Jeopardy

 Want to know what kind of Grumpy Middle Aged Man I am?

My favorite TV show is Jeopardy!  

It's the only thing I set aside time to watch.

There are others on right now that I enjoy.  Abbott Elementary is still quite good (and it's much better this season, with Janine back in the school).  It's only a few episodes in, but St. Denis Medical is also good, though it only hits me right now that they're the same format (not an earth-shattering revelation, and one that I should have noticed right off, but then the blog is called Big Stupid Tommy).  I probably would not have picked Will Trent or High Potential to watch on my own, but Shyam picked those, and I enjoy them very much.

Others:  What We Do in the Shadows just finished up, and I figure I need to finish that one out.  And we enjoyed the first two seasons of The Bear very much (in fact, Night of the Seven Fishes might be the best bit of TeeVee produced in the last few years), but for some reason, we haven't rushed to watch season three, despite it having been out for months now.  

And Taskmaster!  We're catching up on Taskmaster.  Our friends Micah and Michelle introduced us to Taskmaster at the very beginning of 2024, and we spent a lot of the year running through it, first on PlutoTV and then on YouTube.  We're currently six or seven episodes deep into the 15th season of the comedy competition show, which appeals to both our humors, and our mutual love of thinking around corners....

But anyways.  Jeopardy.

It's the only thing that I make time to watch.

That I get antsy if I can't watch.

This despite our DVRing it.  And generally watching it after it's run, mostly so we can just shoot past the commercials.

Monday, though, was a minor bit of life's aggravations.

The NFL held a playoff game Monday night.  And the pregame show played in the Chattanooga market where Jeopardy! usually airs.

Now, this wasn't a regular occurrence during the NFL season, but it did happen a couple of times.  It also happened on Christmas Day, which has somehow become a big day for the NBA.  Jeopardy was also preempted on Election Day, in November.

Now usually, WTVC will air the show at a later time, which is communicated to all the schedule and DVR elves that are needed to notify.  A particular frustration, though is that WTVC has communicated that the show will start at 1:37, but instead starts earlier, which means when the recording starts, it's 6 or 8 questions into the game.  Which is frustrating in and of itself.

Even more frustrating was Election Day, because at the time Jeopardy was to have played, in the wee hours of the morning, ABC was still in panel and was actually in the process of declaring the election for Trump, so it was a Double Whammy of a Fuck Tommy, if I can say such things.

But this past Monday?  No other airings.

I keep score on Jeopardy.  I have, off and on, for a great while.  I actually used Composition Notebooks (sold by the store I used to work in after Back to School supplies went on markdown for something like 17 cents apiece.  The pages, though, were just right for 2 6x5 grids and space to write the answer for Final Jeopardy.  I had a handful of those composition notebooks that I sent to recycling when I moved out of my old apartment.  Kinda wish I'd kept one....

Nowadays, I have an app.  I went a few years without keeping score, but got curious again last spring.  I found an app to keep my Coryat score (a player's score, if all wagering is disregarded....you get the dollar amounts for every question correct, deduct the incorrect and score 0 if you give no answer).  It's a scoring system, according to J!Archive, named after former contestant and 2-game champion Karl Coryat.  It works well enough for most folks.  And I am among most folks.

But I like having a streak.  And not having a Monday show was aggravating.

We like watching together, Shyam and I do.  She's good.  I don't know if she appreciates how good she is at the show. I've encouraged her to take the anytime test, but to this point, I don't think she has.

Anyway.

This morning's minor errand was going through the Monday gameboard on J!Archive.  

My Coryat for Monday was 36,600.  Which is only a few dollars above my season average of 36,547.

I've mentioned a few times over the history of the blogamathing that I've tried out for the show before.  I'm currently still in the process.  I took the Anytime Test last spring.  In October, I did the first Zoom audition, which consists of another 50 question test.  That bit was a panic, as I didn't find my invite to that audition until somebody on Reddit had mentioned that their invite ended up in a Spam folder in the Email.  I had been in the habit of wandering through my Spam folders for a while, but for whatever reason, I hadn't done that in a month or more.  I went and looked, and there the invite was.  I emailed, and they rescheduled me for the next round.

So, I did that...I feel like I answered 41-43 questions of the 50 question test correctly, but I haven't heard anything more about further auditions (I check that spam folder often....)

I've done a handful of auditions before.  All the way since 1991, trying out for the Teen Tournament.  Even got to see Alex Trebek answer questions at an audition in Orlando.

Anyway.  I've rambled.  Basically I've done a few hundred words about how I went to J!Archive and scored myself on the Monday episode we didn't get to watch.

This is what I do, when there's ice on the ground, which is perhaps a whole other post......