And I actually have no excuse for not updating. Except that I'm kind of a jerk.
I just got home from dinner with John after seeing Oceans in the East Village. And while I'm exhausted (it's been a long, long, allergy-ridden week, and one in which Charlie the cat broke his leg again), I figured I ought to check in, at least.
While I was an utter failure (or at least a not-insignificant failure) as an oceanographer, seeing stuff like the Oceans footage reminds me why I tried to do it in the first place (well, part of why, at least). Man, I was a third-rate scientist but the ocean is an almost-religious experience for me, and seeing that kind of film, it's like my heart is getting torn from my chest. The almost mechanical-looking mackerel bait balls, the celebratory sea nettles , oh man oh man oh man. I seriously can't take it. I get teary-eyed, just about. (I actually find myself thinking things like "wow, I would love to be a jellyfish." This is an insane-person thought.)
Also, I'm a big old wimp and had to actually leave the room during the (brief) section addressing water pollution but really, are we surprised?
Friday, April 23, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Eww, I have gross legs
You may not know this. If we haven't met, you have no way of knowing this. And if we have met, you're unlikely to have noticed. But I have superdisgusting legs. Fortunately, these superdisgusting legs are also our visual aid for tonight. Yay.
Since my mid-teens, I've had icky varicose veins on my calves. They are not subtle, not by any means -- they're so pronounced that a young gentleman at the gym during my college years may in fact have once asked me if I would tell him more about the horrible accident that had so dramatically mangled me. He may specifically have inquired if it involved an animal bite. (I don't dwell on past wrongs, not me.)
Regardless, I have gross, veiny legs. I will never be Tina Turner. However, the Handbook offers tips for a modern girl on the go. Sort of. See, for the First Aid badge (that's me, always bringing it back!), I need to explain how to treat severely ruptured varicose veins.
Wait.
Ruptured? With severe hemorrhage?
(That pause was just me going to the doctor in a panic.)
(Actually, it wasn't. After my grandmother's examining my leg and asking "What is that," I did once go to the doctor. He told me to wear support hose, which I coudln't bear to purchase, and therefore I totally ignored his advice. Oops.)
Now, my icky legs just look icky -- they don't hurt. (Also, it's surprisingly hard to photograph your own leg. So you know.) But apparently, varicose veins can become a big problem when they rupture. Leading up to it, though, they tend to bulge and turn reddish or purplish, which seems like the sort of thing that would already be a problem. So, you know.
By all reports (and I'm not willing to crack open my own legs to test it), the main strategy for a bleeding varicose vein is the standard elevation-and-pressure -- keeping the bleeding extremity above the heart and applying firm pressure above the wound (hence, I suppose, my deeply-refused compression hose).
Mission? Accomplished!
Since my mid-teens, I've had icky varicose veins on my calves. They are not subtle, not by any means -- they're so pronounced that a young gentleman at the gym during my college years may in fact have once asked me if I would tell him more about the horrible accident that had so dramatically mangled me. He may specifically have inquired if it involved an animal bite. (I don't dwell on past wrongs, not me.)
Regardless, I have gross, veiny legs. I will never be Tina Turner. However, the Handbook offers tips for a modern girl on the go. Sort of. See, for the First Aid badge (that's me, always bringing it back!), I need to explain how to treat severely ruptured varicose veins.
Wait.
Ruptured? With severe hemorrhage?
(That pause was just me going to the doctor in a panic.)
(Actually, it wasn't. After my grandmother's examining my leg and asking "What is that," I did once go to the doctor. He told me to wear support hose, which I coudln't bear to purchase, and therefore I totally ignored his advice. Oops.)
Now, my icky legs just look icky -- they don't hurt. (Also, it's surprisingly hard to photograph your own leg. So you know.) But apparently, varicose veins can become a big problem when they rupture. Leading up to it, though, they tend to bulge and turn reddish or purplish, which seems like the sort of thing that would already be a problem. So, you know.
By all reports (and I'm not willing to crack open my own legs to test it), the main strategy for a bleeding varicose vein is the standard elevation-and-pressure -- keeping the bleeding extremity above the heart and applying firm pressure above the wound (hence, I suppose, my deeply-refused compression hose).
Mission? Accomplished!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Got an idea?
Any thoughts on how one might demonstrate ladder-based rescue techniques in an apartment that is tiny by US standards, moderate by NYC standards, and quite reasonable by most-of-the-world standards? (I'm in a 4-room, 4th floor walk-up, and no, I am not going to carry anyone or anything up and down the fire escape. That's just insane, dudes.)
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Things that make me mad
When I lost on Jeopardy, I was angry, but I wasn't mad. (Okay, fine. I wasn't angry, either. But I'm trying to make a charming connection to my return to the First Aid badge, so bear with me here.)
Anyway. I wasn't mad because I have never been bitten by a mad dog. Out of concern for the safety of one and all, though, the Handbook's First Aid badge requires understanding how to treat for just such a thing. And so, off we go!
Now, this component of the badge comes as something of a surprise to me. See, I knew that Louis Pasteur had developed a rabies vaccine in the 1880s, and so I saw treating a mad dog bite as kind of an irrelevant thing. Then again, I just wasn't thinking hard enough -- as anyone who's ever read To Kill a Mockingbird knows, rabid dogs were plenty scary in the 1930s.
The Handbook deals with mad dogs in one way and one way only: killing them. This makes any actual mad dog-related demonstration difficult, since I am not a horrible human being, and
since most US rabies cases nowadays are found in wild animals. I considered, briefly, hoping Charlie the cat would bite at me (look at those choppers! ps, he posed for this while purring, because I was also holding him up to gaze at pigeons outside the window), but even that seemed ineffective. But alas, he wasn't feeling too bitey. So instead, I was unable to engage in the Handbook's primary anti-rabid-dog methods, which consist of waggling a handkerchief at a charging dog, matador-style, in order to distract him, then kicking him in the chin. (Alternate methods include wrapping a coat around your arm, presenting that arm to be bit, then either choking the dog with your remaining arm or clubbing him over the head. Please don't be angry with me for this. I am not urging you to do this to your pet, or to your neighbor's pet, or to any actual dogs. Ever. Really.)
Once you've subdued the mad dog, of course, there's still the first aid component: holy crap, you've been bitten by a mad dog! You have rabies! YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!
Never fear. Well, fear in 1911. But don't fear now. In the pre-rabies treatment days, you had a few options. Some included the 18th-century method of swigging a drink of liverwort, pepper, and cold milk followed by an icy bath, or the even older method of drying the dog's heart and eating it. Don't do this. Please don't. It will be a terrible idea.
(If you have gotten here via things like "eat a dog's heart," leave, you sick, sick individual.)
In real life, if you get bitten, all you really need to do is get to some soap and water, then get yourself to the doctor immmmmmmmediately. (If you can, by the way, let animal control know who bit you so they can quarantine the critter for a couple weeks.) Thorough washing will minimize viral transmission, so give yourself a solid 5 minutes with plenty of soap. (Since rabies is viral rather than bacterial, antibacterial soap will do nothing for you -- this is a huge pet peeve of mine.) Regardless, rush to the doctor for some post-exposure prophylaxis, a series of shots over the course of 6 weeks or so. It's supereffective, and since its introduction rabies deaths in the US have dropped to only a couple per year. Go team!
Anyway. I wasn't mad because I have never been bitten by a mad dog. Out of concern for the safety of one and all, though, the Handbook's First Aid badge requires understanding how to treat for just such a thing. And so, off we go!
Now, this component of the badge comes as something of a surprise to me. See, I knew that Louis Pasteur had developed a rabies vaccine in the 1880s, and so I saw treating a mad dog bite as kind of an irrelevant thing. Then again, I just wasn't thinking hard enough -- as anyone who's ever read To Kill a Mockingbird knows, rabid dogs were plenty scary in the 1930s.
The Handbook deals with mad dogs in one way and one way only: killing them. This makes any actual mad dog-related demonstration difficult, since I am not a horrible human being, and
since most US rabies cases nowadays are found in wild animals. I considered, briefly, hoping Charlie the cat would bite at me (look at those choppers! ps, he posed for this while purring, because I was also holding him up to gaze at pigeons outside the window), but even that seemed ineffective. But alas, he wasn't feeling too bitey. So instead, I was unable to engage in the Handbook's primary anti-rabid-dog methods, which consist of waggling a handkerchief at a charging dog, matador-style, in order to distract him, then kicking him in the chin. (Alternate methods include wrapping a coat around your arm, presenting that arm to be bit, then either choking the dog with your remaining arm or clubbing him over the head. Please don't be angry with me for this. I am not urging you to do this to your pet, or to your neighbor's pet, or to any actual dogs. Ever. Really.)Once you've subdued the mad dog, of course, there's still the first aid component: holy crap, you've been bitten by a mad dog! You have rabies! YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!
Never fear. Well, fear in 1911. But don't fear now. In the pre-rabies treatment days, you had a few options. Some included the 18th-century method of swigging a drink of liverwort, pepper, and cold milk followed by an icy bath, or the even older method of drying the dog's heart and eating it. Don't do this. Please don't. It will be a terrible idea.
(If you have gotten here via things like "eat a dog's heart," leave, you sick, sick individual.)
In real life, if you get bitten, all you really need to do is get to some soap and water, then get yourself to the doctor immmmmmmmediately. (If you can, by the way, let animal control know who bit you so they can quarantine the critter for a couple weeks.) Thorough washing will minimize viral transmission, so give yourself a solid 5 minutes with plenty of soap. (Since rabies is viral rather than bacterial, antibacterial soap will do nothing for you -- this is a huge pet peeve of mine.) Regardless, rush to the doctor for some post-exposure prophylaxis, a series of shots over the course of 6 weeks or so. It's supereffective, and since its introduction rabies deaths in the US have dropped to only a couple per year. Go team!
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Jeopardy, part 2
For more info, see yesterday's post.
When we left, um, me, I'd just gotten a phone call to film a Jeopardy episode. Awesome. John, my best friend Wendy (she of the swimming posts), and I booked tickets out to LA, then I had to get to studying. See, a lot of people think that, if ou're going to be on Jeopardy,
you get some kind of list of potential topics. Not so! I tried to think of what I know the least about -- geography, presidential cabinets, sitcoms, and the academy awards, more or less. I made absurdly elaborate flash cards (check out Truman!), which I lugged about with me for weeks on end but hardly actually looked at. (Life advice if you want to study geography, do not waste your time making a flash card for every country in the world, because that is an insane waste of time and you will spend days on end on it and still stall out around San Marino or so. Not that I'd know from personal experience or anything.)
I also started actually watching Jeopardy. Now, this is kind of embarrassing, but I have never been a huge Jeopardy watcher. I know a lot of big fans, but it's not a part of my day-to-day schedule. Clearly, this wasn't going to help me. On the advice of Arthur Phillips (friend of my dad's, Jeopardy champ, and author of "The Egyptologist," one of my favorite books), I watched absolutely religiously. John kept score (enormously strictly -- deducting points when I didn't answer in the form of a question, all that), and things improved dramatically and quickly. When I first started playing at home (in early November), I was scoring about $18,000 per night (ignoring betting). By January, I was reliably hitting $25,000 or so, not actually because I got smarter but because I learned to quit guessing. I stopped prefacing answers with "I'm gonna say . . . ," and, most of all, I kept my big mouth shut when I had no idea. (Apparently, I made the same stupid faces I wound up making on the show, but that's much more my day-to-day life than anything else!)
By the time we got to LA, I was more dreading my taping than anything else. We stayed in the Jeopardy-recommended hotel, and I entertained myself in the rainy LA weather (it rains in LA? who knew?) by trying to guess which other hotel guests were Jeopardy contestants. I was wrong most of the time, but figured it out the morning of the taping. I took the bus over to the Sony studios with a dozen or so other future Jeopardy players, and I remember talking a lot with Nancy from Las Vegas (who was on the day before me) and Sarah from Chicago (who'll be on on Friday). I brought clothes for three days, since they tape five shows per day, but I was secretly betting on being out in one. No one who's ever met me would say I'm over the top in the self-esteem department. (Alternately, I'm realistic.)
Now. When we finally reached the studio and got set up, things got more fun. There was paperwork, sure, but it was augmented by donuts (I had several), smoothies (I had one), and fruit (which I ignored, more or less, in favor of donuts and smoothies). Maggie reappeared, which delighted me, and she and the other casting staff went over our stories. (I'd submitted six or so potential anecdotes, which they'd narrowed down to three -- this site, my time in college working on the steamboat at Mystic Seaport, and a Jeopardy-related story about the first time I met my future father-in-law. We had to rehearse delivering whatever of our stories the casting crew had liked, and then they chose one or two to pass along to Alex.
(Makeup happened around this time, too. Somehow, I managed to be the last through the makeup area, and I have absolutely no idea what they did to me. It was like a magical, movie-style transformation montage. The makeup artist told me that it was just emphasizing good areas and minimizing bad areas and that even a trained monkey could do it, but this is totally unacceptable self-deprecation. So there.)
Post-makeup, we had a few minutes to try out the buzzers and generally get a feel for the set. First things first. See, I have solid spatial perception, but the stage was totally not oriented the way it felt like it should be. I sort of imagined the audience being more behind Alex than they were, and the contestants standing at an oblique angle to the audience. Not so! This, oddly, threw me more than anything else the entire time. Though I also had some big-time problems with the buzzer. I didn't play video games as a child and it showed, though Dave from Mississippi was a magical, magical buzzer god. I think that, in the entire buzzer-practice round, I managed to ring in once, then immediately forget the correct answer. I have a feeling that my future competitors saw me as an easy pushover, and I spent the rest of the morning praying not to go up against Dave.
Finally, it was time for the audience to come in. Maggie re-emerged and went over basic rules. We were allowed to sit near our families, but not among them, and we weren't allowed to make eye contact or communicate in any way. I tried to follow this one, but let me tell you, it's hard. It's like being told not to think of an elephant. Or not to think of Alex Trebek. Exactly. (This was even harder because John and Wendy arrived with my high school buddy Jordan, who is a Big Deal out in LA, and whom I hadn't seen for something like 10 years. Plus, they were going to meet each other at the studio, sight-unseen. I desperately wanted to know that they'd found each other, which they somehow had with almost no trouble. Go my friends!) At some point during the morning, Brandon from Augusta (who would later beat me!) and I had a long discussion of Final Jeopardy betting strategies, which was probably a bad move on my part. Oops. I need to be a tougher competitor. (Please note! Important! I am not not not saying Brandon cheated, or that I gave away my strategy! My winning or losing was 100% my own fault, and I own it entirely.)
I played in the fourth game of the day, after a morning of watching three games and a lunch in the studio commissary. Other people on the show maintain that we ate at a table next to Adam Sandler, but I have no way of confirming this because I wouldn't recognize the man if he were to sit down next to me and say "hi Emily. I'm Adam Sandler." Actually, that might do it. Regardless. (You are probably, by now, getting the sense that my Jeopardy experience was heavily food-based. This is true.)
After lunch, it was my game. Despite everything I'd hoped for, I was up against Dave from Mississippi, the magical buzzer-hero, and Brandon from Augusta. The production crew wired us up with microphones (I kept trying to walk away with mine, which resulted in awkward pulling on the front of my sweater) and used a system of risers behind the podiums (podia?) to make us all roughly the same height -- in real life, I'm considerably shorter than Dave. Johnny Gilbert, the classic Jeopardy announcer, read our names, and we were off!
The first round was a complete fever dream for me -- I was pretty satisfied with the botany and time zone categories, though the army base and baseball categories left me bewildered. Above all, though, I was still having buzzer problems. (If you see the episode, you'll see me unknowingly doing that awful thing contestants do when they shake their hands as if to demonstrate to the world "see? see? I'm totally buzzing right now." I will never again judge someone for that.)
The break between single and double jeopardy felt like it took about a second and a half, but double Jeopardy was enormously better. I decided that I had to stop watching the scoreboard, and after a few questions had gone by I suddenly got the hang of buzzing in. I had some kind of weird, two-handed-two-thumbed buzzing strategy that looks superungainly on tv, but it worked surprisingly well. Only when I got my first Daily Double (a question
about Robert Louis Stevenson, the answer to which I knew thanks to junior high school English) did I realize that I had never thought at all about betting strategies. I drew a number at least a thousand above the point value of the question and hoped for the best. Success! (I was actually feeling really good about the South Seas literature category, because there were questions about Mutiny on the Bounty and Typee, both of which I love.)
I got another Daily Double later in the same round. I'm bewildered by the idea, referenced elsewhere on the net, of "hunting" for a DD -- I sort of thought they were randomly assigned, and I'm not sure how one might hunt for something randomly placed. Regardless. This one was in a category about fashion, which made me draw in my breath a little bit. Only since moving to NY, and therefore no longer having a car, have I stopped buying most of my clothes at Target, and I'm still pretty much dressed via H&M and Old Navy. (Maybe I'm having a little bit of a hard time getting the hang of adult costuming . . . .) Regardless, the question had something to do with Armani and fashion shows, and it was a nightmarish moment -- I'd just bet $3000 on something and, all of a sudden, out of my mouth, comes "you think I should know that?" Oh God. On national television. Mortification ensued, while I was also thinking "Rome? Venice? Siena? Florence? Is Tuscany a city? Tuscany is probably not a city. Really? Tuscany? Sicily isn't a city either." And then, oh you will not believe me, I thought about going to the mall in high school and seeing some semi-fashionable store with a big poster in its window listing "New York. Paris. Milan." Milan! Thank heavens.
The big finale was, of course, Final Jeopardy. I saw the category: the animal kingdom. I am a science teacher with a master's in oceanography. This is a piece of cake! Plus, I'd gotten all the other FJ's correct that day, which was encouraging. Only at the betting did I actually look at the scores -- holy crap. I just won on Jeopardy.
Well, almost.
I bet so that, if Brandon had bet every dollar he had, I'd've won by $1. Was this a good idea? I'm still not sure. In my head, I think I'd do the same thing again. After all, I figured there were 4 possible outcomes: we both got it right, I got it right and he got it wrong, I got it wrong and he got it right, and we both got it wrong. In either of the first two situations, my sickeningly enormous (my first grad assistantship paid only marginally more than my FJ bet!) would give me the win. In the third situation, I'd be pretty much guaranteed a loss, but the fourth situation was a wildcard. Here's the motive: I decided that the only thing I could control was what I got right. By betting the way I did, I had a lock on the win as long as I answered the question correctly -- I would only lose under my own power. Ultimately, things backfired, and I lost because we both got it wrong and he bet way, way less than I did, but still, I can only express so much regret. Sure, if I'd bet a big fat 0 I'd be a Jeopardy champion right now, but in the moment, there was no way to know it. I took an aggressive route, but I played to win it, not to let someone else make that choice for me.
Right afterwards, I was pretty bummed -- I saw Dave later in the hotel, though, and he had great words of advice for me: "Why are you so upset? I was just on Jeopardy, so how bad can it be?" True words, sir.
One final thought: I've been so grateful to my family (who has to be nice to me) and my friends (who are my friends because they're so nice). It's part of the social contract, I guess -- if your cousin or coworker or whatever is on a national TV show, you have to call them brilliant and good-looking and say they were totally robbed in their loss. Thanks, guys. You're awesome.
Other things online have been kind of weird, though. Some sites (the official Jeopardy boards at Sony) were pleasantly serious-minded, and I've been really enjoying reading them. Others, though (I'm looking at you, Television Without Pity!) are pretty harsh -- it's making me a little self-conscious. (This is probably a good reminder that the anonymity of the internet can bite me in the butt. That and that I should never, ever make nasty comments about people on non-fictional TV shows again.) There, and via the hilarious, hilarious twitter search of Jeopardy-related posts from last night, I've learned that a lot of people thought I came off cocky, or even that my hemming and hawing during my second DD was meant to taunt my opponents (what kind of evil genius do they thing I am?) and that I was totally trying to get Alex Trebek to make out with me or something. (Do people say this about male contestants who make jokes, too? If not, which I think is probably the case, this seems both kind of sexist and also a kind of heteronormative.) Also, reactions to me seemed very split along gender lines, which I feel a little weird about, too. That's a thought for another day, though, I reckon.
When we left, um, me, I'd just gotten a phone call to film a Jeopardy episode. Awesome. John, my best friend Wendy (she of the swimming posts), and I booked tickets out to LA, then I had to get to studying. See, a lot of people think that, if ou're going to be on Jeopardy,
you get some kind of list of potential topics. Not so! I tried to think of what I know the least about -- geography, presidential cabinets, sitcoms, and the academy awards, more or less. I made absurdly elaborate flash cards (check out Truman!), which I lugged about with me for weeks on end but hardly actually looked at. (Life advice if you want to study geography, do not waste your time making a flash card for every country in the world, because that is an insane waste of time and you will spend days on end on it and still stall out around San Marino or so. Not that I'd know from personal experience or anything.)I also started actually watching Jeopardy. Now, this is kind of embarrassing, but I have never been a huge Jeopardy watcher. I know a lot of big fans, but it's not a part of my day-to-day schedule. Clearly, this wasn't going to help me. On the advice of Arthur Phillips (friend of my dad's, Jeopardy champ, and author of "The Egyptologist," one of my favorite books), I watched absolutely religiously. John kept score (enormously strictly -- deducting points when I didn't answer in the form of a question, all that), and things improved dramatically and quickly. When I first started playing at home (in early November), I was scoring about $18,000 per night (ignoring betting). By January, I was reliably hitting $25,000 or so, not actually because I got smarter but because I learned to quit guessing. I stopped prefacing answers with "I'm gonna say . . . ," and, most of all, I kept my big mouth shut when I had no idea. (Apparently, I made the same stupid faces I wound up making on the show, but that's much more my day-to-day life than anything else!)
By the time we got to LA, I was more dreading my taping than anything else. We stayed in the Jeopardy-recommended hotel, and I entertained myself in the rainy LA weather (it rains in LA? who knew?) by trying to guess which other hotel guests were Jeopardy contestants. I was wrong most of the time, but figured it out the morning of the taping. I took the bus over to the Sony studios with a dozen or so other future Jeopardy players, and I remember talking a lot with Nancy from Las Vegas (who was on the day before me) and Sarah from Chicago (who'll be on on Friday). I brought clothes for three days, since they tape five shows per day, but I was secretly betting on being out in one. No one who's ever met me would say I'm over the top in the self-esteem department. (Alternately, I'm realistic.)
Now. When we finally reached the studio and got set up, things got more fun. There was paperwork, sure, but it was augmented by donuts (I had several), smoothies (I had one), and fruit (which I ignored, more or less, in favor of donuts and smoothies). Maggie reappeared, which delighted me, and she and the other casting staff went over our stories. (I'd submitted six or so potential anecdotes, which they'd narrowed down to three -- this site, my time in college working on the steamboat at Mystic Seaport, and a Jeopardy-related story about the first time I met my future father-in-law. We had to rehearse delivering whatever of our stories the casting crew had liked, and then they chose one or two to pass along to Alex.
(Makeup happened around this time, too. Somehow, I managed to be the last through the makeup area, and I have absolutely no idea what they did to me. It was like a magical, movie-style transformation montage. The makeup artist told me that it was just emphasizing good areas and minimizing bad areas and that even a trained monkey could do it, but this is totally unacceptable self-deprecation. So there.)
Post-makeup, we had a few minutes to try out the buzzers and generally get a feel for the set. First things first. See, I have solid spatial perception, but the stage was totally not oriented the way it felt like it should be. I sort of imagined the audience being more behind Alex than they were, and the contestants standing at an oblique angle to the audience. Not so! This, oddly, threw me more than anything else the entire time. Though I also had some big-time problems with the buzzer. I didn't play video games as a child and it showed, though Dave from Mississippi was a magical, magical buzzer god. I think that, in the entire buzzer-practice round, I managed to ring in once, then immediately forget the correct answer. I have a feeling that my future competitors saw me as an easy pushover, and I spent the rest of the morning praying not to go up against Dave.
Finally, it was time for the audience to come in. Maggie re-emerged and went over basic rules. We were allowed to sit near our families, but not among them, and we weren't allowed to make eye contact or communicate in any way. I tried to follow this one, but let me tell you, it's hard. It's like being told not to think of an elephant. Or not to think of Alex Trebek. Exactly. (This was even harder because John and Wendy arrived with my high school buddy Jordan, who is a Big Deal out in LA, and whom I hadn't seen for something like 10 years. Plus, they were going to meet each other at the studio, sight-unseen. I desperately wanted to know that they'd found each other, which they somehow had with almost no trouble. Go my friends!) At some point during the morning, Brandon from Augusta (who would later beat me!) and I had a long discussion of Final Jeopardy betting strategies, which was probably a bad move on my part. Oops. I need to be a tougher competitor. (Please note! Important! I am not not not saying Brandon cheated, or that I gave away my strategy! My winning or losing was 100% my own fault, and I own it entirely.)
I played in the fourth game of the day, after a morning of watching three games and a lunch in the studio commissary. Other people on the show maintain that we ate at a table next to Adam Sandler, but I have no way of confirming this because I wouldn't recognize the man if he were to sit down next to me and say "hi Emily. I'm Adam Sandler." Actually, that might do it. Regardless. (You are probably, by now, getting the sense that my Jeopardy experience was heavily food-based. This is true.)
After lunch, it was my game. Despite everything I'd hoped for, I was up against Dave from Mississippi, the magical buzzer-hero, and Brandon from Augusta. The production crew wired us up with microphones (I kept trying to walk away with mine, which resulted in awkward pulling on the front of my sweater) and used a system of risers behind the podiums (podia?) to make us all roughly the same height -- in real life, I'm considerably shorter than Dave. Johnny Gilbert, the classic Jeopardy announcer, read our names, and we were off!
The first round was a complete fever dream for me -- I was pretty satisfied with the botany and time zone categories, though the army base and baseball categories left me bewildered. Above all, though, I was still having buzzer problems. (If you see the episode, you'll see me unknowingly doing that awful thing contestants do when they shake their hands as if to demonstrate to the world "see? see? I'm totally buzzing right now." I will never again judge someone for that.)
The break between single and double jeopardy felt like it took about a second and a half, but double Jeopardy was enormously better. I decided that I had to stop watching the scoreboard, and after a few questions had gone by I suddenly got the hang of buzzing in. I had some kind of weird, two-handed-two-thumbed buzzing strategy that looks superungainly on tv, but it worked surprisingly well. Only when I got my first Daily Double (a question
about Robert Louis Stevenson, the answer to which I knew thanks to junior high school English) did I realize that I had never thought at all about betting strategies. I drew a number at least a thousand above the point value of the question and hoped for the best. Success! (I was actually feeling really good about the South Seas literature category, because there were questions about Mutiny on the Bounty and Typee, both of which I love.)I got another Daily Double later in the same round. I'm bewildered by the idea, referenced elsewhere on the net, of "hunting" for a DD -- I sort of thought they were randomly assigned, and I'm not sure how one might hunt for something randomly placed. Regardless. This one was in a category about fashion, which made me draw in my breath a little bit. Only since moving to NY, and therefore no longer having a car, have I stopped buying most of my clothes at Target, and I'm still pretty much dressed via H&M and Old Navy. (Maybe I'm having a little bit of a hard time getting the hang of adult costuming . . . .) Regardless, the question had something to do with Armani and fashion shows, and it was a nightmarish moment -- I'd just bet $3000 on something and, all of a sudden, out of my mouth, comes "you think I should know that?" Oh God. On national television. Mortification ensued, while I was also thinking "Rome? Venice? Siena? Florence? Is Tuscany a city? Tuscany is probably not a city. Really? Tuscany? Sicily isn't a city either." And then, oh you will not believe me, I thought about going to the mall in high school and seeing some semi-fashionable store with a big poster in its window listing "New York. Paris. Milan." Milan! Thank heavens.
The big finale was, of course, Final Jeopardy. I saw the category: the animal kingdom. I am a science teacher with a master's in oceanography. This is a piece of cake! Plus, I'd gotten all the other FJ's correct that day, which was encouraging. Only at the betting did I actually look at the scores -- holy crap. I just won on Jeopardy.
Well, almost.
I bet so that, if Brandon had bet every dollar he had, I'd've won by $1. Was this a good idea? I'm still not sure. In my head, I think I'd do the same thing again. After all, I figured there were 4 possible outcomes: we both got it right, I got it right and he got it wrong, I got it wrong and he got it right, and we both got it wrong. In either of the first two situations, my sickeningly enormous (my first grad assistantship paid only marginally more than my FJ bet!) would give me the win. In the third situation, I'd be pretty much guaranteed a loss, but the fourth situation was a wildcard. Here's the motive: I decided that the only thing I could control was what I got right. By betting the way I did, I had a lock on the win as long as I answered the question correctly -- I would only lose under my own power. Ultimately, things backfired, and I lost because we both got it wrong and he bet way, way less than I did, but still, I can only express so much regret. Sure, if I'd bet a big fat 0 I'd be a Jeopardy champion right now, but in the moment, there was no way to know it. I took an aggressive route, but I played to win it, not to let someone else make that choice for me.
Right afterwards, I was pretty bummed -- I saw Dave later in the hotel, though, and he had great words of advice for me: "Why are you so upset? I was just on Jeopardy, so how bad can it be?" True words, sir.
One final thought: I've been so grateful to my family (who has to be nice to me) and my friends (who are my friends because they're so nice). It's part of the social contract, I guess -- if your cousin or coworker or whatever is on a national TV show, you have to call them brilliant and good-looking and say they were totally robbed in their loss. Thanks, guys. You're awesome.
Other things online have been kind of weird, though. Some sites (the official Jeopardy boards at Sony) were pleasantly serious-minded, and I've been really enjoying reading them. Others, though (I'm looking at you, Television Without Pity!) are pretty harsh -- it's making me a little self-conscious. (This is probably a good reminder that the anonymity of the internet can bite me in the butt. That and that I should never, ever make nasty comments about people on non-fictional TV shows again.) There, and via the hilarious, hilarious twitter search of Jeopardy-related posts from last night, I've learned that a lot of people thought I came off cocky, or even that my hemming and hawing during my second DD was meant to taunt my opponents (what kind of evil genius do they thing I am?) and that I was totally trying to get Alex Trebek to make out with me or something. (Do people say this about male contestants who make jokes, too? If not, which I think is probably the case, this seems both kind of sexist and also a kind of heteronormative.) Also, reactions to me seemed very split along gender lines, which I feel a little weird about, too. That's a thought for another day, though, I reckon.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's over!
Phew. Jeopardy.
My episode just aired, and now I'm decompressing a little bit. Since I'm now allowed to talk about it, here's the full story:
I tried out for the show a long time ago, in January of 2009. I signed up for the online test as kind of a lark, since I'm actually not a huge game show watcher of any sort. (Except for Project Runway. That's just awesome.) Anyway, the online test was fast and furious, and I remember nothing at all about it except that one of the answers was Cate Blanchett, which I somehow guessed despite having never actually seen Cate Blanchett in any movie ever. Regardless, I was pretty sure that that was going to be the end of things, and it seemed like it was.
But it wasn't! Clearly. I got the call to go to a live audition in New York last June, the day after my last day of work at my favorite school ever (far, far away in New Jersey). I took the train in and found myself in a hotel basement (creepy), where the Jeopardy contestant coordinator Maggie (my best friend in my head) took a Polaroid (they still make Polaroids?) and sent me to sit with the rest of the contestants, who were overwhelmingly male and 20 years older than me. A lot of them had tried out a lot of times, which I found really intimidating, though I'm not sure why. Also, around this point I noticed that the dress I was wearing had a GIANT hole in it, which I tried to convince myself was a design feature. It was clearly not a design feature.
Anyway, we all were ushered into a conference room, where we took a paper-and-pencil test, which pretty much consisted of watching a PowerPoint. There was a question about English royal succession and a question about Twilight. I have no idea. After that, a live-round, in which we used the buzzers, got interviewed (I think I said something about superheroes), and answered more questions (I got a whole slew of them about various alcoholic beverages and knew none of the correct answers). I left feeling pretty overwhelmed and underprepared, then didn't think about Jeopardy again for months.
In the intervening little while, I moved to New York, got a new job, quit my new job, got a new new job, and so on and so forth. So it was something of a surprise when, in November, I got another call from Maggie (hi, Maggie!) asking me to come out to LA to tape an episode. I actually said no the first time -- the scheduling didn't fit. Apparently, no one says no to Jeopardy. It's like refusing a favor to the mob -- you just don't. They were flexible, though, and we finally scheduled for a filming date right after MLK day in January. (Conveniently enough, on my mom's birthday!)
***
Phooey! I was hoping to finish updating this pre-school, but that's not going to happen. Stay tuned for more later!
My episode just aired, and now I'm decompressing a little bit. Since I'm now allowed to talk about it, here's the full story:
I tried out for the show a long time ago, in January of 2009. I signed up for the online test as kind of a lark, since I'm actually not a huge game show watcher of any sort. (Except for Project Runway. That's just awesome.) Anyway, the online test was fast and furious, and I remember nothing at all about it except that one of the answers was Cate Blanchett, which I somehow guessed despite having never actually seen Cate Blanchett in any movie ever. Regardless, I was pretty sure that that was going to be the end of things, and it seemed like it was.
But it wasn't! Clearly. I got the call to go to a live audition in New York last June, the day after my last day of work at my favorite school ever (far, far away in New Jersey). I took the train in and found myself in a hotel basement (creepy), where the Jeopardy contestant coordinator Maggie (my best friend in my head) took a Polaroid (they still make Polaroids?) and sent me to sit with the rest of the contestants, who were overwhelmingly male and 20 years older than me. A lot of them had tried out a lot of times, which I found really intimidating, though I'm not sure why. Also, around this point I noticed that the dress I was wearing had a GIANT hole in it, which I tried to convince myself was a design feature. It was clearly not a design feature.
Anyway, we all were ushered into a conference room, where we took a paper-and-pencil test, which pretty much consisted of watching a PowerPoint. There was a question about English royal succession and a question about Twilight. I have no idea. After that, a live-round, in which we used the buzzers, got interviewed (I think I said something about superheroes), and answered more questions (I got a whole slew of them about various alcoholic beverages and knew none of the correct answers). I left feeling pretty overwhelmed and underprepared, then didn't think about Jeopardy again for months.
In the intervening little while, I moved to New York, got a new job, quit my new job, got a new new job, and so on and so forth. So it was something of a surprise when, in November, I got another call from Maggie (hi, Maggie!) asking me to come out to LA to tape an episode. I actually said no the first time -- the scheduling didn't fit. Apparently, no one says no to Jeopardy. It's like refusing a favor to the mob -- you just don't. They were flexible, though, and we finally scheduled for a filming date right after MLK day in January. (Conveniently enough, on my mom's birthday!)
***
Phooey! I was hoping to finish updating this pre-school, but that's not going to happen. Stay tuned for more later!
Monday, April 5, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Zoo zoo zoo
Yesterday, I visited the zoo. See, I've been reading "The Lost City of Z" (like I mentioned a couple days ago), and all the talk about snakebite convinced me that now is the best possible time to pursue the, well, snakebite treatment portion of the First Aid badge. And where better to learn about snakes than at the zoo?
Despite last summer's exploration of Prospect Park, I'd never visited the Prospect Park Zoo, which was very much intentional -- I'm a big wuss, and I reliably find myself getting depressed at the zoo. It's the same reason I can't have pets who need to stay in cages or tanks, or that the NY ASPCA's subway ads bum me out for the day. While I understand intellectually that zoos have a lot of merits -- public awareness, preservation/breeding programs, things like that -- I find it uncomfortable in the moment. The thing the PPZ had going for it, oddly, was its smallness -- they didn't have big, big animals with ranges of hundreds of miles. Most of the critters were pretty small, and that helps at least a little. (I have mixed feelings about the two forlorn sea lions there, but we'll take a pass on that for the time being.) Also, they have what may well be my new favorite animal, the Pallas's Cat.
Now, I went to the zoo largely to investigate what types of snakes they might have, but the answer was, sadly, very few. I only saw a corn snake (no photography in the reptile house!), and everything I learned about it is totally irrelevant to the First Aid badge -- the corn snake is a constrictor which, while terrifying, means it's not so likely to be a biter. Zoo trip? Fun but irrelevant. Phooey.
Now, it's time to return to my total not-research in "The Lost City," which has mostly featured the 1920s explorer Percy Fawcett loading up his boats and packs with dozens of different antivenom serums and informing aspiring explorers that a snakebite is dangerous only if it turns blue and doesn't bleed. Sadly, this isn't actually true -- some bites (from coral snakes, for example) don't lead to major symptoms for hours and hours. I would bet money, also, that the Fawcett expedition -- and any expeditions launched using the 1911 Handbook -- might suggest sucking venom from a wound. Not so, says my Red Cross instructor! First, ew. Second, you won't necessarily get out most of the venom anyway.
So what do you do for snakebite? Nothing too surprising, it turns out. Splint the bitten limb (but not too tightly), wash the area well, and keep it below the heart (which makes sense, after all). Some folks might steer you towards use of a Sawyer Extractor (which looks kind of like the lease useful syringe ever), but that appears to be optional. Really, this is pretty much it, and everyone -- everyone! -- I've spoken to or dealt with says one thing and one thing only: call for help. Really. Call right away.
I finished all this, though, and I wasn't really feeling satisfied. Whether calling for help is the thing to do or not, seems to run counter to everything the Handbook cares about -- being competent in the woods, away from home. Fortunately, the internet is an excellent and reliable source for information about how to ignore medical advice. So I leave you with something you probably should not actually do if you're bitten by a snake: pressure immobilization. This sounds fancy, but it's really just wrapping the bitten limb snugly (but not so snugly as to restrict bloodflow) with a series of bandages before splinting it. This restricts the movement of the venom through the bloodstream, which has the side effect of loading up the near-bite area chock full of venom and maximizing damage there, but this is (often) a worst case scenario kind of treatment. So let's not do it unless we have to, okay?
Despite last summer's exploration of Prospect Park, I'd never visited the Prospect Park Zoo, which was very much intentional -- I'm a big wuss, and I reliably find myself getting depressed at the zoo. It's the same reason I can't have pets who need to stay in cages or tanks, or that the NY ASPCA's subway ads bum me out for the day. While I understand intellectually that zoos have a lot of merits -- public awareness, preservation/breeding programs, things like that -- I find it uncomfortable in the moment. The thing the PPZ had going for it, oddly, was its smallness -- they didn't have big, big animals with ranges of hundreds of miles. Most of the critters were pretty small, and that helps at least a little. (I have mixed feelings about the two forlorn sea lions there, but we'll take a pass on that for the time being.) Also, they have what may well be my new favorite animal, the Pallas's Cat.
Now, I went to the zoo largely to investigate what types of snakes they might have, but the answer was, sadly, very few. I only saw a corn snake (no photography in the reptile house!), and everything I learned about it is totally irrelevant to the First Aid badge -- the corn snake is a constrictor which, while terrifying, means it's not so likely to be a biter. Zoo trip? Fun but irrelevant. Phooey.
Now, it's time to return to my total not-research in "The Lost City," which has mostly featured the 1920s explorer Percy Fawcett loading up his boats and packs with dozens of different antivenom serums and informing aspiring explorers that a snakebite is dangerous only if it turns blue and doesn't bleed. Sadly, this isn't actually true -- some bites (from coral snakes, for example) don't lead to major symptoms for hours and hours. I would bet money, also, that the Fawcett expedition -- and any expeditions launched using the 1911 Handbook -- might suggest sucking venom from a wound. Not so, says my Red Cross instructor! First, ew. Second, you won't necessarily get out most of the venom anyway.
So what do you do for snakebite? Nothing too surprising, it turns out. Splint the bitten limb (but not too tightly), wash the area well, and keep it below the heart (which makes sense, after all). Some folks might steer you towards use of a Sawyer Extractor (which looks kind of like the lease useful syringe ever), but that appears to be optional. Really, this is pretty much it, and everyone -- everyone! -- I've spoken to or dealt with says one thing and one thing only: call for help. Really. Call right away.
I finished all this, though, and I wasn't really feeling satisfied. Whether calling for help is the thing to do or not, seems to run counter to everything the Handbook cares about -- being competent in the woods, away from home. Fortunately, the internet is an excellent and reliable source for information about how to ignore medical advice. So I leave you with something you probably should not actually do if you're bitten by a snake: pressure immobilization. This sounds fancy, but it's really just wrapping the bitten limb snugly (but not so snugly as to restrict bloodflow) with a series of bandages before splinting it. This restricts the movement of the venom through the bloodstream, which has the side effect of loading up the near-bite area chock full of venom and maximizing damage there, but this is (often) a worst case scenario kind of treatment. So let's not do it unless we have to, okay?
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