Life

Jeopardy Zoom Test – July 6, 2022

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Thirty-four years ago I took an in-person test for Jeopardy at their studio in Burbank. The process was simpler then. All you had to do was ask to take the test and then show up – I’m good at showing up. There was less to know, and less competition (just nerds waiting in line cramming with index cards and excitedly reminiscing about past episodes). But I still wasn’t good enough to get on the show, though I did get invited to a party in Malibu by one of the other hopefuls who didn’t make it.

Nevertheless, for the last 16 years, with no expectations and for no good reason, other than challenging my diminishing memory, slow typing skills, and ignorance of current events, I have taken the annual online screening test.

Then, newsflash, I got an email last week saying that I had qualified for the second round of testing, on Zoom (so they can watch to see if you have 12 people in the room helping you cheat).

This figured to be ugly. I have no knowledge about the last 30 plus years on almost any topic they might ask about, and it’s too late to start studying the almanac again, like I used to do in class, when I went, on my way to participating in an intercollegiate trivia bowl.

But, I figured, what the heck, grist for the mill, something to write about in my blog. So, in preparation for the big day, just as Bobby Fischer famously played tennis on off days during his World Championship match with Boris Spassky, I watched Wimbledon on tv.

As it turned out, out of the 50 questions, there were only two or three where I knew the answer but couldn’t remember it until too late (one of them embarrassingly). There were a couple other questions I should have known, but they were geography related, and who knows anything about that these days without their GPS in hand. The other likely misses just weren’t in what remains of my wheelhouse.

Still, who knows. Maybe a couple of my random guesses will turn out to be correct, or my deer in the headlights look will appeal to them. I’ll hear back from them within a year, or not, or maybe I’ll get invited to another party. That would be a win.

Belated New Year’s Predictions

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After millions of people order free Covid test kits on the new government website, a night janitor with a PhD in computer science will discover a glitch in the software caused by the host computer’s proximity to a 5G tower, which caused all the kits to be delivered to a cave in New Mexico inhabited by a disgraced poet who writes only in A-A-A-A rhyme scheme. The site will be made a National Park.

Novak Djokovic will wind up dating someone he met in detention, ala The Breakfast Club.

Doctors will perform the first brain transplant from a tree shrew, the mammal with the highest brain-to-body ratio, 1:10. Humans are 1:40, but remember, if this seems too good to be true, this is size only, not functionality.

The new James Webb Space Telescope will fully deploy, and, immediately thereafter, spot, not the alien spaceship headed for a crash landing on earth due to interference from a 5G tower, but rather a helium balloon that was released during a child’s birthday party in 1973.

Undetected, the alien spaceship will land on earth, and its crew will score a fortune in tree shrew brains by peddling NFTs of black holes and cryptocurrency that can only be exchanged on Proxima b in the Alpha Centauri system.

5G technology will become obsolete within 6 months, replaced by 6G, a day before the U.S. Supreme Court sets everything back to the age of innocence by deciding that the Constitution does not explicitly permit any number of Gs.

 

Don’t Tell Me I’ve Nothin’ To Do

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I’m not saying that I’m desperate for entertainment, but today I watched a GoPro video of the inside of a dishwasher while in use. Admit it, you’re curious too. Next, refrigerator lights.

The problem with wearing mittens in cold weather is that when some bleeping, not beeping, driver guns it, cutting you off and almost killing you as you cross the street, he can’t tell when you then give him the finger.

All the headlines about Omicron rising made me think of Jupiter Ascending, another science fiction tale that was bad news, though it only cost about 200 million and disappeared faster than the latest variant.

In accordance with the latest, ever-changing, safety guidelines, as I understand them, I am now requiring proof of vaccination on all my Zoom calls and asking that participants sit at least six feet away from their screens.

I tried to search online for a videotape on proper masking procedures but wound up with a video on how to use masking tape, which in case you are wondering, really hurts when you rip it off your face after going to the store.

“My Fingers Always Seem Busier Than My Mind” – Alexander Calder

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I just noticed that it’s been two years since anybody new has subscribed to my blog. Given that, according to WordPress, over 409 million people view blog pages every month, I seem to be falling short.

I wonder why that is. Perhaps, in part, it’s because I haven’t had any contact with the outside world in that time.

That’s not true of course. I have looked out the window on occasion. Actually, at least twice a day, to make sure there’s still something there. (So far so good, in case you were wondering.)

And I’ve learned some valuable new skills. I’m now a wiz at self-checkout at the grocery. No prima donna here. Or should I say primo uomo? I guess not, according to the dictionary, which doesn’t attach the same unflattering, secondary meaning to the principal male singer in an opera that it does to the female lead.

I also have improved my ability to bend the last knuckle of my pinky on my right hand, though there’s still room for improvement, not to mention attention to the left. Pinky, by the way, comes from the Dutch for little finger, but, according to a site on Dutch genealogy I found, one finger, shockingly, wouldn’t be enough to hold back the water. I wonder how many subscribers that page has.

My First Retraction (Post #349)

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Thank you to everyone who inquired as to my condition. I’m fine. I didn’t slip and fall on the ice. I’m a little upset by the fact that no one seemed to care whether or not the pets of the cast of The Play That Goes Wrong had become infected and a little surprised that no one believed that I’d gone to the theater on the wrong night, given my history in that regard.

The correct answer to the quiz in the last blog was Other. When I got to the theater I couldn’t find my CDC proof of vaccination, so, instead, I offered, and, after hours of negotiation, had rejected, a letter of exemption provided by Novak Djokovic’s doctor, whereupon I was put in a taxi and asked to leave the neighborhood.

I’m kidding.  There was no taxi.

Happy Groundhog Year Number 3

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Today, on the first work day of 2022, I cleaned the apartment. So now I don’t have to worry about doing that again until 2023, or 2024, whichever comes first.

I’m not sure if my inability to make that determination is evidence of a specific erosion of arithmetic skills, a general cognitive decline, or a rift in the space-time continuum (which seems to take the blame for almost everything else), but, in any case, it’s a clear demonstration of cerebral atrophy in the age of Covid, confirming the adage, use it or . . . , something.

What I am sure about is that I’m a valued Amazon customer. Why else would they, having seen all the bamboo products I’ve been buying (towels, sheets, serving trays, waste baskets, scaffolding) send me a complimentary, complementary, red panda (giant pandas being out of stock, again)?

Okay, I haven’t yet purchased bamboo scaffolding, though it is available in the world and might come in handy as a sort of jungle gym for Ralph (the panda).

It also occurred to me that I could teach Ralph to type (after someone first teaches me), so that someday, perhaps, he could relieve me of the arduous task of transcribing these blogs from the audio cues I leave on my recorder while talking in my sleep.

Sock It to Me

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Another victim of the ongoing pandemic. My longstanding dream to open a sock puppet theatre.

The Holidays, not the Australian indie pop/soul band, but rather the term used as an excuse for overeating, overspending, oversleeping, and underperforming at the end of the year, have never been a period of delight for me, at least not since 1875, when a Prussian immigrant created the first Christmas card originated in the United States. But I digress.

Looking for a way to make my time more productive, I started going through drawers, when, lo (or actually low, as I was looking down), and behold, I discovered one full of socks, socks that I hadn’t worn since I retired five years ago, socks that might come in handy for some out-of-work actor who had been wearing his thin by pounding the pavement the last two years in search of gainful employment.

So I gathered them up (the socks, not the actors), two by two, as if preparing for entry on Noah’s Ark, and delivered them to a local charity, as an initial public offering, without regard to the effect on the sock market, in the hope that someone might, with their help, kill an audition, and that, someday, I might find myself in an audience noticing them on that dancer’s jazz feet.

Pillow Talk

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Following the lead of the NFL and NBA, I have decided to upgrade my health and safety protocols. Fortunately, I was able to do this unilaterally because I represented both sides of the negotiation, which was not a conflict, though perhaps a potential psychiatric case study.

First, I initiated periodic self-testing. Every half hour I ask myself how I feel.

Next, I cancelled all international travel. Well, not all (though I might if I could), just my own.

And, though it wasn’t part of my original plan, I beta-tested the even stricter precaution of not leaving my home at all, the inspiration for this being brought about, not by any CDC guidelines, but by the fact that I couldn’t find my keys.

A couple hours later, having crawled through six rooms on my hands and knees, with flashlight in hand, and suffered through a humiliating investigation of my garbage, which fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, had been piling up since well before the keys disappeared, I was about to abandon all hope, as if I were entering the gates of an even worse hell, when, in a moment of sheer desperation, I peeked underneath the pillow on my bed, the last place I would have, and had, thought to look, much like when the police searched the rocker panels used to hide the drugs in The French Connection, and practically fainted from disbelief upon discovering that that was, in fact, were the elusive objects had chosen to hide from me, causing me to consider the possibility that I had put them there, while asleep, in an unconscious effort to restrict my movements in the Age of Omicron (not to be confused with that other supervillain sequel, Age of Ultron).

My Week in Review – Presets, Pump Boys & Dinettes

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Eight years after buying my car, I finally figured out how to preset the radio, so now I don’t have to keep listening to golden oldies from the 60s, that’s 1860s, when Stephen Foster was the hot songwriter, or try to search for other stations while driving, which, to be fair, has resulted in no more than twelve accidents, none of them fatal. Who says you can’t teach an old dog . . . something, I forget.

I went to see my first play since Grease at the Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre in February 2020, this time Pump Boys & Dinettes at the Porchlight Music Theatre. Thankfully, given my constant need for continuity, Billy Rude appeared in both shows, this time as Jackson, whose leaps in the air while rocking his guitar reminded me of the fact that my vertical jump, once mediocre, is now, not only potentially dangerous, but also probably nonexistent.

I last saw Pump Boys in the mid 1980’s, when its tale of the Double Cupp Diner, lyrically located on Highway 57 (marked down from Dylan’s earlier Highway 61), not only delighted me, but also gave me words to live by with its Be Good or Be Gone, a song with which Melanie Loren, as Rhetta Cupp, in Porchlight’s production, wowed the audience.

By the way, the Cupp sisters, Rhetta and Prudie, who joined together for another highlight, Tips, bear no relation to Cooper Kupp, who is leading the NFL in receptions and touchdowns, though all of their cups runneth over.

Thinking Out of the Box

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With autumn having arrived, the wind blowing at biblical levels, and fallen leaves starting to hide my errant golf shots, I turned my attention to preparing for what is to come, because, as weatherman Phil Connors so aptly put it in Groundhog Day, “I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.” And that was before the delta variant.

So, I visited a long-forgotten friend, my safe deposit box. Oh, sure, I knew, and mostly ignored the fact, that the bank deducted a few dollars every year from my checking account to pay for the luxury of having an uninsured place to store unimportant documents in a building that might be converted into a wine bar at any moment without prior notice, but with outdoor activities winding down, and indoor activities still borderline, at least until I get my fourteenth booster shot, I needed to find something constructive to do, so, at long last, cleaning out the box seemed like just the ticket.

As expected, most everything, except my first passport, which has a flattering picture of me, can and will be discarded, that is, shredded, giving me months of something to do that also qualifies, in my book, as exercise. But I’ll miss these decennial visits to the box. We had something special.