Sunday, August 8, 2010

T minus 2 days

It's the final countdown to Kathy's Jeopardy! experience.  We leave tomorrow morning for L.A. and the show tapes on Tuesday.  Kathy has been busy with her final preparations, trying to cram as much knowledge as possible in these remaining days.  This would certainly be easier if we weren't moving to a new house two days after the show, not to mention keeping two babies alive.

Last night at dinner we practiced betting strategy for Final Jeopardy.  By the way, this is at her request-- I'm not a crazy stage mom!.  But it is sad to me when I see someone lose the game because they didn't know how to bet.  Usually this applies to the second place player who decides to bet everything instead of betting a calculated, conservative amount, playing for the possibility that the first place player makes a sensible bet and gets the question wrong.  (It also makes me sad when people on The Price Is Right bid badly in Contestant's Row-- the last player should always bid $1 more than a previous bet, or $1 exactly.  Can you tell I watched a lot of game shows as a kid?)

Today she's been reviewing her compiled spreadsheets of information on likely question topics (Shakespeare, world leaders, state nicknames, poetry, composers, etc.).  I took a peek at the Shakespeare list which includes for each play the major characters and a brief plot synopsis in her own words.  Among my favorites:

The Comedy of Errors:  Twins cause misunderstandings and beatings ensue.
Titus Andronicus:  Everyone dies. Lots of amputations and raping.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre:  Antiochus offers his daughter to whomever can solve a riddle.  The answer is "incest".

Shakespeare was pretty screwed up in the head.

Speaking of study topics, can anyone share a good reference on potent potables AKA mixology?  There are references online but they're way too comprehensive and include many drinks that will surely never appear on Jeopardy!.  Like "Cum in a Hot Tub," which I found just now on a top search result.  (Actually, after meeting Trebek last month I'm less sure that this would never appear.)  But a list of like 20 popular drinks and how to make them would be pretty handy.  Otherwise we're going to have to watch Cocktail and that would be unfortunate.

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