Category Archives: Men

A Festa, Zeppoles, and a Trip Back to Lodi

15 Monday Sep 2014

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unnamed-2 By FRANK TERRANELLA

My father was born, lived and died in the same house. But that’s a rarity. The odds are that if you’re over 50, you have lived in several different places in your life. I’ve lived in nine.

It’s always interesting to return to the place where you grew up. For some of us, it’s depressing. Inner city neighborhoods that once were great places to live, now are not so much. For others, it’s just a strange experience because so many years have gone by that most of the people we used to know are gone. I moved out of my hometown of Lodi, New Jersey in 1975, the year I got my first job. If that looks like I couldn’t wait to get out, you’re right. But just about every year since, I have returned to the town of my birth to partake in a cultural landmark — an annual Italian street fair called the Festa de San Giuseppe.

unnamedMost people in the New York who have been to an Italian feast have been to San Gennaro in Little Italy. That’s the king of Italian feasts. It has great food and even greater crowds. In fact, the crowds can be compared to a subway car at rush hour. It’s not a fun experience and no one would do it if the food wasn’t so great. By contrast, the smaller feasts like San Giuseppe in Lodi are comfortable and the food is every bit as good.

2014-08-31 18.34.16For the uninitiated, these Italian feasts are basically church fundraisers. Non-Italian churches have carnivals and bazaars every summer; Italian parishes have feasts. In addition to the best pizza and sausage and peppers sandwiches around, Italian feasts always feature a statute of the church’s patron saint on which feastgoers tape paper money. It used to be just dollar bills, but these days you often see 20s and even 50s. Watch for the guy who attaches a $100 bill. He probably is either a fan of The Godfather, or he is the real thing.

Now it would be strange enough if the feast just featured a currency-covered statue. But an important part of just about every Italian feast is the procession of the statue through the streets. That’s for the people who are too sick (or too lazy) to come to the feast. On at least one day during the run, the feast comes to them, accompanies by a band playing music from the old country. The marchers carry the statue right to the doors of willing donors. This procession of the statue through the streets of town is among my oldest memories. It’s quite amazing to a small child for a band to come to your house once a year carrying a statue like the ones you’ve only seen in church. It’s like God opened a traveling branch office — equal parts fascinating and terrifying.

unnamed-1Anyway, the Festa de San Giuseppe was a part of my life for all the 22 years I lived in Lodi. And it has continued to be a part of my life for the almost 40 years since. As my hometown has changed to the point of being unrecognizable in many ways, one thing has remained constant — the feast still happens every Labor Day weekend. And it still looks very similar to the way it looked 50 years ago. I have dragged my wife and children to the Feast for years. Why? Because it provides a sense of continuity to my heritage and to the place of my birth. And that’s important in our transient society. The unchanging ritual is comforting. Labor Day’s ritual used to be to watch Jerry Lewis on the MDA Telethon and go to the Feast. Jerry is gone now, but the Feast carries on. And I hope it does for the rest of my life. The zeppole are out of this world!unnamed-3

The Ceramic Couple

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

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ceramic one

By BOB SMITH

I’m not much for tchotchkes, but we’ve got a set of ceramic salt-and-pepper shakers that’s close to my heart.

You’ve probably seen them, or some version of them: it’s a married couple, in “Before” and “After”poses.

“Before” shows the couple young, happy, and dressed for their wedding day. He looks handsome in his gray tuxedo and red bow tie, sporting a mustache and glancing sidelong at his rosy-faced bride. She stands proudly in her white wedding dress and headpiece, with golden curls spilling out the sides, demurely holding a bouquet at her midsection. Her lips are pursed in a hopeful smile and her blue eyes gaze brightly ahead, focused on the future.

When you turn the figurines around, the legend on the bottom reads “AFTER,” and the changes are striking.

ceramic 4The groom is now wearing a strappy T-shirt and boxer shorts, and he’s  gained at least 30 pounds. Frowning, he’s lost most of his hair and the dapper mustache, and he’s glancing sheepishly at his wife as if expecting recriminations. She, too, has gained a few pounds, as evidenced by her jowly face and plumper middle. She’s wearing a bathrobe and curlers in her hair, and instead of flowers she holds a rolling pin. Her young bride’s optimistic smile has been replaced by a scowl as she glares at her spouse, apparently considering where to slug him, and how hard.

I bought these when Maria and I had been married around twelve years, when we weren’t far removed from the “Before” picture of the happy couple. We’ve been displaying them on the windowsill over the sink for the last 20 years, and I’ve since come to identify with – if not resemble – them more and more.

They’ve taken a beating over time – his hair, and her veil, are badly chipped on the “Before” side, and both of their noses, “Before” and “After,” have been marred by falls from the window ledge. We, too, bear scars from our three decades of life together. And like the figurines, neither of us is in quite the shape we were when we were married, but we’re still standing.

Sometimes I’m in a miserable mood and she’s just fine, the “Before” to my “After,” or I’m feeling just fine and she’s in the dumps. We can arrange the figures accordingly.

ceramic2ceramic

But usually the couple on the windowsill isn’t mired in “After.” They’re facing front, smiling warmly in their wedding regalia; a much more pleasant image. Like our ceramic counterparts, we’re hopeful we can carry on living happily ever “Before.”ceramic one

Does Everything Happen for a Reason?

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

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Even Facebook believes EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON

Even Facebook believes ‘EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.’

BY BOB SMITH

People always say: “Everything happens for a reason.” Usually with a knowing wink, as if there’s mysterious meaning behind it. As if some greater being or force has determined the proper sequence and nature of everything that happens on earth, and makes things happen to fit that grand scheme.

But it isn’t so. It’s really just causation, dressed up as having meaning.

Say you’re sitting at your desk and a pencil rolls off a shelf, falls onto your old address book (yes, the paper kind, which people kept before the advent of the electronic calendar), and lands pointing directly to a listing for your elderly aunt. This seems to be a truly random event, particularly if your desk is an unholy mess like mine. When you notice the pencil apparently pointing in the general direction of this particular listing, you recall that this elderly aunt had recently been ill, so you call and wish her well. Tragically, she dies four hours later.

You later mention that the circumstance of the pencil having fallen was what prompted your call to ailing auntie, and someone immediately wants to ascribe the event to divine intervention. You get the knowing wink and the conspiratorial nod – “Everything happens for a reason.”

Yup-gravity.

Calling it a divine act seems to bring order and reason to what would otherwise be random chaos; mere coincidence, but that’s all it was. Saying everything happens for a reason is really just an extension of Ecclesiastes 3 (remember the song “Turn Turn Turn” by the Byrds – a time to be born a time to die, etc.?). “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Maybe.

Or maybe things just happen because that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Time goes by and cells get tired and maybe you breathe more radon than you should have, and a bunch of lung cells multiply madly, grow into a tumor, metastasize, travel to everywhere in your body, and your life is over. If you’re 80 something, the conclusion will be “he lived a full life,” but “it was his time.” If you’re 30 the prevailing wisdom will be “he had his whole life ahead of him,” but again – obviously – “it was his time.” And then when the thirty year old’s widow meets and marries a billionaire six months later, the conclusion will be “everything happens for a reason.”

It is what it is.

This is another favorite of the casual (causal?) philosopher, and like the Ecclesiastes conclusion, it’s irrefutable. “It” must be an object of some kind; therefore it exists and “is.” Whatever “it” is, that is its identity, and therefore it is “what” it is. So to say “it is what it is,” is simply to recognize reality: things exist, with their own identities, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That last part is implied. When you say “it is what it is,” you’re really saying “it’s reality; you can’t do anything about it; shut up and accept it.”

Which brings us to a related platitude: “let go and let God.” This follows naturally from “it is what it is”: because if you can’t affect the reality of things, you might as well just accept them (“let go”), and let the universe have its way with them, as it will in any event (“let God”). Whether there’s a divine being up in the sky pulling the strings on this marionette show, or whether everything that happens is dictated by the course of nature, or whether it’s all just random madness, these sayings seem to foster comfort and acceptance. And at this stage of my life, those are good things regardless of the source.

So go ahead – recite them on any occasion, either alone or in sequence, and they’ll make as much sense as anyone needs to ascribe to them.

“Hey, everything happens for a reason.”
“It is what it is.”
“Let go and let God.”

AMEN!

Hello 50. Goodbye Creativity?

26 Tuesday Aug 2014

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franks 54BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Have you ever noticed that creative people create their best works while they are young? Whether it’s musicians, authors or artists, it’s an inconvenient truth for those of use on the right side of 50 that creativity declines with age.

I know I may get arguments on this point.

People will inevitably point out the exceptions to the rule as disproving it. But if you look at the great creative works in history, you will find that the overwhelming majority of them were created by people under the age of 50. Some of that is due to the fact that many great artists die young —  Mozart was 35; VanGogh was 37; Fitzgerald was 45. But among those who do not, most find their later years much less fruitful from a creative standpoint.

There are lots of examples, but I will pick just three from the 20th century. Example one is Orson Welles. Welles made Citizen Kane when he was 26. He never attained that level of creativity again, and made his last film when he was 50. Example two is Truman Capote. Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s when he was 34. He wrote his last great work, In Cold Blood, when he was 42. After that it was all downhill. Example three is Albert Einstein. Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity when he was 26. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics when he was 42. Although he lived to be 76, his later life produced no other creative breakthroughs on a par with his earlier work.

So why is it that most creativity comes in the earlier years of life? Frankly, I don’t know. Is there something in the brains of younger people that dissipates over time and blocks creativity? Anyone who has ever had a stroke of creativity will tell you that when they were creating, it was like someone else was inhabiting their body directing the genius. Composers talk about sitting down at the piano and composing a hit song in as long as it takes to play it. Creativity, when it comes, always flows out so fast, it’s an effort to write it all down quickly enough. The very word “inspiration” comes from the Latin “in spirito” meaning literally “possessed by a spirit.” This is exactly the way artists talk about the process of creating their most brilliant works.

Perhaps the human mind as it ages becomes less welcoming to this process of being possessed by creativity. Perhaps there is an unwillingness to just follow the dictates of the spirit as we grow older. Isn’t this the idea of “old people” that we had when we were young? Yet there were always exceptions to the rule. Most of us have memories of an older relative who didn’t act his or her age, and we loved them for that. So certainly we can be inspired and possessed by creativity in old age. It’s just less common.

Famously, Grandma Moses did not begin painting until she was in her 70s. Fortunately, she lived to be 101. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote great works like the Mass in B minor into his 60s. Woody Allen’s output has not lessened with age. He was 76 when he wrote and directed Midnight in Paris, which won him an Academy Award.

Clearly, inspiration can still occur in later life. I think the trick is not to settle for a comfortable existence where life has an unchanging routine. If the spirit moves you to pull an all-nighter to create, open your mind and let it flow. Creativity may prefer youth, but we over 50s can still claim our share. Go Woody!

I Want What She Has: Big Muscles

20 Wednesday Aug 2014

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Originally published on December 11, 2012:

Muscle Chick by Julie Seyler

Muscle Chick, by Julie Seyler

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

When I was 12, I arm-wrestled a girl and lost. I had not entered puberty yet, and the girl had. As I remember, it wasn’t even close.  The girl, who was the same age as me, had initiated the match.  She asked me to show her my bicep muscle. Perhaps she was flirting, but I was oblivious. When I flexed my arm, practically nothing popped up. The girl smiled, suppressing a giggle. She also did not have a defined bicep, but she had a thick arm, and was simply much stronger than me at that age. From the moment she engaged her strength, and started to push against my hand, I simply could not stop her from pushing my pre-pubescent arm down to the desktop. She was proud of herself, and when we argued about anything thereafter, she would flex her arm and say, “Remember, I’m stronger than you.”

Soon after that, I entered puberty, and within 12 months, when I flexed my skinny arm, a hard, round muscle popped up. It was truly amazing to the girl. She knew that I had not started lifting weights, or even exercising.  Just on the basis of being a boy, I had developed a bulging bicep muscle bigger than hers.  And to add insult to injury, she found out when we had our re-match that I was now just a little bit stronger than her also.

I was never a gym rat in my teens and never had athlete-sized biceps. But like most men, I developed biceps in my teens that were bigger than those of the women I came across. While they were just average by male standards, I was confident that I was not going to lose a strength contest to any woman I might meet.

Then I hit 40. I noticed that my biceps did not have the peak they used to have when I flexed them. I noticed there was more fat on my arm covering the muscle.  By the time I hit 50, I noticed a decrease in arm strength.  Lifting heavy items to put them on a top shelf was not as easy as it used to be. I started to read articles in The New York Times and elsewhere that said I was losing one percent of my muscle mass each year. This was alarming.

And then I started noticing that many women were developing  biceps as large or larger than mine. I was walking in Midtown Manhattan one day, when I saw a young woman with biceps the size I had formerly only seen on men. These were not cute fitness biceps from aerobics; these were cannonball-sized guns on a beautiful woman.  And I loved them on her! And beyond that, I wanted them on me.

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Hanging On to (And Finally Letting Go of) the Chooba Diamond

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

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Originally published on December 5, 2012:

the chooba diamond- drawing by Julie Seyler

A Little Chooba Diamond on Her Hand.
Drawing by Julie Seyler

BY BOB SMITH

Have you ever heard of the Chooba diamond? I invented it when I was 11.
In 1965, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons had a pretty big hit on pop radio with a song called, “Let’s Hang On.” It’s a bouncy anthem about love gone wrong featuring Valli’s powerful falsetto, and one of the verses begins like this:

That little chip of diamond on your hand
Ain’t a fortune baby but you know it stands
For the love (A love to tie and bind ya)
Such a love (We just can’t leave behind us) …

The chorus exhorts the girlfriend to:

Hang on to what we’ve got
Don’t let go girl, we got a lot
Got a lotta love between us
Hang on, hang on, hang on
To what we’ve got.”

Somehow, I misunderstood the first line of that verse.  I thought Frankie said, “that little Chooba diamond on your hand,” instead of “chip of:”

I’d had zero experience with diamonds (or engagement rings, or girls, for that matter), so I  assumed Chooba was a designation of origin for a rare type of diamond unknown to me.  The “ain’t a fortune baby” line made sense because he did say “little,” after all.  So in my quaint understanding, Frankie had purchased an engagement ring for his girl set with a minuscule, but nonetheless highly-prized and mysterious, “Chooba diamond.”

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Breaking News: Robin Williams’s Death Not Worthy of TV Interruption

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

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rwilliams3BY BOB SMITH

Last night we were on the couch watching TV. Alex Trebek had just announced the close of the initial Jeopardy round, when the network news logo suddenly flashed across the screen, accompanied by blasts of militaristic brass music and marching drums, and the words “SPECIAL REPORT” in red capital letters:

“We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this Special Report from ABC News,” said the announcer, as my heart upticked in anticipation.

Has one of the local wars around the world blossomed into a nuclear holocaust?

Has an assassin’s bullet found the president?

Is a major U.S. city a smoldering ruin thanks to a terrorist attack?

Involuntarily, my mind reeled back to that November afternoon more than 50 years ago, when TV brought us the stunning news that President Kennedy had been shot dead in Dallas. What new calamity could this be?

None of the above – a celebrity had died.

The announcer, a square-jawed 20-something guy in a somber suit and serious demeanor, stared reassuringly into the camera. His hair was piled high on his head – dense, yet richly textured – like a freshly-baked chocolate souffle.

“ABC News has learned that Robin Williams is dead,” he said. “The gifted comedian and actor, 63, was found at his Northern California home earlier today. He appears to have died of asphyxia but authorities have not confirmed that, or any further details on the circumstances of his death at this time.”

He went on to note Williams’s brilliant comic talent, his long and varied TV and movie career, and the fact that he had long struggled with drug and alcohol addictions and severe depression. The report concluded after two minutes with the announcer promising “further details as this shocking and saddening story unfolds.”

Really?

Look, I loved and admired Robin Williams as much as the next guy. It seems anyone with a glimmering of talent today is called a genius, but he was the real thing – a comic tsunami, a dead-on, rapid-fire impressionist with both precision timing, and wickedly hilarious things to say. Loved him.

But have we really become so frivolous as a society that the death of a comic actor – even a transcendently talented one like Robin Williams – is considered breaking news that merits stop-the-world treatment? Has Entertainment Tonight hijacked the news?

No disrespect to Robin, but except for his immediate family and friends, I don’t think any of us will recount, decades from now, exactly where we were and what we were doing when we learned of his passing.

We interrupt this blog to bring you a special report: Mrs. O’Toole’s cat is up a tree again. The fire department is on the scene with a ladder truck trying to effect the rescue. Now back to our regularly scheduled (escapist) programming.

Getting in Touch with My Inner Nascar Redneck

11 Monday Aug 2014

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photo 2By FRANK TERRANELLA

I think that we over 50s stay young through new experiences. You say you’ve never been scuba diving? Jump in, the water’s fine. Never been to the opera? No time like the present. Recently, I crossed an item off my bucket list. I attended my first NASCAR race.

Now some of you may be wondering why it took me 61 years to try the most popular spectator sport in America. My only defense is that I’m from New Jersey and there is no NASCAR in New Jersey, never has been. The closest racetrack for me is 90 minutes away in the Poconos. So unless you have family or friends who are fans, NASCAR is not on your radar in the state with the most roads per square mile in the nation.

Only recently has a New Jersey NASCAR fan become a friend. My daughter’s boyfriend has been going to NASCAR races since he was a boy. So when he mentioned that he and his family were heading out to Pocono Raceway for the weekend, I expressed a desire to go along. So my daughter and I got up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning and headed to Pennsylvania to meet up with her boyfriend’s family who had rented an RV and were waiting on the Pocono Raceway infield for us.

If you’ve ever been to a horse race, you know that there is a center portion of the track that is usually green but not inhabited by fans. Car racing is a bit different. First, the track is about twice the length of a horse track and the infield is accordingly much larger. In fact, it’s large enough to accommodate hundreds of RVs. This is like the biggest tailgate you could imagine. Everyone brings grills, lots of food and unimaginable quantities of beer. In fact, everything about car racing is supersized. The racing is like horse racing on steroids; the tailgating makes football fans look like rank amateurs. Even the crowds, in excess of 200,000, are far beyond any other spectator sport.

It took an hour, but my daughter and I finally reached her boyfriend’s RV parked on the track infield. The first item on the agenda was breakfast, and the bacon, eggs and sausage were among the tastiest I’ve ever had. We took a walk around and noticed RVs with satellite television and RV’s with rooftop terraces. We also noticed a lot of Confederate flags.

Now I would expect to see the stars and bars south of the Mason Dixon line, but we were in northern Pennsylvania, about 150 miles north of Gettysburg in fact. So the presence of large numbers of Confederate flags was puzzling. The cars in the parking lot did not indicate that Southerners had driven north for the race.

photo 4 (4)

No, I found out that the stars and bars has become the flag of Redneck Nation. People who simply identify themselves as rednecks fly the flag, in some cases totally ignorant of its historical significance as a flag of slavery for African Americans. And as I looked around, the only people of color I saw were security personnel. There were also far fewer women than men. It seems that NASCAR is a predominantly white male pastime. Fortunately, I fall into that demographic, at least on paper.

As race time came around, we all went to the fence separating the infield from the track and watched the cars whizz by. I have to say that I enjoyed the race itself and all the people we met were extremely friendly. I am glad that I went for the experience of it, just as I was glad that I visited the Guggenheim Museum the previous Sunday. I think that the overlap of customers at the two is probably quite small. But I’m glad that it includes me. In fact, I would not mind attending another NASCAR race in the future. But this weekend, I’m going to the National Gallery.

Five Stages of Liberal Grief

06 Wednesday Aug 2014

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stage exportBY FRANK TERRANELLA

There are five stages of grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying.” As a lifelong liberal, I have been going through them since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

Stage 1: Denial — When Reagan was elected, it seemed to me that this was just a “throw the bums out” reaction to the incredible inflation and gasoline shortages we were experiencing at the time. It didn’t help that Jimmy Carter was perceived as weak on Iran and that Nightline reminded us every night for 444 days that 52 American diplomats and citizens were being held hostage. It turned out that Reagan and the Republicans were like the house guest who never leaves. They occupied the house on Pennsylvania Avenue for 12 years. And then with only a break for a conservative Democrat who gave us “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Defense of Marriage Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the repeal of Glass Steagel, we had another 8 years of so-called “compassionate conservativism.”

Stage 2: Anger — By the time George Bush was “elected” in 2000, my denial was over. Now I was angry. I was angry first that an election had been stolen and then that the thief was hell-bent on starting a war in Iraq. For the first time since the 1960s, I marched in the streets and took part in vigils against the war. The anti-war efforts were completely ignored by the Bush administration. The anger dissipated after a few years.

Stage 3: Bargaining — By 2004, a helplessness feeling had set in. What could we have done better to elect John Kerry? Clearly our message had not gotten out. Were we doomed to have a President who was a joke to the rest of the world? Perhaps we could compromise some principles in order to elect someone who was not a liberal but was at least a moderate. The bargain we struck got us Barack Obama who immediately took compromise to a new level by adopting the Republican healthcare plan.

Stage 4: Depression — As I watched a Democrat expand the use of drones, wiretaps and deportations to unprecedented levels, depression sank in. This was “our guy” doing this. What is it going to be like when the next inevitable Republican takes over?

Stage 5: Acceptance — Just this year, as I turned 61, I came to the realization that I am never going see the kind of nation I thought I’d see when I first became socially conscious 45 years ago when my age digits were reversed. I also will never get to travel to the Moon or own a flying car. In the decade or so that I have left before senility sets in I will have to accept that I live in an imperfect world. Good ideas don’t always beat bad ideas. Altruism doesn’t always trump greed. I have officially entered the cynical sixties.

But just to be sure I don’t get too cynical, I have also this year been given a wonderful grandson in whom I can place all my youthful hopes and dreams for America. I may never get to see a kinder and gentler America where guns and wars are rare and where equality pervades every segment of society. But Bryce may see it. One can only hope.

My Kind of Jeopardy: Geriatric

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Trebek Bob

BY BOB SMITH

Lately, we’ve been watching Jeopardy almost every night. It’s broadcast every weekday at 7 p.m., but we program the DVR to record it so we don’t have to watch any commercials. This has the added benefit of skipping a couple of days and then go on a mini Jeopardy binge – watching two or three shows in one evening. Modern technology can be a great thing.

I can’t recall having watched the show regularly when I was younger, so I’m not sure if I could ever have gotten all, or even most of the answers correct. But it’s clear there would be one of two results if I were to get on the show today:
a) I’d end up with zero dollars because I’d never figure out exactly how and when to push the button on the “signaling device.”
b) I’d somehow master the signaling device, but I’d answer so many questions wrong I’d end the show in negative numbers.

The last episode we watched was part of the Teen Tournament, in which the three contestants were in 7th, 9th, and 11th grades, which makes me at least 10 years older than their combined ages. The winner was the 7th grader, a bespectacled boy wearing his Dad’s best tie bunched up in a lumpy knot. The kid had barely begun puberty, but when “HE WAS PRESIDENT DURING THE WAR OF 1812,” flashed up on the screen, he promptly buzzed in and correctly replied “Who is James Madison?”

Alex Trebek always talks briefly with the contestants about an interesting fact from their lives. This 7th grader told the story of how, during his first confession (what – four years ago?), the priest had addressed the assembled prospective penitents before taking them aside individually to hear their sins. Once the priest’s speech was done, this lad was first in the confessional booth.
However, the priest forgot to disengage his lapel microphone before settling down in the confessional, so this kid’s entire first confession was broadcast to his, no doubt, delighted classmates waiting in the pews outside.

Which normally would be a pretty embarrassing event, but as Alex Trebek observed:
“And they heard everything? But this was your first confession, right? So how bad could it be?”

I suspect he was confessing to having a secret system for cheating at Jeopardy. How else would he know about things like “MOZART’S LAST AND PERHAPS MOST POWERFUL SYMPHONY SHARES ITS NAME WITH THIS PLANET.”

My answer (a wild guess, just for laughs): “What is Uranus, Alex?”

But the correct response, from the mouths of babes: “What is Jupiter?”

I certainly didn’t know that in 7th grade. In fact, I wasn’t aware of it until yesterday. And there’s a pretty good chance, given the way my memory is drying up, that I won’t know it next year either. Or even tomorrow.

The kid won more than $19,000, and qualified to compete in the quarterfinals of the tournament against other freakishly knowledgeable teenagers. I’ll watch, and try to keep up with them, but I don’t have much hope with categories like “NEW TESTAMENT GEOGRAPHY;” “PHYSICS;” and “KATY PERRY VIDEOS” on the board.

I might fare better if they had Geriatric Jeopardy with categories like “PAIN RELIEVERS;” “FLORIDA GOLF;” “SINATRA SONGS;” “NEW HIPS;” “OLD HIPPIES.” There’d be a pee break before Final Jeopardy, and if you’re lucky, you’d get to say “Make it a true Daily Double Knee Replacement, Alex.”

Oh yeah, that’s my kind of game.

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