Send in the Clowns (小丑, ピエロ, 시골뜨기)

Clowns have always been a curious concept for me.... actors who dress up in costumes and heavy make-up and try to amuse people, make them laugh. My first memory of clowns was watching Bozo the Clown on TV and wishing I could play the Bozo Buckets game of tossing balls into the buckets. Little did I know as a kid that society would make clowns into a character more synonymous with horror and fear, through hit movies like "It," "Killer Clowns From Outer Space," etc. My most recent obsession with clowns, though is a good one: The song "Send in the Clowns," made famous in the musical "A Little Night Music" by Stephen Sondheim. No matter if it's sung by Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra, or Judy Dench (all renditions can be found on Youtube), I find the song not only musically brilliant with qualities similar to Debussy's Claire de Lune that hits a chord in my heart, but also the lyrics describe ironies and rejections in life, something we're all familiar with. It's true for me that although happy songs are memorable and make us happy, usually sung with a crowd of friends and family at parties or something, the sad songs are the ones that truly resonate with us and are much more profound and have deeper meaning, just as it's human nature to react more sensitively to loss than to gain. Similar songs like Donnie Darko's "Mad World" by Gary Jules and "Memory" from Cats have carved a notch in my memory bank for go-to songs when I'm feeling down or in need of inspiration. 

Studying for Jeopardy in the past year has given me so much knowledge that I didn't know that I really needed to know; the categories are often summarized as diverse and multi-faceted, but 3 main categories stick out: Geography, history, and literature. I would argue that sub-categories right behind those, kind of like the 4 oceans v. 7 seas, are Bible, entertainment (TV+ movies +musicals, etc.) , science, human body, music (classical + modern).  Recently, though, I've found that the categories have 2 different types of "sticky materials" that glue them all together: People, since the history of the world primarily consists of humans (the interesting and juicy parts anyway) and there's usually a person or many people behind every one of the other categories, and TIME, one of my favorite ways to remember things. Not just for historical facts (I love chronologies in history books, btw) but all other ways that can involve time like timing of inventions, when movies came out, when authors published their books, what year prizes were given out, when Rhodesia turned into Zimbabwe or East Timor split from Indonesia, etc., etc. time is one of the unifying factors, and Jeopardy uses them very liberally to give context to its clues, such that going down every year of movies like "what were the biggest movies of 1967? 1968?" would be a huge help for any trivia nerd. (Btw, 1980's is underrated as one of the best eras of movies ever). The category that it helps the MOST in is Final Jeopardy, where contestants have more time to think about the clue and narrow down their guesses based on date. One Final Jeopardy clue I just saw asked something about in 1919 this man won the (Blank) award but became more famous for the historic feat 8 years later). I knew nothing in the clue except that the year 1927 was the subject of a Bill Bryson book, and the most prominent fact about that year was Charles Lindbergh made his Transatlantic fact. Boom. A crucial Final Jeopardy clue deciphered just by time. Other times it matters are like "This 1988 movie used blah blah blah...." It was Who Framed Roger Rabbit, an answer that stumped even reigning 35-day champ Matt Amodio on his incredible run and would have eliminated him had his closest compettior gotten it right, but could have been narrowed down if I had just went through all the biggest hit movies of each year. 

Time, time, time. The most scarcest resource we all have, and some of the most important information that we can obtain. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan