz') US of A address.
Contest

The Final Jeopardy category was American Politicians. But before that, let's talk contestants.
It was 4 time champion Bob's night as he had $4400 by the first commercial. Melissa (on the viewers' far right) talked about her and her husband's "major hobby" of role-playing games. TOO MUCH INFORMATION. Heh but she didn't mean the innuendo my dirty mind picked up. I mean, it is Jeopardy after all - on at 7 PM every weeknight. She called it "pretending for grown ups" and oddly and awkwardly as only our friend Alex can be said, "kinda like marriage". The audience gave a laugh but I am not sure what in the heck he was thinking.
Luis was next and he told a story of getting kicked out of Canada as a US naturalized citizen (originally from Mexico) who didn't have his papers so he couldn't stay more than 48 hours. I thought of Liza and hoped she had all of the papers she needed when she disembarked the plane with her suitcases (new and borrowed ones).
Lastly, Bob told a scary tale of leaving his home and never coming back for 20 years. And yes, I thought of my dear friends (who luckily are family, too!) who better not imitate his daunting tale (albeit one told in less than 45 seconds). He was from Czechoslovkia was visiting Yugoslavia and during that visit the Russians took over. His family headed to the US of A and he made it back 20 years later. Alex had nothing to say but "let's get back to the game"(or something along those lines). Yikes.

And back to the game we went.
There were some good categories including Best Oscar. Three films were listed and contestants had to name the Oscar winner. The $1000 Answer was Mrs. Miniver, Mr. Roverts and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Bob lucked out (as sometimes only a champ can) as the other two contestants answered wrong. (Question: What is Mrs. Miniver?)

We also had a question:
What is Massachusetts? And the answer contained Worcester - a dead giveaway in my world.
Worcester shout outs are always satisfying especially when a certain somebody has shed tears that very same day. Or climbed over a couch and behind two chairs to dig and dig and find Plan B (aka another suitcase).

The number one word looked up in Webster's online dictionary is integrity and that is a word that ALWAYS reminds me of my sister. Well, more like integral (as in "an integral part of my life") but the two words have many of the same letters, right?

Luis got both Daily doubles but it didn't help as
1) He was in the hole for the first one, and
2) Bob kicked butt.
He had it by Final with $17,000 - the other two players couldn't touch him.

And that is all about last night's Jeopardy.

Universally Challenged

So there I was, all alone, waiting for Liza in our new home and inevitably the TV came on. As pathetic as it sounds, I knew that as soon as 10.30pm rolled around, I would be fine as one of the shows I work on would come on (it's about football so my constant excuse is I would be watching regardless of my choice of career) but how to get to the (near) graveyard shift? Eastenders came and went (oh how I've missed you! Phil's son ran away but came back - phew! - and everyone got drunk at the pub. That's pretty much the recap for any British soap opera) and then the 8.30 - 9.00pm slot became filled by University Challenge. For those of you unaware of this staple diet in the British quiz schedules, two (usually) upper class sides from the UK's greatest universities battle it out to win, like, a plate. The questions are obscenely difficult (if I get 5 right, I can sleep easy) but before I could even attempt the music round (name the composer to this piece of classical music) I realised that this was the first quiz show I'd watched since...well, you know what. And it was a freaky experience for the first half of the show because each time a contestant answered, I was expecting them to phrase it as a question! Their one word responses confused me and I started to feel quite uneasy. Normal service had resumed by the time the gong sounded to indicate the end of the game (Cambridge beat London, if you're wondering) but I hadn't enjoyed what I'd watched one bit. I think what I'm trying to say is, "What is, I miss Jeopardy and everything it reminds me of?"

The Lees

William Lee, our champion with approximately $62,000 after two wins, and Dan Lee, a new guy, were two of the three contestants last night. They are not related for anyone out there (perhaps on the other side of the pond?) who is wondering. Kathy, our token female for the evening, was in the middle.
Going into final Jeopardy we knew Kathy was our winner with a runaway score of approximately 22,000 (compared to William's $7,000 and Dan's $5 something.)
The Final Jeopardy questions was "What is Russia and Japan?" (The answer being "These two countries were involved in a war with each other but it was not fought on either participant's soil.") I only bring up the question to point out that although you may think getting on to Jeopardy means you are not a fool, it is just not true.
Dan's answer that he wrote on his writing pad was this "What is the Russo-Japanese War?" Well, if I tell you there was a group groan in our house, would you believe it? Well, of course you would. We groaned. We yelled. We are were pissed off. We don't like when people are idiots and we especially don't like it when they are on Jeopardy being idiots. Read the question please!
So, perhaps this post would be better titled "Gripe Session #2"

Did I mention that Kathy blew the Lees out of the water?

Brought to you by the letters "ALL" as in ALL about last night's Jeopardy

Okay, so maybe the fundamentals of the "All about last night's Jeopardy" blog were not as thoroughly followed through with in those last couple of posts as they should have been. For that, I repent. (Isn't the Jewish repenting holiday coming up? Oh wait, no. The one coming up is the one in which we only eat unleavened bread - or do we?)
And in that shout out to the New York Times, what better way to start the summary of last night's Jeopardy? Alex started by telling us that there is a new partnership between the New York Times and Jeopardy. Just another reason to love the show, eh? So to the categories.
"Historic New York Times Headlines" (but, of course). "Which TV Show Came First?" "That's Super" "On The Menu" "A La Carte" "Prefix"
How pun-like that "Prefix" would come as the LAST category on the board. Oh you witty Jeopardy behind-the-scene-ers. (And how I long to be you.)
Our contestants for the evening were (from viewers' left to right, that is, starting with our champion)
Michael Falk (with winnings of $59,403 after 2 days) the academic meteorologist,
Stacy McKnight, the nanny, and
Peggy Till, a schoolteacher from Arlington, TX. It is here that I will tell you that Peggy Till's name caused quite a stir here in this poster's apartment. Jeremy chuckled and shared. Peggy Hill is the name of the mother on King of the Hill and that fictional family also hails from Texas. Peggy Till, Peggy Hill. Oh please stop!!
So on to the game!
Well, onto the first commercial. The scores were
$8800 (Michael),
$3000 (Stacy) and
$5000 (Peggy).
Coming back from the first commercial we found out many, many things including the fact that Stacy and her boss almost electrocuted themselves, Peggy attendee a festival called Spamarama and submitted a pasta salad made with Spam, and Michael is from Milwaukee. This round brought Stacy a daily double and double did she! Well, she almost did but she did take second place. She bet $2500 and got the question right.
Double Jeopardy brought us categories including, but not limited to:
"April" (a good month to be born, we all have been told),
"Who Are You?" (who is asking?),
"In the Dictionary" (words), and
"Geographic Horserace" (can only be explained in person - which I look forward to doing).
Let's cut to the Double Jeopardy chase. It was a great round. At one point Stacy was oh so close to taking over the top spot, which Michael held all of the time. But Stacy ended up placing third as the contestants entered Final Jeopardy. The category was Business & Industry and as an MBA student, the pressure was on in our house!! Luckily, the answer was this:
"On July 16, 1995 a science textbook was this company's first sale"
For those readers who don't wish to know, I won't tell. If you want me to tell, please comment.

The champion was the winner (sounds like a Yogi-ism) with $22,801, Peggy came in second with $15,000 and Stacy's score was so insignificant that I didn't write it down.

It was a great episode, classic Jeopardy. . . plunged into Hall of Fame status with one of Alex's last lines of the night. "Our thanks to the ladies"
Yes, Alex, give those ladies the thanks they deserve!

And that, my dear readers, is all about last night's Jeopardy!

..Brought To You By The Letter "J"

Yes, that's right. For some reason on 'last night's jeopardy' was 1/12th (how many categories are there total?) children's show. The category was Sesame Street Live. Alex and Sesame Street characters announced the clues in a cutesy way on Sesame Street. The usual suspects were the stars: Elmo, Oscar and Big Bird. There was one character that I've never heard of...Rosacita? A big blue monster, a poor man's Grover/Cookie Monster if you ask me. There were talking eggs in the $2000 clue and this final clue received a spontaneous round of applause from the audience! It was quite a coup!

I guess the kids stuff was apt for today's episode. One of the contestant's names was....LIZARD! No joke.

Oh, and the guy in the middle won. He was incredibly happy which is always a nice thing to see.