Since I have to be in New York for the Jeopardy! audition, Louisa and I have decided to make a weekend of it. She doesn't much like musicals and I love them, but I'm still hoping to see one or two that weekend.
I also need a place or two to have a nice meal. I guess in addition to boning up on facts, I need to look at a few travel websites to get some good ideas.
Still, it's exciting and I can't wait to go!
I recieved the following email today:
Congratulations! You
have been selected for a follow-up appointment at an upcoming Jeopardy!
contestant search for the New York City area, exclusively for those who
successfully passed the online test. This is the next step in becoming
a Jeopardy! contestant. We have reserved the following appointment
for you:
When: Sunday, May 25th Time: 3:00pm
Where: New York City, NY
Hooray! I had no idea I did so well on the online test a few months ago. I have no idea if I'll do well at the audition, but it's been a dream for me since I was a kid to be on Jeopardy!...it just feels good to be invited to try to reach it.
But now I'm incredibly nervous. I mean, how do you prepare for Jeopardy!? Excuse me while I freak the hell out for the next month...
What is your "role" in your family?
I'm the oldest kid in my family, so I'm the person everyone has known as long as they have my mom and dad. Growing up, I kind of helped look out for my brothers and sister. I was the person who calmed my mom down when she got too upset. I am the person who can fix the cable or your computer. I was also the guy my mom could lean on when my dad got sick those times.
Unfortunately, I am also the person who withdrew the most. It got better as it went along, but it was pretty bad for awhile in my teen years and early 20s. I am not by nature confrontational, so if I had a problem, I'd retreat to the cave.
As it stands now, I'm the closest thing the family has to an get-together organizer, which is sad because I generally suck at that. I think I did well when a bunch of us went to Disney World in January (I can't believe that was three months ago!)
I wish I was someone to look up to. But I can't answer that question. I can only aspire to it.
Louisa and I have a competition every year during the Oscars over who can pick the most winners. Louisa has beaten me every single time. It's like six in a row now. One of those years we created a forfeit where the loser has to watch a movie of the winner's choosing.
I've thought about what I'd make Louisa watch. I am really bad at knowing if she'll like something on TV or in the movies. Of course, this assume I would be kind and make her watch something I think she'd like. Thankfully, she's been relatively merciful to me, although she did try to get me to watch the whole 124 hour "Pride and Prejudice" thing one year. That is NOT a movie.
This year it was "Little Women" starring Winona Ryder before she became a kleptomaniac. I kept putting off the movie, not expecting to like it, but I did. Winona was great, reminding me why I liked her in the first place.
Because of my stupidity, I didn't realize the great switcheroo between Kirsten "Snaggletooth" Dunst and Samantha "Way Prettier than Dunst" Mathis. Odd that Mathis would go on to be in "American Psycho" with Christian "Newsies" Bale. Makes the whole movie seem more unseemly.
But the thing that I most observed in the movie "Little Women" is how wrong Ryder and Gabriel Byrne were for each other. Maybe the book was different, but it seemed creepy to me. Maybe if I knew more about his character...nah, it'd still be weird.
