I'm losing my mind a little bit. I've decided to go on Jeopardy! That means I've decided I need to learn all the trivia information I have previously not known. That means I spend all day memorizing. Every location and date of every Summer and Winter Olympics? Check. Every State nickname. Every body of water. Every mountain. Check check check check check. Every Best Picture winner. Check. Every Best Actor and Actress Winner? Not yet, but we're working on it.
It becomes a way of thinking where everything is a question that leads to everything else. My wife mentions Say Anything. I think: Cameron Crowe, married to Ann Wilson. Heart. What were their singles? What were their hit albums? What other films did Crowe direct? Did he ever win an Oscar? Was he ever nominated? Who won on the years he was nominated? And it just goes on and on. "Take My Breath Away" is on the radio. Oscar winning song from Top Gun--obvious--but somehow I forget who sang it (Berlin--though they didn't write it. But the writers are too obscure to be asked about, Thank God).
I don't know when I'll take the test--I'm thinking in a month--but the test isn't the issue. The test is easy. I passed it easily in 1999, without any study. The problem is, there's often only a lag of one or two weeks between passing the test and being asked to go on the show. So I need to be show ready. That's the crux.
The point of all this is to be able to buy a new house, by the way. We're probably moving. We might not though. Who knows. Does it matter? Of course not. What matters is being able to exactly explain and delineate all the mythic figures from Ancient Babylon. That's what matters. And that's what I must go do.
The answer to the title by the way: Chattanooga Choo-Choo.
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6 comments:
Awesome. You musy let me know when you will be on. It's an election year, would thry be more likely to ask election/presidential questions?
If you could choose your 12 categories, what would they be? Bowie, Food Stuff, Poker...and?
In rough descending order, my best subjects are probably Literature (especially world literature and poetry--they get finicky about a bunch of 19th c american literature that no one reads), history (US, Ancient, European); Art and Artists; Classical Music; Geography; Pop Music; Film; Sports. But there are significant gaps--for example I don't know anything about the last ten years of pop music. And my film knowledge skews heavily toward the Classic and the Foreign. I'm way more likely to have seen an obscure film of Godard than something that's won an Oscar. Which I need to change--I'm about to start watching a lot of recent movies.
Geography used to be only so-so, but I've hit the books hard over the last two weeks and now I'd say I'm pretty strong there too. I'm poor on Musical Theatre, so I've been doing lots of work on that. Getting to be at least average there.
But it's hard, feeling like I now need to know everything. Which is sort of how I feel. I watch Jeopardy everyday, obviously, and I'd say that three days out of four I feel it's likely I would beat the people on it, given the questions. But yesterday, for example, was a Final Jeopardy question I would have missed--and I would have lost the game. That's unacceptable. I need to be a multiple winner, obviously. So, still a lot of work to do.
Do you need to watch all of these films, or just go buy a book about the oscars where they give you the winners since the beginning and have a little paragraph or so on each year?
Do you need to watch all of these films, or just go buy a book about the oscars where they give you the winners since the beginning and have a little paragraph or so on each year?
I don't necessarily "need" to watch a bunch of those films, but it can't hurt. I've seen most of the old classic films (though not in a long time, for some of them); it's the more recent Oscar winners (and nominees) I don' know. But, is it going to be useful for me to watch "The King's Speech", e.g.? Maybe, a little. For now I'm just making sure I know the major actors and actresses.
However reading so much about film and Oscars has made me interested in watching and rewatching a lot of movies. We watched "All the King's Men" last night, e.g.--which I'd never seen (it's mediocre). And, e.g., there's an 83 film about a Texas country singer called "Tender Mercies" (it won Duvall an Oscar) that intrigues me. So we've got lots and lots of new movies coming.
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