Ramblin' with Roger

JEOPARDY! Part 2

Great. I pass the mini-test for JEOPARDY!, but I can’t go on the bus to Boston because I had made previous plans. Swell.

I told the person who informed me that I had gotten an acceptable score of my problem, and she suggested that I call WTEN, the local affiliate that carries the show, the next day.

So, I called the station, and spoke with a sympathetic woman about my situation. She indicated that there would be tryouts in Boston on May 15, the day after the bus trip, but that didn’t address the issue, as I would still be away in the Midwest. She then recommended that I talk with another person, a guy, who was then in a meeting.

Later in the day, I called this second WTEN employee and retold my tale of woe. He told me that I should talk with a woman at SONY in California, and gave me her number.

Susanne Thurber is the “talent coordinator” for JEOPARDY!, in Los Angeles. I called her and told her my plight. She informed me about tests in Washington, DC the following week (May 17-21), and THAT was helpful. (Coincidentally, the son of a friend of mine was also trying out in DC that week, but I never heard the results.)

I had planned to take two weeks off from work for vacation. The first week would be traveling in the Midwest. The second week, I would stay home and take care of reading, paperwork, stuff around the house. The heck with that: the second week I’m going to our nation’s capital! Subsequently, I received a letter informing me of my test that turned out to be May 20 at 9 a.m.

I took the train out to Detroit and see some sites (more about that another time). The only JEOPARDY!-related story is this: my friend Sarah and her boyfriend and I are watching the show one night. The Final comes on, and immediately, the boyfriend comes up with an answer. Then he derides the show as too easy. He also mocks the fact that I would be trying out the following week. I didn’t know the answer to the Final, but I knew enough to know that HIS response was WRONG, and I told him, “No, I don’t think so.” Sure enough, his answer WAS wrong, and he muttered something unintelligible. I took some pleasure in that.

After Cleveland (also, more later), I went back to Albany, then went down on another train, this time to DC. My old colleague Jennifer, with whom I used to work, had been nagging me to visit for some time, so it became the perfect opportunity to go see her, and take the REAL JEOPARDY! test. The night before the test, I ate fish for dinner; “brain food,” said the mother of a friend of mine.

The next day, I went to some hotel conference room, where 45 or 50 people were seated the test. I decided to wear a suit, something I almost never do voluntarily, because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

First, we saw a film clip of Alex Trebek. I don’t remember it much, except that I thought it was supposed to be inspirational. Then, on a blue screen, much like the individualized version of the JEOPARDY! board (and in the same font), the answers would appear for eight seconds, then disappear. 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.

At first, the test seemed easy, almost too easy. Then, the questions were getting tougher. Or was I just getting jittery? Even the things I knew, I didn’t know. At one point in the test I said to myself, “I don’t know ANYTHING!” One clue about a movie (question 23 or so), and I said, “Mel Gibson. Blue face. Scotland. But what’s the NAME of the film?” I had even SEEN this film at Proctor’s Theater in Schenectady, on a wide screen. I drew an asterisk and went on; at about question 35, suddenly it came to me: “Braveheart!”

One question I got wrong didn’t bother me that much. It was about a Playboy Playmate and an older man. I was actually PLEASED that I couldn’t remember Anna Nicole Smith.

The last question was in the Before and After category. After the test was over, someone asked me, on behalf of a few test takers, “What was the last one – Woodrow Wilson?” No, it was Woodrow Wilson Phillips. Had they not watched the show? Or at least Wheel of Fortune, where this category is also quite popular?

There were eight of us who passed the test. One of the talent people complimented me on my apparel, and chastised some of those who had come in jeans. It seems as though they treated this activity like one would treat a job interview and they were the job interviewers.

Then we played a few mock games, complete with buzzer. Someone said that I wasn’t buzzing in correctly. You don’t click once, you click repeatedly until someone’s name is called. I missed some questions, got some right. All of this is being videotaped. And at the end, we were told that there were only a few hundred slots open each year, so we may be called in a few months, or up to a year later, or we MIGHT NOT BE CALLED AT ALL.

Continued on Saturday, June 11

No. 99: George Mikan

Miami Heat center Shaquille O’Neal has offered to pay for the funeral services for George Mikan, who died Wednesday. I was very pleased by this.

George who?

George Mikan was, by all accounts, the first truly dominant basketball player. Because of him, they widened the paint (the area under the basket), so he couldn’t just stop everything. The goaltending rule (blocking a shot after it begins its downward arc) was created because of the 6’10” Mikan, as was the institution of the shot clock.

Mikan was named the best player in the first half-century, and one of the 50 greatest of all time, according to people who select these things.

Mikan was the first great Laker center, back when the team was in Minneapolis. (The Lakers were named for Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. The “Los Angeles” Lakers makes as much sense as the Utah Jazz, who USED to play in New Orleans.) Shaq was the last great Laker center, after the late Wilt Chamberlain, who used to clog the lane like Mikan, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose skyhook was similar to Mikan’s hook shot.

I liked that Shaq is offering to care for the Mikan family because it shows his sense of history and because it shows that he recognizes the disparity of the kind of money players were making then as opposed to the current pay scale. The Mikan family was struggling financially with George’s illness and a pension plan for old-timers a pittance compared to what later players would receive.

As Shaq said, “Without No. 99 (Mikan’s number), there is no me.”

Save our bus route!

May 30, 2005

Dear Capital District Transportation Authority:

I was extremely interested to read the story in last Tuesdayâ€™s Times Union, “Complaints stall CDTA plan.” When I heard of the plans for the changes, I was quite disappointed, but assumed that the decisions were final. I was pleased, therefore, to discover that you have at least delayed the proposed route changes.

I never knew of the petition signed by people protesting the proposed changes on the route, but certainly would have signed it had I known.

I am not a current rider of that bus. However, our daughter is going to day care starting in September. Part of the decision for selecting that specific facility (and subsequently putting down a deposit to secure a slot) was its easy access by the bus from our house. The new schedule would have meant an extra couple block walk, which would have been OK in the good weather, but problematic in the winter and in inclement weather. The new times were also less desirable.

Thank you for reconsidering this matter.

Sincerely, Roger Green – posted to www.rogerowengreen.blogspot.com on 6/3/05

I write this, not so much to mention this fairly parochial matter from my point of view, but to remind me, and perhaps remind you, that sometimes you can fight City Hall (or at least the bus company.)

There’s a lozenge for that

W. Mark Felt? What a disappointment.

If you were of a certain age (and a certain political persuasion), you might have spent hours trying to figure out just who was Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s secret source during the investigation of the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration. The existence of DT came out in Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s best-selling book “All The President’s Men.” In the hit movie based on the book, Hal Holbrook played the mysterious character.

Felt, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, was on the shortlist of most Watergate observers. According to a Vanity Fair article, Felt felt that disclosures about his past somehow dishonorable, but at the age of 91 found it desirable to clear the air, if only for his family’s sake. Conversely, his family believes he should receive praise for his role in exposing the Watergate scandal before he dies.

There were always a number of people suspected of being the background informant for the reporter: Assistant Attorney General Henry Peterson, deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding, White House press officer Diane Sawyer (yes, the one now on ABC News), Nixon press secretary Ron Zeigler, White House aide Steven Bull, speechwriters Ray Price and Pat Buchanan, White House counsel John Dean, FBI director L. Patrick Gray, Nixon advisor Alexander Haig, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and even former U.N. ambassador (and later president) George H. W. Bush.

How about…

I never believed it was Zeigler (too loyal), Buchanan (too verbose) or Dean (too obvious). Haig, Kissinger, and Bush weren’t on my consideration list, either. Gray probably had the most to gain, being squeezed out of power by Nixon’s loyalists. My pick, though, was none of these. It was current Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The increased recent interest in Deep Throat, Woodward’s renewed promise to reveal the source only after DT’s death, and Rehnquist’s failing health obviously led me in the wrong direction. Glad I didn’t have money on it.

But pardon my political naivete: I had no idea that there would be a debate 30 years after the fact over the propriety of the leaks – “Was it criminal?” I read recently. Clearly, Felt was a reluctant hero, but a hero nonetheless. What were his options? Tell Attorney General John Mitchell? A criminal. How about White House Chief of Staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman? Also, a criminal. So the chief law enforcement person for the country, and the head political operative, not to mention their many minions, could not be trusted. And President Nixon himself? My favorite Watergate term: “unindicted co-conspirator.” I believe Mark Felt did the right thing, and I hope he lives out his remaining years in peace.

Boomers weep

I get this e-mail from Lenny Gaines from Empire State Development, forwarding this Census report. He says: “For all you baby-boomers out there…. Seems like we’re no longer the largest school-age cohort.

“This report contains only national data.”

Yeah, yeah, whatever…

This is the kind of e-mail I get all of the time. I eat this stuff UP. It’s a disease, I know. Alas, no known cure.

I promise to NOT subject you to this stuff TOO often.

School Enrollment Surpasses 1970 Baby-Boom Crest,
Census Bureau Reports

The number of students enrolled in elementary and high school in 2003 – 49.5 million – surpassed the previous all-time high of 48.7 million set in 1970 when baby-boomers were of school-age, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today.

After peaking in 1970, total elementary and high school enrollment fell during the 1970s and early 1980s. The enrollment increase of children of baby-boomers is expected to decline slightly between 2005 and 2010. This is due to a small decline in annual births from 1990 to 1997.

In 2003, 75 million people – more than one-fourth of the U.S. population age 3 and older – were in school throughout the country, according to School Enrollment – Social and Economic Characteristics of Students: October 2003. Nine million children, age 3 and older, were enrolled in nursery school and kindergarten, 33 million in elementary school and 17 million in high school. There were nearly 17 million college students.

In addition to an increase in births during the late 1980s, immigration also contributed to the growth of the student population in elementary and high schools. In 2003, more than 1-in-5 students had at least one foreign-born parent.

Other highlights:

— Nursery school enrollment has increased dramatically, from about one-half million in 1964 to about 5 million in 2003, an increase from about 6 percent to about 60 percent of children ages 3 and 4.

— The vast majority of 5-year-olds (92 percent) were enrolled in school in 2003, likely reflecting the availability of public kindergarten in most states. During the past three decades, the share of children this age attending all-day kindergarten increased, from 1-in-5 in 1973 to more than 3-in-5 in 2003.

— Elementary and high school students today are more diverse than the baby-boom generation of students.
In 1970, the student population was 79 percent non-Hispanic white, 14 percent black, 1 percent Asian and Pacific islander and other races and 6 percent Hispanic. In 2003, 60 percent were non-Hispanic white, 16 percent black, 4 percent Asian and 18 percent Hispanic. (Data by race for 2003 refer to the single-race population, and Hispanics may be of any race.)

— The high school dropout rate of 3.8 percent in 2003 was not significantly different from the 3.3 percent rate in 2002, but was lower than the 4.7 percent rate in 2001.

— In fall 2003, 46 percent of high school graduates ages 18 to 24 years old were enrolled in college. College enrollment, totaling 16.6 million students, was up from 14.4 million a decade earlier.

— In 2003, 1-in-3 of the nation’s 13 million undergraduate college students was attending a two-year educational institution.

The data are from the October 2003 Current Population Survey. As in all surveys, the data are subject to sampling variability and other sources of error.

Editor’s Note: The report can be accessed here