Game on.

I spent a week in Western North Carolina recently. Yes, I was there to celebrate my 45th Birthday belatedly and to relax, but it was also a business trip. I had an appointment at The Westin Charlotte at 3 pm on May 1st for a Jeopardy! final audition.

Drove over from Junaluska Thursday stopping in Morganton at Judge's Riverside Resaturant on the banks of the Catawba for lunch.





I had a half slab of Ribs. Yum Yum!



We continued on out of the Piedmont and into the Queen City right by the Bank of America nee Ericsson Stadium to the Westin located in the Uptown financial district and overlooking the Convention Center.








The Duke Energy Center lacks only it's 150,000 lb. steel truss capstone. When it was the Wachovia Tower, they discovered they couldn't afford that architectural feature!



Thursday night I had booked a table at Toscana. We even got a primo outdoor table next to the fountain. When I booked the restaurant, I had no idea how close it was to Quail Hollow. Ironically, we walked in and the first person I saw regaling a big table was Jim Nantz.



We shared paesano-style: 2 starters (Insalata Greeca and Portobello Grigliato) and 2 paste (Gnocchi al Telefono and Linguini alla Sinfonia del Mare). With the big interview the next day, I stuck with 1 litre of San Pellegrino. The fact that they didn't offer Barolo by the glass didn't hurt either. They did offer two fine bottles of Barolo: Bruna Grimaldi 2000 ($110) and Alessandria 2003 ($90). Thanks, but no thanks. Still I would eat here again in an instant the next time I'm in Charlotte.

For Left Coast followers, it was located in an interior shopping courtyard reminiscent of The Stanford Shopping Center, Paseo Nuevo (Santa Barbara) or even La Arcada, or finally and most famously the Fashion Island (Newport Beach).



I can't give details about my Friday meeting. Just suffice it to say that I will remain in the Jeopardy! contestant pool through November 2010.

Turn it on.

Hope you enjoyed my attempt at National Poetry Month. It was fun to give exposure to friends who are also talented poets, relive some favorite Renaissance moments, spill about a dirty secret (Stephen Crane's poetry), and push the bounds of defining poetry (E Regina's prayer and speech). I'll try it again next year.

Was busy May Day so didn't blog anything. Longer entries with pics about an almost perfect week away in North Carolina including a Ruskin-esque photo essay to come.

Suffice it to say my "secret" mission was accomplished. I'm on the list and will remain so for 18 months. Beyond that no information is available.

We are the champions (spoilers)

U Penn ABD English grad student Celeste DiNucci joined elite company as a rare Jeopardy Champion and rarer yet a female tournament champion having just won the 2007 Jeopardy Tournament of Champions. She ranks right up there with the College Tournament Champion Phoebe Juel from Sylva, NC a couple towns over from my family's mountain house at Lake Junaluska.



Anyway, well played Miz DiNucci!

JEOPARDY! Closing Theme Mastertone.

The test was exhilirating. I'm amazed how short 15 seconds is when you have to get an answer and then type it out in an answer box. At least we only had to do last names and no phrasing as a question. I don't type 300 wpm after all! Even on the ones I got immediately, I decided not to punch the submit button and pace myself for all 50 questions. They didn't appear to be factoring speed into the grading equation. Two I blanked on for 14 seconds and couldn't get anything down: Fishburne (who played Neo and a Spike Lee role) and the 2003 musical pre-history of Oz Witches (Wicked.) D'oh! Of the other 48 I'm confident 45 were right and the other 3 were legitimate guesses (thrown ball arc, Ho Chi Minh's river: the long one with a famous delta not the Saigon, and Armenia not Georgia as ex-Soviet republic led by a Petrosian). They don't announce passing scores, and even if you pass total numbers and demographics, geography, etc. might prevent you from going on. So we wait.

Lots of literature: The Tempest, Beowulf as progenitor of Berger's Grendel, Robert Frost reading at Kennedy's inauguration. Sports too: Teddy Ballgame(.406 avg) and Roberto Clemente (3000 hits and dead in relief effort). And a home state question about the location of Appalachicola and Osceola National Forests. Alas no Potent Potables. My fave question was about what kind of poem Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" is. Ahem, moment of honesty, I taught that very poem most semesters from Fall 1996 to Spring 2003. That's what I call a home field advantage. Oh, it's a sonnet and should be paired with Emily Dickinson's "There is no frigate like a book" as masterpieces about literary imagining.

Think music.(here)

I'm doing this tonight. Wish me luck as I chase the legends of the unbeaten Brad Rutter, the maniacal strategist Chuck Forrest, fellow Crimsonite Jerome Vered, the Sylva, NC bookseller Phoebe Juel, the Manhattan cop Frank Spangenburg et al.

I know a little.

Ken Jenning's long run on Jeopardy is finally over. He lost on Final Jeopardy to Nancy Zerg. But boy what a run. 74 wins and 2.5 million in pre-tax earnings.

I know several people, myself included, who could crush him in a straight-up general trivia contest without a time element. But put him with a Jeopardy buzzer in his hand, and you're talking something else. Yes, he missed a lot of pretty easy Final Jeopardies, but that's the point. It seldom mattered as he usually had runaways of up to $30,000. No, he wasn't the smartest guy ever on Jeopardy; I vote Frank Spangenberg (the mustachioed NYC cop) but know some will pick others. What Jennings was was simply the greatest game show contestant of all time. He had three things going for him:

1) preternatural buzzer reaction speeds,
2) the ability to play the clock and grab answers late from his head, and
3) uncanny poaching ability on questions with several potential answers by letting others ring in first and eliminate options.

I'm not sorry to see him, his smirk, and his cutesy pie varying signatures go, but I do salute his majestic achievement.

Le Roi est mort. Vive La Reine!