First off, the big concerto is at 7:30 PM this coming Saturday night (11/20) at SCC's Performing Arts Center. $5 to get in, I think they said. I'll post more updates on future concerts when I have exact times.

Now, as to the big Jeopardy trip...

For starters, AudioBlog has been down, apparently. I was going to try and post an audio file a couple of times during my trip to kind of give my impressions of what was going on. No could do, though. (Is that the proper past tense for "No can do"?)

Anyhow, rather than force you to skim past a bunch of boring stuff to see what happened, I didn't pass the exam. On the other hand, if you fully intended to read the whole thing and wait with baited breath for the outcome, sorry for being a spoiler.

The trip over seemed to zip by fairly quickly, which is odd... when Zach and I drove to SixFlags last March, it seemed like once we hit L.A. we drove for another 12 hours or so on an infinite loop of freeways. Hell, maybe we did... I went equipped with MapQuest directions, and while they're technically accurate, they have a nasty habit of sending you on the geographically shortest or "fastest" route, while occasionally it would be a LOT easier if you went a little out of your way to stay on main freeways. Um... rant over. Anyway, I was cruising along, and once in California I decided to forego my usual stop in Blythe since I was a little behind on time. I'd seen that "Desert Center" was about 30 miles past Blythe, so I figured I'd stop there instead, and from there it'd be a cinch to make it to Santa Monica, where my hotel was located. Unfortunately... as I neared Desert Center, I was treated to the sad realization that Desert Center consists of one abandoned gas station and a bunch of dead palm trees. It was a good 45 miles to Indio, and my truck was showing a range of 25 miles before it just went to "Low Fuel" and then "Hey Dickweed, You're Gonna Wind Up Standing In The Middle Of The California Desert Trying To Hitchhike Your Way To A Gas Station If You Don't Gas Me Up Now!!!"... or maybe that's what I was envisioning. Luckily, about 12 miles past the remnants of Desert Center, on the horizon shone a beacon... a beacon with "Chevron" printed on it. Chiriaco Summit to the rescue! -- that is, 'til I pulled in and found they charge $2.62 a gallon for plain unleaded ($2.82 for Super). *cough* Apparently, many a weary traveler has crawled into Chiriaco Summit after mistakenly thinking Desert Center was more than just simply the center of the desert. I put in $12 (just over 4 gallons) and rolled on down into Indio to fill up.

Aside from that, 'twas an uneventful journey. Checked in at the beautiful Santa Monica Days Inn around 9:00 their time, ordered some B-list delivery Italian food, and got on up around 7:00 this morning. I snapped a picture of myself all spiffed up for my tryout (look for that on my picture page later) and cruised over to the Sony studios, a pleasant 2 hours early. I was the only one there for a good 45 minutes, and most of the people got there around 9:40ish (tryout was at 10:00). *shrug* I let the computer kick my ass at FiveStones on my phone for a while to pass the time. Anyhow, a coordinator came out and rounded us up, and over to the Jeopardy set we went. We were seated in the audience in every other seat and handed an answer sheet and a pen (and a nice flimsy piece of cardboard to write on), and after a brief video on what we could expect to see on the test, it began.

I thought I did fairly well. Of the 50 questions, I know I had 37 right, with 4 good guesses and 9 lousy guesses and/or blanks. There was one "Words in Quotes" question (ends in "ash": sometimes as brief as a hyphen, sometimes it's 100 yards long... what is a dash?), one "starts with _" question (starts with "M": ... uh, it was so easy as to not be memorable), and one "before and after" question (pure white arctic predator who is gloomy about stock trends: what is a polar bear market? A little confusing, but those always make sense to me anyway). There were a couple current events questions (this Israeli prime minister was assassinated at [some peace summit] in 1995: who is Yitzhak Rabin?), and then about 40 literature and history questions. Oh, great. So, as it turns out, the test is a good deal harder than the show actually is, since on the show there's always the one really hard category that no one wants to touch, and then three decent-strength categories and two absolute softballs (Rhyme Time, anyone?). The ratio was weighted a bit more towards the tough, and I didn't know a few I should have (This author's only novel was "The Picture of Dorian Grey," and all I could think of was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen... dumbass), but I knew a fair amount of them (Freud divides the personality into three categories: the ego, the superego, and this subconscious level: what is the id?).

Aaaaaaanyhow, I don't actually know how well I did, since they don't release the scores. The guy came back in, commented that we'd had a full load of 70 trying out, and then said, "Here are the people who passed:" and read off five names. That was it.

So, yeah, I lost. But so did a bunch of other really smart-looking types, too, and they were a LOT more vocal about it than I. "What the hell? THAT was a bunch of shit," commented one balding old guy. *shrug* I did the math... they have three tests per day (10:00, 1:30, and 5:00), and if they invite 70 to each, let's assume they don't always have a "full house", so 200 per day. If they test for a week, that's 1,000 testees (or 500 sacks, assuming no one's one-ballin'... oh, just forget I said that). I heard the coordinator mention that 5 is slightly above average, that usually they get 3 or 4 per group, so that's about 12 a day, so 60 from one week of testing. Makes sense. That's practically a month's worth of contestants from one week's worth of tests, so the ratio is about right. I just didn't make the top cut.

I won't lie and say I'm not disappointed, nor will I say I wouldn't do it differently were I to try again. (I didn't cram for the test, so to speak, fearing I might forget more than I actually learned... though next time I might consider reading a few boxes' worth of Trivial Pursuit cards in the hotel the neight before.) But at least now I know that, in fact, I HAVE tried out for Jeopardy, and I can officially try again after one year has passed. Don't rule it out. There was a guy there who mentioned that this was his fifth attempt at the test, and he said, "You BET I'll be back again next November."