Weeklypedia Quiz #4: Fantastic

Last week's answers are now available. Please also check out a couple of updates to my Jeopardy audition story. Here are some new clues:

Weeklypedia Quiz #4

1. This singer & trumpet-playing bandleader was the "A" who partnered with Jerry Moss to form "A&M Records."

2. This aquatic/aviary term refers to an event that is so unusual and unimaginable that it cannot be predicted. The September 11 attacks and the stock market crash of 1987 are cited by some as examples.

3. This 1980 film by Michael Cimino on the Johnson County War was a financial disaster that led directly to the folding of United Artists studio into MGM.

4. The 1966 novel and 1968 Frank Sinatra vehicle "The Detective," about Detective Joe Leland, was followed by a sequel book, Nothing Lasts Forever, which was adapted into this late '80s blockbuster action film.

5. An arena, indoor or outdoor, for track cycling.

6. Mexico has recently seen several riots in major metropolitan areas, in which youths who follow this musical and fashion style have been targeted for attack.

7. Handmade Films, the British production company behind such films as "Monty Python's Life of Brian," "The Long Good Friday" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," was co-founded by this lead guitarist.

8. Interstate Bakeries Corporation owns both the Hostess brand of snack foods and former competitor Dolly Madison, originator of these cakes once pitched by Charles Schultz's Peanuts characters.

Next week! Or rather, later this week!

Jeopardy Audition Rundown

Note: UPDATED! See below.

Web-logged accounts of auditioning for or appearing on Jeopardy are thick on the ground, but dammit, it looms large in recent events, so it's my turn.

My Jeopardy audition happened back on March 10th in downtown Minneapolis. See also my previous post about the online test and my invitation. Thanks to the efforts of Kathryn Kienholz, a fellow invitee to the same session, and knitting blogger extraordinaire, there's photographic illustration of our audition experience. All photos in this post are by her, and used with permission.

My appointment wasn't until 3, but I took the afternoon off so I wouldn't be hurried and stressed on my way in. I showed up to the swanky, new Hotel Ivy a little early, and immediately wished I'd shown up even earlier so I could take a quick bathroom break. As it was, I didn't think I had time before things were going to start. They had me fill out a contact info form, including times you know you're definitely NOT available to go to LA for a day or two and, oddly enough, asking if you were involved in Quiz Bowl in high school (I was, and I suspect a lot of contestants have come from that background). They also asked if I'd had any contact with previous Jeopardy contestants, which I had to admit I had (a brief weblog-based exchange with Kate Pedersen, a fellow Grinnell alum who congratulated me on my audition and who had very recently played on the show). They took a Polaroid of me, and soon ushered the group of hopefuls into a small meeting room.

There were twenty of us in a room that could hold twenty-seven of us. An LCD projector and speakers were rigged up to a laptop up front. Head Contestant Coordinator Glenn Kagan (pictured) and associates Corrina and Laurie and tech guy Carlos ran the show. Here was our itinerary:

1. Introductions and description of what is about to happen (Glenn)
2. Showing us how the mock game board works (Corrina)
3. 50-question contestant exam
4. Q&A about the show (Glenn)
5. Rolling mock game and interviews (everybody)

The exam was similar in structure to the online qualifier I'd passed in January. 50 questions, 12 seconds each. However, since it was written, we had the opportunity to correct ourselves as we went along. Thank goodness, too, because it took a while for my brain to warm up. There were two or three extremely basic questions in the first ten that I knew, but couldn't produce to save my life. Once I got going, and those previous answers came screaming back into my forebrain, I was able to fix them. In the end, I felt at least as good about this test as the previous one. Giving a quick glance at my answers once time was up, I counted only ten or eleven questions that were educated or out-of-my-ass guesses. Although they'll never admit it, rumor says 35 is a passing score. So I like those odds.

While Corrina and Laurie scored our tests in the hall, Glenn answered every question anyone's ever had about the show. What's with Trebek's sling? He had an accident puttering around the house. Have you ever had blind or deaf contestants? Blind yes, deaf no. Do you pay for our airfare and hotel if we get on the show? No, unless you win and have to come back another day -- they had to fly Ken Jennings back & forth between LA and Salt Lake City week after week while he was on his streak. And so on... Many of these questions were paired with amusing anecdotes. Glenn's been in the game a long time, and accrued plenty of stories.

The stuff I was curious about was related to the competition to get on the show. How many people took the online test in January? I didn't write it down, but I think they said 11,000. How many of these sessions were they doing in Minneapolis this week? Five. Ok, so that means I was one of no more than 135 to be invited to a Minneapolis audition, which draws not only from MN but the whole upper midwest, since there were folks there from WI, IA, and as far away as St. Louis. That's pretty sweet.

In the mock game, they invited three of us up at a time to get on the buzzer and try our hand. The game board had six categories of three clues each, and every time one was depleted, a new category popped up. They gave each trio about 10 clues each, and may or may not have actually called on people based on buzzer timing -- we couldn't see or hear the buzzer signals, and they seemed to cycle to allow all three folks a chance to show they can speak loudly and clearly. After the questions, they had us put the buzzers down and interviewed us briefly about who we are, what we do, what our interests are, and, vitally, what we'd do with the money if we won. The whole mock game isn't about scoring or otherwise answering correctly. It's all about whether you have any presence or personality, can handle the buzzer, and can follow directions.

I was in the first group up, along with Susan and Norman. We traded questions back & forth. I misidentified the famous guitarist who owns the guitar named Lucille. I got control of the board on a question about the year 1961. And then I got a question nobody else knew the answer to. After the clue was revealed, everybody stared blankly. A beat or two later, I managed to scrape the name of a two-time Bond girl (whose movies I've never seen) out of the back of my skull and coupled her with our first one-term president to get fake presidential couple "Maud and John Adams" (Who are Maud and John Adams, indeed?). This earned me a little round of applause from the room, which felt pretty great.

After being interviewed, I sat down and observed the rest of the mock game and interviews. It was cool hearing everybody's back-story. There were a lot of new or recent empty-nesters and a lot of lawyers. I was definitely the only engineer with improv comedy experience in the bunch. Lots of people who would use Jeopardy winnings to travel, and a couple folks who would use it for a wedding or honeymoon. Since I was in the first group, the idea of using the money to pay off loans and maybe pay a down payment on a house was way less played out when I said it than it was by the end of the session.

I was disappointed that they didn't tell us whether or not we passed the test, which I guess they do at their big contestant calls in LA, in order to cut down the number before playing mock games. I suppose that makes sense, given the relative numbers. Anyway, if I passed the test, which I feel safe in assuming, then I'm in their "active contestant file" for the next 18 months. Anytime during that period, they could call me to be a contestant. They told us in no uncertain terms: do not call or email us; we'll call you. If they don't decide to put me on the show, I'll know after 18 months have passed, at which time I'm free to take their qualifier again.

At this point I've accomplished what I feel I needed to. I still count being on the show as a life goal, and I hope it happens and that it's a lot of fun and I win at least one game, if not seventy-five. But having passed the January test, I felt I needed to have a good showing at the audition and have fun. And I've done that. Hoo-plah!

UPDATED (3/28/08):
I forgot to include two points. First was one of the most interesting bits of Glenn's Q&A. Someone asked if the specifics of the answering in a form of a question are parsed for grammar. For instance, if you responded to He opposed George Westinghouse in the so-called War of the Currents with "Where are Thomas Edison?" or the less weird "What is Thomas Edison?" Apparently not only is that sort of thing ok, but you could also say "Is it Thomas Edison?" They discourage such flippant games, but if you stumble into something like that, they're not going to dock you for it.

Second is that the day after my audition, my wonderful wife sent me delicious brownies at work as congratulations. In the parlance of the medium, she is teh awesome.

Weeklypedia #3: Already at the bottom of the barrel?

Last week's answers are up. Here's this week's quiz, which feels more sophomore-slumpy than last week's did.

1. The remake of this film featured James LeGros in a small role as a used car salesman who didn't want any trouble from his first customer of the day.

2. He is the NYC cop who broke the code of silence surrounding police corruption in the early 1970s (last name only is acceptable).

3. This hazardous metal is commonly obtained from the ore cinnabar, and is one of only two elements that is liquid at standard temperature and pressure.

4. Regina is its capital.

5. This 2002 album by the rock band Wilco would have been known as "Yoke How Fox" if they were British instead of American.

6. It's a slang term for a padded backrest on a motorcycle.

7. She's the owner of the company that adapted Zora Neale Hurston's novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" into a film in 2005.

8. The title of Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung, which premiered in Bayreuth, Germany in 1876, is a translation of this Norse term meaning "the Fate of the Gods."

Until next week, or until I finally blog something other than hastily-constructed trivia.

Weeklypedia Quiz #2: Sophomore Slump

OK. It's a bit late, but here is the second Weeklypedia quiz, comprised of stuff I learned or re-learned because I read about it on Wikipedia this week. The answers to last week's quiz have been posted as a comment to that blog entry, so check 'em out.

Here's the new quiz:

1. If The Ramones had reset their song "Rockaway Beach" in the next nearest peninsula to that shore, it might have been called this.

2. When he takes office to succeed NY Gov Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson will be the United States' fourth African-American governor and, significantly, only the second governor who is this.

3. Although wildly popular in American Chinese restaurants, this dish, named for a ming dynasty warrior, is largely unknown in China.

4. It is a statistical phenomenon that may be seen as a basis for a "sophomore slump," the tendency of those who excel to be less above-average in their next performance.

5. For most of NASA's Space Shuttle project, extra-vehicular manipulations have been performed by astronauts and by eponymous robotic "arms" produced in this country.

6. This British rock band was hailed as "the next Beatles," had the support of the Fab Four and even performed original songs by Lennon & McCartney, before spectacularly flaming out.

7. This presidential appointee is not part of the military, but is the head of one of the United States' uniformed services. Hence the naval-styled attire. (Note: multiple correct answers are possible.)

8. They are what the two syllables of the geographic slang BosWash refer to.

I still have not blogged about how my Jeopardy! audition went on Monday. I'll do that soon, honest. Short version: it went well, I think, and I hope that I have a decent shot at being a contestant. I'll know if they call me or not in the next 18 months. More to come, but in the meantime, check out the blog of one of the other applicants at my session, kmkat, who knits! She even got some great pictures!

New Feature: Weeklypedia Quiz #1

I was chatting with Nels today and, after asking how my Jeopardy audition prep was going, he declared that he had two trivia questions for me. Here they are:

1. He founded the Dominican Rebuplic.
and
2. It is the only borough in New York City not on an island.

After I answered (I got #2 right), he then demanded that I prepare some trivia for him. I scoured my browser's history for Wikipedia topics I'd read in the previous week, and came up with some clues (Prisoner of Trebekistan has taught me that the nomenclature is clues and responses, since questions and answers don't really apply properly to Jeopardy). I've polished up these clues a bit, and posted them below. Nels says he wants more, so I'm going to keep doing this from time to time.

So, this is the first in a maybe-weekly series of trivia quizzes based on my Wikipedia consumption. Keep in mind that I'm a nerd, so being a nerd will help sometimes (there are two in the quiz below that it'll especially help on). Correct responses will be provided each time a new quiz goes up.

Weeklypedia #1

1. Heiress and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt is the mother of this CNN anchorman.

2. In 1976, the Viking I probe spied a "face" in this region of Mars' surface.

3. It is defined as one minute of an arc of a great circle on the Earth's surface.

4. He has been identified by various groups as the Pope, Martin Luther, and the Secretary General of the United Nations.

5. On the fictional planet of Arrakis, you'd call it Muad'Dib, but this rodent has a different name in the real American Southwest.

6. This film director has been portrayed by Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio.

7. In the 1970s, his girlfriends included socialite Silver St. Cloud. Since then he's tended more towards news photographers and burglars.

8. His last theorem proved unsolvable for centuries.

Come back next week for more. Fair warning: comments may have spoilers in them

I'll play your game, you rogue.

I'm not good about setting or keeping track of Fred-specific life goals. I have work-related goals, and personal goals that a lot of people have (home ownership, kids someday, etc.), but really only one special goal that I keep in the back of my mind, burning like a Citronella that wards off the mosquitoes of complacency (but apparently not the fruit flies of tortured metaphors): to be a contestant on Jeopardy!(TM).*

The origins of this goal lie in high school, when I was on the Minneapolis Southwest Quiz Bowl team. I was only on the team for my junior and senior years, but that second year, I was promoted to co-captain of Team A (a Welsh shout-out to co-captain Jenny Hurrle, wherever she is), and we were totally State Quarterfinalists. Somewhere in my parents' basement there still exists a tape of our public-access TV victories, leading up to our semifinals loss to Minneapolis South, who I'm sure only succeeded because their school has no windows to distract them. Anyway, trivia and the acquisition of a broad base of general knowledge have been pursuits close to my heart since then, and at some point this coalesced into the Life Goal to be on Jeopardy!(TM).

In the meantime, I've had my flirtations with such passing fancies as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Win Ben Stein's Money, Beat the Geeks, and the dead-before-its-time MTV show, Idiot Savants.** But my youth, busy signals and/or the short lives of these shows prevented my getting a chance to be on them. So Jeopardy!(TM, ok I'll stop that now) remains the Holy Grail (or Crystal Skull, if you prefer).

When I was in college I signed up for Sony's emails on how to be a contestant. They sent me periodic updates, but it never really went anywhere, mostly because they didn't hold auditions particularly close to me. When I moved back to Minneapolis for grad school, it seemed that they only ever got as close as Chicago. Stymied. Damn you, Trebek.

But, now that I have a friend named Lacey Mamak, I am plugged in to game show audition news. Being on a game show is among their life goals, and we stood in line for seven hours one Saturday in December, half of it outside in sub-freezing Minnesota weather, to try out for Deal or No Deal, which could've been a blog post itself. Lacey got a callback out of the experience. I got an experience. They alerted me in January to the Jeopardy online contestant test, held the last three days of the month.

So, you register at least 24 hours before the test, and sign in within the half hour before 8PM, when the test is to begin. At that time, the site starts a countdown. 30 seconds before 8, The Music begins, and once the clock hits zero, the music stops, thank God, and question-spitting begins. The test is 50 questions long, and you have 12 seconds per question. Here are the questions I was asked, and the answers (scroll down). By my count I got 37 correct. Rumor has it 35 is a passing score.

Well, 37 is a passing score at least, because on Friday I got an email from Sony, offering me an audition in Minneapolis on March 11th. Hot damn. Lacey got an audition as well, earlier that morning.

So apparently the procedure is that we'll go in and take another 50-question test, and then if we pass that (stressful!), we get to play a practice game to try our buzzer skills (if you buzz in before the question's finished, you get locked out for a crucial half second), and then talk nice with the producers. I'm excited, obviously, but nervous that the test will be harder than the one I already took. And I hope to do well in the practice game. To prepare, I've ordered the PS2 Jeopardy game off of eBay, and plan on checking a couple of Jeopardy-related books out of the library.

I will have two fears if I actually become a contestant. The first is irrational, and it's that I hope I don't slip into quoting Darrell Hammond at any point. The second is very real, that I hope I don't pull a Clavin.

Update: Go here for the story of how my audition went.

* Jeopardy!(TM) is a Merv Griffin Sony Pictures Television production.
** Idiot Savants was hosted by Greg Fitzsimmons, who would one day fill in for my friend and college roommate to open a Zach Galifianakis stand-up show, when Kumail had to pull out. Small world? No, just Kumail's awesome rise in the comedy world.

Taste the rainbow

My next blogging subject was suggested by an article on Salon.com, entitled "The Letter E is Purple." Without even reading the lede, I knew exactly what the article would be: a first-person narrative nonfiction piece about synesthesia. I knew this because I have had similar statements bouncing in my mind since an early age, except to me, the letter E is orange.

Synethesia, as the previous links will tell you, is a state in which the mind connects the input from one sense with the felt experience of another. Being able to taste colors, see music, or indeed, associate colors with numbers and letters.

Ever since I was little, I've associated a certain color or colors with each number and letter. The image above more or less represents my color associations with the ten individual Arabic digits. Not all of the color associations are strong, and some are hard for me to pin down if I think about them. 1 and 0 are hard, especially. 3 is sometimes yellow, sometimes orange. But for my whole life, I've had a starter set of colors that I associate with numerals and with letters. Like each color has a Platonic form sitting in a locked room somewhere, a perfect Sesame Street Muppet version of itself that all other examples of the symbol is copied from.

I think that when I was a kid, I understood these colors to be universal, but after a couple arguments ("Don't be stupid! E is brown!"), I realized that my colors were not other peoples' colors. And over time, I think I realized that a) the colors were subjective and b) not everybody had the colors, so I let it drop. That has always been the extent of my synesthetic experience: each letter and numeral has a color. Sometimes words or longer numbers have colors, being combinations or sequences of others. Sometimes a color overwhelms. The letter F is green, as are the words Fred or Frederick. B and Beukema are red. Incidentally, my favorite color is blue. On an early date with my wife, I explained my experience of synesthesia to her, and mentioned that her initials went well together (MSR = blue, grey and brown, although the letters are black, blue and reddish brown respectively -- I never claimed this made any sense to me).

Years later, again in Doug Diamond's music history class (see also my second post), we talked about the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, and I first learned the word synesthesia. Seems old Alex had a particularly strong case, and saw colors associated with musical tones. His composition was necessarily affected by his colors, and in order to convey his experience with his audience, he devised a color organ that would project the colors he saw for each note. The wikipedia article on Scriabin describes arguments he had with Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov about his associations. Apparently the latter had a low-grade synesthesia himself. Of course his colors didn't match Scriabin's -- I think everybody who has this has a different set of associations, formed by certain chemical connections randomly happening at some time in one's youth. Maybe I had a children's book that showed the numbers as I show them above. Or maybe "green" and "4" just landed in the same place in the primordial soup between my ears.

I've spoken personally to two other people who have had strong synesthetic experiences. One is my friend Adam from college, who, if I recall, had much stronger associations than mine, including musical ones. And I once had a conversation with a synesthete who described how she would see the colors associated with words and letters projected over a page as she read it. That's very different from and more extensive than my simple, back-of-the-brain experiences.

A Japanese video game designer named Tetsuya Mizuguchi created a game for the Sega Dreamcast and Playstation 2 called "Rez" that sought, in part, to simulate synesthesia for the player. The game is full of simple, stylized, colorfol visuals and pulsing, evocative techno music, resulting in a simulation of a rave as much as anything else. But it's a fun and easily recommendable game. Check out some video from it.

So, handful of readers, do you have synesthetic associations? Have you told anyone about them? Have you talked to others who have them? Please, do tell.