If you've been following my life closely via this blog, you know that I've tried out for "Jeopardy!" four times in four years and passed the contestant test each time, but haven't been called to be on the show yet.

I've been willing to take a day off work to take the test, but now that I'm unemployed, I figured I might as well go down to Culver City and see a "Jeopardy!" taping in person. Now, I was already familiar with the studio (because I've taken the contestant test there), and I was already familiar with what happens during tapings (from various Internet sources), so all I can say is that things went pretty much exactly as I was expecting. But any psychological advantage can help if I ever do get called to be a contestant, and I think I have a (slight) edge over another contestant who hasn't set foot in the studio before.

That said, it's a little disheartening to see just how fast the "you can ring in now" light around the board flickers on and off when there's a contestant who's very quick on the buzzer, and I won't know how good I am on the buzzer until I get called to be a contestant and am actually standing there on the stage.

I'm not going to reveal the results of the three shows I saw -- heck, I'm not even going to reveal what dates they air, just in case I find myself in a situation where I can place a wager on the outcome.

In his weekly column on NFL.com, writer Gregg Easterbrook frequently complains about NFL game predictions that include a final score, especially when that final score involves an unlikely combination of digits.

For seven or eight seasons now, I've been using a shareware Mac program called Pro Predictor to predict the winners of NFL games. It was last updated in 1999, so I'm pretty sure it's been abandoned, but fortunately, the programmer made "in case there are expansion teams" and "in case the divisions get realigned" provisions, so it's been humming along perfectly well. I haven't been using it for much, just Yahoo! pick-'em leagues, and this year, a football pool at the school where my mother works.

Pro Predictor does indeed make predictions that include a final score, and that score often involves an unlikely combination of digits. But this week...



I think this is the first time it's ever gotten a score exactly correct, although ti's been correct about the point spread reasonably often. For my own personal picks this week, incidentally, I went against its advice on the Giants-Eagles and Panthers-Bucs games, and won the pool at my mom's school. (As you can see from the screen shot, the computer is .695 on its picks this season. I'm .714.)

Rupert Holmes's "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" has a bunch of fads of the late 1970s packed into it: yoga, personal ads, making love at midnight in the dunes off the cape, even health food. But who would have thought that, in 2005, the only thing in the song that's become obsolete is the simile in the first stanza? "I was tired of my lady/We'd been together too long/Like a worn-out recording/Of a favorite song." Go ahead -- try to wear out an MP3!

25 years ago, when I was hearing Christopher Cross's "Ride Like the Wind" incessantly on the radio, there was a lyric that went "And I've got a long way to go/To make it to the corner of Mexico."

I just heard the song again, and it turns out it's "To make it to the border of Mexico." Which makes less sense -- who says "the border of Mexico" and not "the Mexican border"? Songwriters trying to wrap their ideas around a certain rhythm and rhyme, that's who.

While we're at it, it turns out that in "I Can't Get Next To You," the Temptations are singing "I can make the seasons change just by waving my hand," not "I can make a super train just by waving my hand." But having the power to create super trains out of thin air would be much better than making the seasons change! Right?

I've now met both of my neighbors for similar reasons. A couple of months ago, the man who lives in the apartment to my north came to my door in the morning to ask if I could let his car out of the garage because he couldn't find his remote control. And then yesterday evening, the woman who lives in the apartment to my south came to my door to report that she was locked out, and to ask if she could climb over the wall that separates our balconies to get in through her sliding glass door. Didn't work -- her sliding glass door was locked. (She ended up going to the manager's mother, who lives elsewhere in the building, to try to find the manager and have him let her in.)