The King is Dead - Long Live the Queen
December 2, 2004

by Ivette Ricco, President of Femmefan.com

It's tough calling my mom. She's alone, elderly and suffering from a variety of physical maladies. Plus she lives in Puerto Rico, over 3,000 miles away from my home in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But yesterday I had a reason to call, a reason aside from the fact it had been 6 days since I last spoke with her and I had better get on the phone and off her shit list. A reason that was likely to put a happy note into the conversation, and remind me of how often she used to laugh. I was looking forward to making the call.

I waited before hitting her with the big news. I asked how she was feeling, how she was getting along, what the doctors said about her knee, and got the latest in this week's chapter of family gossip.

But once we were done with all the family business I asked her.
"So mom, did you know that guy you hate, the white rat on Jeopardy, finally lost?"
The timber in her voice changed immediately and there was a slight sneer and chuckle when she responded. "I know, they finally got somebody who wasn't stupid. Everybody has been so stupid, they don't know nothing."
"I hate him. I think he won like $3 million dollars, that ugly m----- f-----."
I told her he had won about $2.5 million dollars. That seemed to sober her a bit.

After we laughed about the guy, and how he was beaten by a woman, we chatted some more and then said good-bye.

It wasn't until later that I realized that the last time I visited my mother, was in June 2004 and the reason that the visit had been memorialized in the following story was because of Ken Jenningss, the Revenge of the Nerds.
Wow! That means that Ken Jennings was on Jeopardy for 6 months! No wonder my mom was pissed off!

The thought of how quickly six months had gone by made the memory and the conversation poignant. But I have to thank that m----- f----- Ken Jennings for giving my mom someone to loathe and giving me a reason to smile when I mention him and mom in the same sentence.

Ken Jennings – Revenge of the Nerds

July 26, 2004

Question - He has racked up over $1 million dollars and is the all-time champion of the long running syndicated show, Jeopardy.
Answer -Who is Ken Jennings?

I long ago stopped watching Jeopardy. But, whenever I make a trip to visit my 83 year-old mother in Puerto Rico, I am obligated to sit through reruns of Matlock, In the Heat of the Night and Walker Texas Ranger, followed in short order by Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

So it was this June that I found myself sitting in a pool of my own sweat in my mom’s living room in Carolina Puerto Rico, where the temperature was 94 and the humidity was 100%.

After fulfilling my obligations as the good daughter for the day (trips to the mall, trips to the doctor, trips to the pharmacy, wash the car, put up a curtain rod) I reclined on the sofa (which she keeps covered in plastic, a throwback to her days in New York City) to take a nap.

I was starting to drift off when my brain picked up the Jeopardy jingle, and then, just as I was starting to dream about California and fog, I heard my mother yell “that m----- f----- is still winning. Why can’t they put somebody on there who can kick his ass?” “These people are stupido, what ass-holes”.

Screaming profanities with a Spanish accent is nothing new to my mother; it’s a technique she perfected in the Bronx. However, I couldn’t understand why she was tossing f-bombs in the way of Alex Trebeck. Curious and startled I sat up to see what was causing this uproar.

And that was when I first gazed upon the Nerd-King, Ken Jennings.

Ken Jennings, the software engineer from Salt Lake City who has shattered all the records on Jeopardy. Ken Jennings whose record-breaking run began June 2, 21 days before my arrival in Puerto Rico. Ken Jennings mild mannered Nerd. Jennings who shattered a one-day record on the program by earning $75,000 on his 38th consecutive victory.

The Utah software engineer's winnings stand at more than one-point-three (m) million dollars, so now he will take a little break.

That's because "Jeopardy!" goes into reruns Monday, July 26, 2004 , with no new shows until September sixth. Jennings will be there to defend his championship. He's already beaten 76 challengers.

Jennings from Salt Lake City is married, with a year-old son, in true Championship style he has promised to give ten percent of his winnings to the Mormon Church.

I asked mom why she didn’t like the guy, after all it’s much more compelling to watch a man playing for a million dollars than a lousy $5,000 or so.

She said, “I hate his face, he looks like a white rat!” Oh-oh, she hates the way he looks, she hates the way he talks, she hates the way he shakes his head when he answers, she hates the way he acts as if he doesn’t know the answer, thereby raising mom’s hopes that he will lose and then drive a stake through her heart as he goes on to bury the competition.

Apparently Ken has raised the blood pressure and ire of many a senior citizen.

“Esther Long's day job is a pollster for long shot presidential candidate John Kerry, but by night she heads the largest game show activist network in North America , Grandma's Against Game Shows (GAGS). Long, 58 of rural Plano , has headed the organization since 1998.

"When I first became active in GAGS, our intention was to steer older Americans away from long hours of game show watching on television," states Long. "Though it's not well known, game shows are the number three cause of Alzheimer's in females; behind soap operas and bearing more than one delinquent child."

Until recently, Long's rather benign duties as president of GAGS has included issuing press releases, spearheading nursing home protests and the occasional speech at a new age health convention. But Ken Jennings has changed all that. "No one can be that smart. He has won every show for over a month now. It's all very, very fishy."

Long has at least forty notebooks full of single spaced scribblings detailing her suspicions about Jeopardy and it's reigning wunderkind. "Look at some of the questions they have asked him. Question: What is the minimum TGL width under normal atmospheric pressure in a superconductor? Answer: 14.7 mm. Question: What is the capital of South Dakota ? Answer: Pierre . Question: Why is Britney Spears so popular? Answer: Because male puberty now runs from age 8 to age 38."

"I mean, who could possibly know the answers to all three of those questions?" asks Long. "This guy is either a genius or something weird is going on. And we know he is not a genius. How many geniuses do you know that live in Utah ?"

"There are other things too," says Long. "I have kept detailed listings of every opponent Jennings has faced on the show. Look at some of the people he has competed against: a traffic school instructor, a feminist poet, a state senator from Vermont , a TV weatherman, an environmental activist; I mean, c'mon, he clearly has a huge intellectual advantage at the start of every show."

Long has many suspicions, but she says one tic of Jennings proves that the game show isn't on the up and up. "Ever notice how sometimes he pauses when he is about to answer a question, then tilts his head to one side and shrugs his shoulders while looking off into the audience. A few seconds later, he taps his ear and winks at somebody off camera, and poof--he answers the question correctly. I suspect this whole thing is rigged and they are feeding him the answers through nanotechnology."

If Long's allegations turn out to be true, Hollywood may be looking at the largest television scandal since John Turturro exposed the shenanigans on the rigged game show Twenty One in 1958.”

Courtesy of: www.thespoof.com

I on the other hand enjoyed watching the Nerd-King; he is so perfectly boring in such a perfectly Nerd-like way.

As of this writing Jennings is still the champion, my mother has stopped watching Jeopardy because she hates Jennings rat face and wants the m----- f----- to lose.
Sorry mom, but it looks as if Nerd-King is in for the long haul, best get your priorities in order and go back to watching “Bubba” on “In the Heat of the Night”.

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