Jeopardy Profiling

Jake and I spent Valentine's Day doing one of our favorite things -- making fun of people on TV. For the first time in a long time, I had finally made it downstairs and I was able to be in the upright position for longer than 5 minutes. It was just like old times, and one of the happiest Valentine's Day I can remember.

For some reason, we decided to watch Jeopardy! (I think its official spelling involves the use of the exclamation point), and lucky for us it was the teen version. I mean lucky for us, because we at least knew some of the answers and were able to shout them at the screen. Teen Jepoardy! has fun categories such as, "Ashton, Keanu or Einstein." I am SO not kidding. Needless to say, I cleaned up in that category. It comes in handy to know a little bit about Ashton Kutcher.

(Which brings me to a small footnote of information. While my pregnancy has been very hard on the body and spirit, my mind has done nothing but flourish. Robby so eloquently pointed this out the other night when we were playing the intellectual game of "Shout It Out: Television." He said, "Hey, she hasn't had any alcohol for three months!" This is very true, and I think I have replaced some brain cells. Either that or I am freakishly good at television trivia. Okay, I am sure it is a little bit of both, my television consumption has gone up greatly.)

But, really, the most fun part about making fun of TV is making fun of the contestants. Hate the players, not the game. Now, I realize it is not very nice to make fun of smart people, especially teenagers, but they are on TV, and hey, it was Valentine's Day.

The first contestants name was Idewala or something like that. She had braces and talked as though she was asking a question. It didn't really bother me that much until she spoke more than one sentence. At the point when Alex comes over to get to know the contestants, the fast fact that he had about Idelweis was that she learned how to knit at age four. Upon hearing this, one thinks that she has knitted herself an empire and that she in fact started a knitting business at the age of 12, then was featured in "Knitters Today" for being the most successful knitter that ever was before the age of 85. Boy, were we wrong. She told Alex that actually, she only like knits wash cloths, like about 40 of them. In utter disbelief Alex asks her if she EVER tried to knit a sweater. Then she painstakingly went through a story about how it was like in her backpack and then like her brother took it out and like tore it up. At this point Jake turns to me and said that she only has two friends.

The next contestant was Allison in cursive with two "Ls." She wore pearls and had very nice shiny, long hair. At the mid point of the game she was in the hole, so I kind of felt sorry for her, and wondered how she got on Teen Jeopardy!. She seemed pretty normal, until she told Alex that her favorite pastime was to go on vacations with her grandparents. Not that it is a bad thing, but she had been EVERYWHERE with her grandparents, and when asked whether it was more fun to travel with her parents or grandparents she said her grandparents. And, it wasn't in a way that made you think that her parents were dead, or abusive or anything, she definitely liked to spend all of her free time with her grandparents.

The third contestant was some guy, whose name I don't even remember. We also missed Alex's chat with him, so we had no good ammo to go off of. He didn't have any speaking ticks or remarkable clothing, so we kind of left him alone.

When it came to final Jeopardy! the category was something about "Women" and "being important" or something. All I know is that I knew the freaking answer, and that is about a one in a million chance. The answer was, "This former university provost topped Forbes list of the most powerful women in 2004 and 2005." The question was Condoleeza Rice. I thought that all of the brilliant contestants would get it. However, Allison with 2 "Ls" and pearls, guessed Oprah. Now, by all means that was probably an educated guess and a good answer, but for some reason I thought that was the funniest thing I had ever heard. I had become a Teen Jeopardy! snob. Actually, I think I am just an Oprah snob, and I know that Oprah has done a lot of things but be a university provost is not one of them. But, then it made sense to me that Allison with 2 "Ls" would not know this, because I am sure that she does not have a TV and I am SURE she does not watch Oprah (that is unless her grandparents do). She kind of reminded me of a girl I went to high school with, let's call her Lulu Green to protect the innocent. She was considered intelligent on paper, however she didn't know things like when you are eating a sucker, you only eat the candy part and stop when it is gone, and do not proceed to eat the white, paper stick it is attached to, or that cartoons were indeed drawings and not little people dressed up.

Okay, now I am way off the subject.

And, in conclusion, I don't have much to say except A) I really need a job and B) I really need to get out of this freaking house.