Essay: The joys of minutiae

The essay schedule isn’t always going to be fluid, and I apologize for not having one yesterday. But, hey, here’s one today. And it’s very lighthearted about. It’s about trivia and Jeopardy — I omitted the exclamation point in the essay for readablility — and why I love both.

Ehm, it’s not the most focused thing I’ve ever written. (It was originally about something totally different and somehow became this homage to trivia.) Hope you enjoy. It’s after the jump.

For an archive of essays, you can go here.

There used to a be a poster in my grade school that said “knowledge = power,” and though I now know that not to be true, I’ve always found it an intriguing prospect.

Of course, I now know what really is powerful: trivia. What else lets you hold conversations in bars with a variety of members of the opposite sex, gets you free bar tabs in quizzo and allows you to write articles about a bunch of different subjects. Or, hey, even blog posts about them.

I prefer my trivia in the more thinking man’s style, and not usually mindless, stupid facts. (Except for sports trivia. Then mindless facts are okay, because I know some of them.) I like trivia that you can figure out the answer to. At quizzo the other week, there was a question about the largest state east of the Mississippi. (We didn’t get it, but it was fun to figure out.)

But, oh, the king of all trivia is, of course, Jeopardy, the greatest television show not named Arrested Development right now. And it’s not some sort of hot-for-a-minute Who Wants to be a Millionaire-style quiz show — oh no, the current version has been on since 1984.

I’ve watched Jeopardy since I was little. I didn’t used to do so well, but in recent years I’ve watched the show enough to be able to answer questions well. (For some reason, Henrik Ibsen comes up a lot in Jeopardy. Much more than in all other television shows now that Henrik Ibsen’s Flying Circus has been cancelled.)

Last night I listened to Jeopardy in a cab. Usually my cab rides are pretty uneventful. I don’t start conversation unless there’s some sort of ridiculously compelling reason. For example, one time there was a dead deer in the road. That required some talking and laughter. The only other memorable time I’ve had on a train talked with a guy who had come from Angola the year before — he made me guess what county he was from; I obviously did not get this correct — and who was driving a cab to help pay for his daughter’s education at Harvard.

I left my apartment last night around five of seven, jogging to Spruce to catch a cab. When I got in, the cabbie was listening to the end of World News Tonight on the radio broadcast of ABC. (It’s the first station on the dial. I have no idea why this channel exists, but it’s been there as far as I can remember.) We listened to the end the final news report and the cabbie flipped off the radio.

I figured we’d be spending the rest of the cab ride in silence. But he turned around at the next red light. “Hey, you want to listen to Jeopardy?” he looked back at me.

I thought I was going to have to miss Jeopardy tonight. I’m addicted to the game. I’ve been trying to get on for a long as I can remember. I estimated after Ken Jennings’ run ended that I missed only about 10 shows of his 74-match winning streak. If I’m near a television at 7 p.m., it’s on ABC and I’m watching the lottery and then Jeopardy — and turning the channel as soon as the show ends to avoid having to see Wheel of Fortune.

(On a side note, I’ve always thought it was weird that these two shows are on back-to-back in Philadelphia. The first occasionally has some pathetic performances sneak on, but for the most part everyone on Jeopardy is pretty on the ball. Wheel of Fortune is like hangman, only easier since you can buy vowels, and the contestants seem to be people who didn’t do too well in hangman in grade school recess. I’d be on either show if I had the chance, of course. Uhh, hello, it’s a game show, they’re all fun to play.)

“Of course,” I replied to the cabbie, probably a little too excitedly. We listened to the show — he did about as well I did, though I got the Daily Double and he didn’t. We conversed, we leaned, we had fun. Better than a normal cab ride. And this is why I love quiz shows (ehm, but mainly Jeopardy). So much that when I got to my friend’s house I forced him to watch the rest of the show. And I’ll probably watch tonight, too.

Oh, and if anybody asks me what the largest state — in land area — east of the Mississippi is, I know the answer is “Georgia” now.