Will It Play in Peoria?

 A phrase that was completely unfamiliar to me before 2022, "Will it play in Peoria?" was according to Wikipedia because they do such a better job of explaining than me, a phrase traditionally used to ask whether a given product, person, promotional theme, or event will appeal to mainstream United States, or across a broad range of demographic and psychographic groups.

The "Peoria" in that phrase was Peoria, IL, which reflected middle America at the time and its Midwestern culture a the "mainstream," and nowadays I don't think it's much different: I would submit Chicago, IL as a great "test market" for any things that will appeal to wide swaths of the American public, not just the Ivy League elites on the East Coast or West Coast hipsters, and even with TikTok and a variety of other social media services that influence culture, I can still see it every time I travel through the Midwest: mainstream culture. 

Nowhere was this more reflected better than in my most recent trip to Chicago, where I spent a LONG day before New Year's Eve weekend at O'Hare Airport (Midway airport was compromised due to the aforementioned problems with Southwest), mostly at the American Airlines lounge. Families, friends, business travelers, people on vacation, families with children, all flooded through the airport on their way to different areas around the country, and all apparently needing a McDonald's or a Starbucks (depending on their priority to quench their hunger, thirst, or fatigue). O'Hare airport, at one time one of the busiest airports in the world (now that honor I think belongs to Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta) serving the second-largest city in the US (used to be Chicago before it was overtaken by LA) was featured on "Home Alone 2" as an important plot point, where Kevin McAllister (MacCauley Culkin) gets lost at the airport when his family is bustling through the airport to make it to their gate on time after waking up late that morning. Boy do I relate to that, both the rush to the airport (I'm like 20 for 23 on making it on my flight after close-shave trips to the airport, but those 3 times I missed the flight were pretty painful), and that sprint through O'Hare has always stayed with me even when I walk through the airport roughly 26 years later, like I'm revisiting a scene from my own childhood. 

Also, the visit to the airport reminds me of how far America has come since the pandemic: While China is barely coming out of it now, finally ripping off the band-aid after almost 3 years in lockdown trying to chase down the elusive white whale of zero Covid, the US is pretty much back to pre-pandemic travel rates, with less and less people wearing masks (ill-advised, IMO, but not a tradeoff people are willing to make anymore) and getting back to the lives of Christmas parties, New Year's Eve Celebrations, and rushing through airports. For some reason, I've had fond memories of spending time at airports perhaps because it's one of the best places to people-watch (better than even Disneyworld, music concerts, and outdoor parks) just from the sheer volume of people coming in and out. It's definitely not because of the jacked-up prices of food inside the hospitals or the consistently disappointing attitude I get from TSA agents (did they never get a morale boost from the movie Get Hard or at least understand the irony of being mean and condescending TSA agents?) but the idea of O'Hare airport being the hub of people going from one place to another and branching out, like life passing through and intersecting with others' lives, has an odd appeal to me. Oh and there are some weird places that American Airlines flies to from Chicago: Bozeman, MT? Grand Rapids, MI? Davenport, Iowa? And with a name trivia nerds love, Grand Forks, North Dakota. Yup, for one glorious day at the end of the year of our Lord 2022, I was at the center of it all, of civilization itself: the American Airlines terminal at O'Hare Airport. 

Flight Cancellations (航班取消)

 Due to a glut of bad weather especially in its hub cities of Chicago and Denver, Southwest Airlines has been the talk of the country this week as it cancelled thousands of flights during the holiday season, leaving passengers stranded and not knowing where its crew members were in some cases. Much like the Johnny Depp- Amber Heard case earlier this year (nobody talks about that anymore even it was the No. 1 story for weeks on end), this Southwest fiasco will eventually go away, but for now Southwest has really sullied its reputation and people won't be choosing them for a while. I'm scheduled to fly tomorrow to Chicago as well on Southwest and luckily there were other options on other airlines, who swooped in on Southwest's misfortunes (and mishandling of the situation) and capped their fares so that passengers could switch out of Southwest to them. Reminds me of the weeks after the pandemic when all airlines were issuing refunds and demand completely stopped, but the airlines were jostling with each other to not lose their airport positions (because once you lose those, you lose them forever).....right now it's the opposite problem, too much demand from customer going back to pre-pandemic levels, but not enough supply, or employees to staff those planes. 

Nowadays it's easy to cancel and switch out of flights, which reminds me of the times I cancelled and backed out of parties, plan, etc. For whatever reason, whether I was too naive, immature, inconsiderate, inexperienced, or didn't have an older sibling to tell me how to act, I took a lot of invitations for granted in my early adulthood and cancelled on things without really thinking about it (not that I was the most popular person anyway), or I tried to thread the needle and try to go to 2 different parties at the same time and leaving in the middle of one to go to another, which surely drew the ire or at least the gossip of at least one if not 2 hosts. Nowadays, having emerged from the pandemic isolation in a new city, I fully grasp the value of those invitations and wish I could do it over again, in a typical "you don't know what you have until you lose it" scenario. As a kid, you think you have plenty of friends and there will always be time to go back to certain friends.....as an adult you realize it's not always like that. If you miss out on one birthday party or don't invite someone back for something, or act in a weird or standoffish way, or just simply don't click with a group of people, those people are kind of just lost...forever. They're still alive, still the same people with they were before, but the link between 2 parties has been severed, it's like your friendship's been cancelled, and it's pretty hard to pick up the phone and try to get a friend back once it's cancelled. 

And it's not like when you cancel a Southwest flight, you can just go on their website for the next trip and see how they're doing then. I think back on so many conversations with people I've lost contact with over the years.....co-workers, friends, people I went to school with, people I used to spend every day of the week with (especially co-workers, the contrast between someone you sit with at work every day and know everything about is so vast compared to not seeing them anymore after the job/ project is finished) and the last interaction I ever had with them: did I know then that would be the last conversation I'd ever had with them? (probably not) Was there something I did to cause our friendship to deteriorate, something I could have done differently? (In some cases, maybe, but in others it's just the natural passage of time and not mutual slipping of communication that's the culprit) And then the harsher truths come to light: If we don't talk anymore, were we ever that great of friends to begin with? Did they even value my friendship enough to try to stay in contact with me? I'm sure these questions aren't exclusive to me, but sometimes I do feel if I was more popular, more fun, or people had more reasons to hang out with me, get something out of the friendship with me.....I'd have more friends, and not get the "cancelled" button. 

United Parcel Service

I've always thought that the busiest places in the world right before Christmas are airports from people trying to get home, and that may be true. After visiting the UPS Customer Center closest to me yesterday, December 23, though, I may challenge that, or at least nominate UPS as one of the more chaotic places to be before Christmas. Long before Amazon with all their Prime trucks, UPS was around with their "What can Brown do for you?" campaign and had the lockdown on delivery other than maybe the United States Postal Service. (I thought they also had the lockdown on delivery services depicted in movies, but apparently Tom Hanks's character in Castaway worked for Fedex, and Ken Jennings's famous wrong answer ending his 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy was "What is FedEx?" and not UPS, curiously. 

Anyway, the Customer Center on a Friday evening is quite a scene: Trucks milling about everywhere, people yelling to get packages out, people zooming around retrieving packages for customers, all as part of a mad dash to get ahead of Santa's December 24th deadline (presents have to get to homes before Santa arrives!). And this was 6:30PM on Friday night; it doesn't matter what day of the week it is, the only number that matters is the number of days before Christmas. A dodgeball friend just posted a very haggard, tired-looking selfie today on Facebook celebrating finally being done with deliveries.....there must be a tremendous pressure to get everything in on time, which perhaps explains why MJ's iPhone delivery didn't find its way into our apartment building: we have a security-activated front door that requires a code, so the UPS deliveryperson likely gave up trying (3 attempts!) in favor of going somewhere else to make other deliveries, hence my need to wait in line at the customer center to retrieve said package with iPhone in it. Once I handed the (surprisingly friendly, given the circumstances) worker, she went to "the back" to retrieve the package, which when I peered in through the door wasn't a "warehouse" at all, it was an open-air area with hundreds of shelves lined with thousands of packages, like one of those photos of Amazon warehouses that you see where droids are picking up packages that people had ordered. After what seemed to be about 10 minutes, she finally emerged with my package in hand; I could only imagine she went through mazes full of shelves, sifting through layers and layers of manila folders and brown boxes to find my needle in the haystack. Hope they get some rest in the holiday season (unlike MJ, who is working both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day! Some professions just are different than others- some "office workers" I know will take the day off if their internet connection is slow, such an inconvenience!) 

Plenty of entertainment options out there over the holidays since the streaming networks seem to know people are all at home without work and school obligations (and college students especially have plenty of time to binge watch shows) so there's plenty of content that dropped this past week, including "Alice in Borderland 2," a Japanese show that is based on a manga that spoofs Lewis Carroll's (aka Charles Dodgson) work "Alice in Wonderland. There is one "team game" in the show players have to play that plays very similarly to Mafia, the parlor game I've played many times with friends/strangers/ at parties. In fact, I believe Mafia is one of the best "icebreaking/fun activities" that one can play with any group larger than 5 or 6, and the more the merrier. Basic premise is that everyone is trying to work together, except there is one/multiple "mafia members" who are killing off other team members and working for themselves, but no one knows who that mafia members is (in the series that person is the Jack of Hearts, and the game takes place inside a prison, enhancing the criminal element of it). MJ hates Mafia the game; I kinda love it and have secretly yearned to play it with any group I hung out with since college, when I first stumbled into a game of it with people on my residential hall floor. There's also now an online version of it called "Among Us" that has done well, unsurprisingly to me because there's a pretty large demand of it and longevity in the concept: everyone kind of wants to be a detective and figure out who's the suspect, but for the more psychopath-inclined like me, we even more so want to be the mafia member who's lying to everyone despite fitting into the group. 

On that happy note, Merry Christmas, HO HO HO! 

Savings Account (储蓄账户, 普通預金口座, 예금 계좌)

 What a 2022 it's been for me financially- after starting the year's blog entries with "ER Nurses," my portfolio needs medical attention at an ER due to about the umpteenth nosedive this year just days before Christmas- this is one of those "coals in your stockings" years for stocks. After numerous false bottoms where the market had a prolonged slump but bounced back just enough for me to feel complacent again and hold on to my tech stocks (at least I didn't own crypto I guess!) it plunged even further down in a slow spiral of hell to me FINALLY throwing in the towel on trying to time a bottom and adopting the gloomy outlook for 2023 that the inflation and high interest rate environment dictates. It sucks but I have to put my money in a wait for it.......savings account. 

Turns out, possibly one of the only silver linings of rising interest rates is that the individual investor can also capitalize on the higher interest rates by getting some nominal interest in savings accounts, like not 0.1% anymore......now some banks are offering 3.5%, 3.75%, 4%, etc (mirroring the federal interest rate, except, a little less of course because banks need to make money!) Getting a small interest of +3.5% to 4% is better than say, oh, I don't know, a  NEGATIVE 50% return from Amazon shares this year (and not necessarily an improving outlook in 2003, although I guess it's harder to drop too much farther from here) so allocation to a savings account it is. For 2023, instead of most people's promises to lose some weight, my resolution is to stop being overweight.......in tech stocks. Damn them. 

Winter is just a bad season for people with dry skin, like me. Itchy everywhere, lotion required, static everywhere I touch, essentially death from a thousand cuts. But I can't complain; I could be in Chicago where they're gearing up for winter by "hoping for the best, preparing for the usual" (a co-worker on a call with a dry sense of humor said this about the looming winter snowstorms hitting the city delaying or cancelling many flights on possibly the worst weekend to have those issues- Christmas weekend). Or I could be in Antarctica right now....everyone imagines what Antarctica or Alaska is like in the summer to do a fun trip, but what about winter? Brrrr. I'm reading a history of the coldest continent and some strange stuff, like a plastic bust/statue of Vladimir Lenin at the Pole of Inaccessibility (constructed as part of the Cold War dick-measuring contest between US and Russia), Primus stoves used by explorers to heat stuff up easily, sealing clubs made of penis bone of a seal or walrus (yes apparently walruses have penises and they are hard enough to create a club out of it, including ones with scrimshaw on it), and a King Sejong Island on King George Island that has hydroponic (meaning growing things without soil) fruits and vegetables (hard to grow those things on Antactica, I guess). Also, King Sejong has got to be the most famous name used by Koreans for things around the world......I once knew a co-worker named Sejong, he was very proud of his name. Also, they used pee flags to mark territory in Antarctica. Yup, a pee flag is exactly what it sounds like: plant a flag and have some yellow snow around it. 

And finally, Antarctica is becoming a popular spot for weddings. Actually, now that I'm interested in all things Antarctica, I wouldn't mind going to a destination in Antarctica. I'd just bring on a lot of lotion. 

Midwest Appreciation Post, Part 2

 A year ago I read a book called the Midnight Library, about a girl on the brink of suicide who finds a magical library that allows her to live many different lives in various places of the world, like becoming a surfer in Australia, a polar explorer in the Arctic sea, a rock star in South America, an Olympic athlete in London, etc. Not sure if that's everyone's idea of a good time, but for me that's the essence of life: experiencing new things and new experiences, so that one can live many different lives within the only one we're allotted. I often wonder in other universes or other "Midnight Libraries" where I'd be now and what I'd have done, whether it's staying in China and not even moving to America, becoming a scientist or doctor, a homeless guy living in the streets (although a brutal prospect, I could honestly see myself in a different live living that way, without the drugs), being a traveling musician and traveling the world performing in front of crowds (this is MJ's dream, to be like a Ray Chen or Lang Lang or Itzak Perlman) or being a father of eight (Eight Ain't Enough! This one's a little hard to believe in this day and age but there are still some big families out there). 

One of the more likely scenarios from those admittedly outlandish and fairy-tale alternative realities is that I would have wound up living the Midwest. I've always maintained that the Midwest in general has nicer people than either coast of the U.S. (I've lived in both East Coast and West Coast), and anecdotal evidence and consensus polls confirm my hunch. Whenever I go to a Midwest town I feel like I understand the people who live there, have a sense of belonging with them that they are "confined" (trapped not exactly the right word) in the central part of the US but still appreciative of it and content with living a slower, more peaceful life in the suburbs without need of the glitzy and glamorous allures of the big cities. I once again got a taste of that this weekend in Cleveland, Ohio, not a winner of any national contests for "best and brightest city" and not a destination for any college kids trying to make it big or live the high life, but nonetheless a real city that has the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame (not my first time visiting, but first time appreciating the architectural splendor of the I.M. Pei-designed building as well as all the facts about American musicians over the years), a downtown by the lake that surprisingly reminded me of Chicago's Lake Shore. People here aren't caught up in being the latest fads on Youtube or social media and don't need to show off all their newest fashions or toys, it's a city on the Rust Belt (one of the areas that cost Hilary Clinton the 2016 election because it felt left behind by all the preachy liberals on both coasts) that embraces its own culture, where people I walk by actually say "Hi" in greeting and make me feel like a real person instead of just another customer or a non-celebrity getting in their way of meeting a celebrity or someone else who can help them get ahead in life. I'm content with the way my life turned out, but I could definitely have seen myself living a life of modesty and obscurity in a smaller city like Cleveland, just being a "nobody" in the right way. The lake-effect snow and brutal winters would have been unappealing (my legs are feeling really dry and itchy as I write this) but half the world lives in winter temperatures- there's something about bundling up and braving the outside weather together huddled together at a train station or digging one's car out of the snow before driving it, that builds character in cold-weather communities, I feel. 

MJ and I's world tour of visiting art museums is allowing me a lot of great stimulus, where Cleveland had a FREE art museum ( so far that's 2 for 2 for free art museums in Ohio for us, Cincinatti and Cleveland) that had a very impressive center square with a cool design. Note to any city that wants to have MJ and I visit: have a well-designed art museum, we'll be there in no time. 

Studying for the SAT

 Do high school students take the SAT anymore? Last year colleges started making it optional. It's a shame; I actually have some good memories of taking the SAT; I was one of those kids ready to go on the Saturday mornings with No.2 pencils in a bag itching to get in that test room, primed for 3 or 4 hours of releasing my knowledge onto the test. I think it was because the SAT represented a known entity in a chaotic time of my life that was high school, so many different stresses and opinions, at least I knew the SAT had equal portions of math and verbal, some fun math puzzles, and equal sections of analogies, reading passages, and "fill in the blank" sections, and then some fun reading passages about humanities, science, things going on in the world. Oh.....and I was pretty good at it. 

STUDYING for the SAT was a whole different thing......had to be systematic and delve into unknown world of words, words.....vignette, erudite, logorrhea, aplomb, predilection, paucity, gratuitious, etc.; that's why they coined the phrase "SAT words" for big words. But the thing about the SAT was, you COULD study for it, there were certain things about the test with its format, the way they ask the questions, and you could gear your studying towards those things, despite not knowing for sure what exactly was going to be on the exam as they could have any sort of reading passage about any topic in the world; but you knew they could only test for some finite bank of words. 

Forward to "studying for Jeopardy...." I don't know how many people are doing there out in the world, there's gotta be quite a few, and you can kind of tell who has or who hasn't when they get on the Alex Trebek stage and show off their knowledge to the whole world, and unfortunately you could tell who HASN'T studied that much for Jeopardy. It's like watching contestants take the SAT in front of the whole world, (even the jeopardy of losing points when you get a question wrong vs. just not trying to answer it is similar as SAT deducted points for wrong answers) especially with the Jeopardata box scores available now. Each night, I tally up my points and see how many times I "buzz in" on an answer (basically, if I can come up with a reasonable guess for an answer by the time Ken or Mayim finish reading the clue) and it ranges from about 40 to 48 on any given night (out of 60 total questions minus Final Jeopardy), less than 40 I'm really kicking myself or endured through a bunch of tough categories......it's a consistent quantity, and it's because the questions are generally predictable, running through a large array but still finite set of questions in the Jeopardy! "clue bank" (as opposed to the SAT word bank). And they'll reuse a lot of the same material over the years like the SAT runs through vocab words (garrulous, onerous, temerity....) 

When contestants get just 32 buzzes in, I just question whether they studied for Jeopardy. It's not that they're not smart, one lady was a consistent crossword solver which wins my admiration because crosswords boggle my mind, but she just wasn't familiar with what kind of questions could be on Jeopardy.... a 1789 search for this waterway is never going to be "the Styx" (her wrong answer) but Northwest Passage has definitely come up before, and surely will in the future. Similarly, "Presidential Facts" (final jeopardy) asked about one of the most common topics in trivia (and even more so on Jeopardy: American presidents: love them or hate them, you gotta know them cuz they're easy trivia fodder. Only 3 American presidents have married in the White House.. John Tyler was the first, and they ask about the last. You just have to have a rough timeline of Presidents in your head, (DATES, CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, TIME!) and Tyler was the 10th President. One contestant answered William Henry Harrison, who was the 9th President.......not even AFTER Tyler, which seems like a prerequisite for a guess. There's no penalty for guessing on FJ, except for the fact it's a little embarrassing and shows a lack of knowledge...and then the other lady guessed the 12th president, Zachary Taylor, which would have meant Tyler was the 10th, then 11th Polk just happened to do it too, then Taylor did it......ahh maybe she misinterpreted the clue? Regardless, not a good guess. The 25-year-old young man who HAD seemed to study for Jeopardy based on the clues he was giving (and a robust 48-question buzz tonight, better than me) did get the correct answer, Woodrow Wilson who came much later and who remarried while President, a fact gleaned if you've studied mostly Jeopardy-type facts over the years. It's an acquired taste; not for everybody I guess, just like studying for the SAT. 

Quid pro quo (交换条件, 見返り, 대상물)

 Tonight's Final Jeopardy was a Triple Stumper, but should it really have been? A Latin phrase that originally was used when a doctor or apothecary (fancy word for a pharmacist!) substituted one medication for another. I didn't get it neither, but despite the murkiness of the clue it still should have rang a bell since quid pro quo is one of the most commonly used terms, or at least read out/heard about Latin phrases due to one man in particular: Donald Trump, the infamous Ukraine weapons-for-incriminating facts-about-Joe-Biden scandal that lead to impeachment (but not conviction) and is now even more of an issue due to Ukraine actually desperately needing weapons. Somewhat sad that the term, a reasonable term for compensation/payment/trading something for something else (and really, is the whole concept of Christmas present-exchanging), is now forever a negative image in most people's minds due to Trump but also due to its ties with sexual harassment (requesting sexual favors in exchange for something at the office). I even was involved with a quid pro quo event when I ran for 1L Class President in law school, when I gave out a pen to a classmate and (I didn't ask for it specifically, but I guess my actions insinuated some sort of compensation) he voted for me in the election, citing the universal concept of quid pro quo. (There's actually a bunch of Latin phrases in the law like caveat emptor and res ipsa loquitor, which clouded my thinking on that FJ question). And what was I doing running for class president during the crucial first semester of law school, you might ask? I ask myself that too; I was just a different person in 2008, still striving for popularity and fame, visions of grandiosity, never had a real job and nothing close to any real legal experience unless you consider going to court to legally change my first name, and oddly wishing with all my might to go back to 2004 so I could still compete in high school chess. Weird dude, don't know how he graduated law school, really. 

2nd part of the blog that I didn't know how to segue into from the first: RATS! In every city I've ever lived in I've seen rats. Horrible, horrible rats......although, are they that much different from squirrels, really? I never cringe when I see a squirrel walking around in front of me or even grosser yet, climbing a tree and getting close to face level.......so why are so many of us (especially my wife MJ, who shudders at the sight of a rat half a mile away, while we're sitting in the car, with no danger of that rat ever touching her or even getting in the proximity of her) so grossed out by rats? Is it the way that the rats scurry around, the darting and shooting out of corners? Is it the thin, slithering tail that's more sinister than the fluffy, bushy tail of the squirrel? Is it because we associate rats with garbage and dirtiness which in fairness they are usually around all the time? It's some combination of all those, but it's also because of the SIZE of some of the rats I see. Maybe it's me but they've gotten huge, like I don't think my shoe could even cover the size of one. Oh and like elephants, I think humans don't want to think about things crawling around our feet and maybe getting in our feet (snakes give a similar vibe)- gives you goosebumps just thinking about it doesn't it? Maybe the only thing that will make MJ cringe worse than cockroaches, and that's saying something considering she just set up a new batch of roach traps around our apartment today to "kill the roaches where they sleep" as the kit she bought from the gas station advertises. 

You know what the SECOND largest rat in the world is? (oddly specific number, it's because No.1 is like the nutria/capybara, and that's not something everyone knows) It's the beaver, the log-rolling dam-building rats of streams and rivers. I would have no problem seeing a beaver up close, but rats? I've seen too many roadkill rats on the side of the road to have a good image of them. 

Podcast (播客, ポッドキャスト, 팟캐스트)

 Not unlike most times in my life, I'm still stuck on an outdated technology (blogs) from the early-naughts, while all my peers are on much more modern tech (podcasts and Youtube channels). Seems like everyone nowadays has a podcast or a Youtube channel that it's become a bit cliche- I wonder what's the next big step? telepathically reading someone else's mind while walking on the street? I don't know if that's that far away actually, at least in terms of sensing brain waves, emotions, etc. 

But for now Podcasting is a very useful medium (unlike say, actually talking to people you're in the same room/car/elevator with- I just found out my Generation Z sister rarely ever talks to her roommate, only through text each other even at times when they're in the house together.) and I, like everyone else, has favorites and ones I subscribe to, including a few trivia podcasts that's like a slow IV drip of trivia pumping through my veins all hours of the day, my stock market podcasts that I've grown weary of this year due to all the doom and gloom this year in particular (just depressing hearing about how much money I'm going to lose in the near future). I did get inspired by one podcaster named Jeric from the College Jeopardy Teen Tournament, who channeled his energy for the show into a podcast where he interviewed Jeopardy contestants who had recently competed on the show. Loved the podcast......but alas, Jeric, being a college student and all, possibly ran into a busy schedule and hasn't been updating. 

Should I take the leap and start a podcast? A quick google search indicates it requires a microphone and headphones and possibly some other equipment, but otherwise yes I guess anyone can start a podcast; that's the power of technology these days. What's the one thing missing from all of our daily schedules? (Ok, from MY daily schedule?) A 10-minute recap of the Jeopardy episode from the previous night and commentary on the significant clues, how hard Final Jeopardy was, etc. I find myself going on Reddit anyway to interact with the J! community, but a podcast inserts the human touch of one's voice into it and gives you that feeling you don't just get from staring at text: Actual emotion and passion! 

If I had a podcast, I'd also talk about my most recent visit to a Jeopardy live taping show with MJ, my 2nd visit in 13 years. Without giving away any spoilers from that day's taping episode, I'll say that going isn't exciting as I thought it would be: there was a long wait just to get into the studio (we were probably waiting in line for just as long as actually were in the Jeopardy studio), we had to go on a random Tuesday afternoon which is work time for most Americans but more importantly meant they only shot 2 episodes, and by the time it was over it was 5:00PM, spitting us out into Culver City and the heart of....LA traffic. Horror of Horrors. 

Other than that, though, the taping was a joy.......it was a Ken episode! (My hero; Mayim has grown on me a tad and is important to appeal to certain demographics to expand the show's audience but MJ has strong feelings on her...body movements), but the biggest takeaway for me was how fast the show was: at home I can pause the show at any time to think of the answer, and I often give myself too much leeway to think of the answer, much longer than the show would allow for, but the actual show just goes bam-bam-bam, almost no breaks, and the contestants mostly answer immediately without any hesitation. Pretty intimidating, although I do suspect at least one of the games that the competition was an above average performance from a couple really good players. If I never make it on to Jeopardy, at least I'll know I lived vicariously at those tapings and tested myself through them, and fared.....OK! And if I do make it on, at least I will be familiar and not look like a cooked goose up there or (better animal metaphor) deer in headlights. 

Now to think up some names for my podcast......Bobby's Hobbies? Bob's Pod? Robert Yan the Man with the Podcast Plan? 

The Midwest (中西部, 중서부)

 The American Midwest: ridiculed by the rest of the country as "Flyover States," they always occupied a soft spot in my heart as the region where I grew up, from 5 years old all throughout college at University of Illinois. 

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a "get the biggest hyped item" kind of guy, I'm more of a "find the hidden steals that others have discarded kind of guy." Cincinnati, Ohio is one of those discarded places that I find has some real value (even though I've only been there on brief stints, staying in the city just a few hours each time). Forget the "3 Rivers City" of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati is on the corner of 3 states of Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, driving over the John Roebling bridge will get you into Kentucky. It has free Sunday admissions to all of its art museums, of which they're a little small if you're comparing to the Met in New York or the National Mall but still reasonable considering the population that it's serving, and the people at the museums were.....believe it or not, friendly. MJ and I wandered out into the "event session area" of the William Howard Taft Museum of Art (yes, that Taft, the 27th president and Supreme Court justice) and had to back out when we realized we'd gone to the real place and came face to face with a museum worker who began to pull out something, presumably to give us a warning or something......only to find out he was giving us a business card to call the museum if we were interested in having a wedding there. He thought we were looking for wedding venues! How thoughtful (even though we live hundreds of miles away). Quaint is a good word for Cincinnatti....also, underrated baseball stadium, right on the Ohio River facing into the stream, well situated, huge facility: if only there had a good team. 

Columbus, Indiana is one of the hidden gems of the Midwest (btw, yes Ohio is a Midwest state, although it's pushing into the east a bit if you ask me, bordering both Pennsylvania and West Virginia. NOT Columbus Ohio, which bothered me when MJ and I walked around the campus of "THE" Ohio State University, 2 days before THE big loss to Michigan. To encourage student spirit they'd crossed out all the M's on all the street signs and building signs around campus, all in an attempt to get riled up for the big game. That's like one of those "don't change underwear" or "don't step on sidewalk cracks" superstitions: it had zero effect on OSU's chances of winning, and it just felt over the top. 

Columbus, Indiana, on the other hand, is a great architectural town with pieces done by Eero Saarinen, has father Eliel Saarinen, with various churches, bridges, factories, libraries, even detention centers ("The nicest looking jail in the world!" one fellow tourist on our tour exclaimed). The crowning achievement was the Miller House tour, designed by Saarinen that just had such interesting features within the house with huge glass windows and  backyard that would make any kid jealous of all the space in the back. An architect's dream and masterpiece. 

Something about places like Bloomington, Indiana- college towns in the middle of the Midwest (nowhere) with its own vibe and college town mystique (and Mies Van der Rohe buildings!) that makes me want to go back to college again. And Jimmy John's! Happy college students still get to experience the wonderful culinary tradition that is a Jimmy John's store, with all the classic menu items still intact. 

Mental Math (心算, 정신 수학, 暗算)

 Since I was a young kid, and with full credit to my late grandpa, I have been (comparatively) good at mental arithmetic, being able to do simple math calculations in my head. As long as it didn't involve algorithms, calculus, or any other higher level of mathematics, I was really good it. My grandpa helped me memorize the times tables early on, then I moved on to fractions, solving for x, squares and square roots... I was always a bit ahead of everyone else in my math class, fueling my pompous attitude of thinking I was smarter than others, when in fact I was just fast at one of the most basic functions of math, but one that does still have a bit of practical function, fortunately. I learned all squares (like square root of 21 is 441, 22 is 484, 23 is 529, etc., when I was bored in 6th grade. (Epilogue: After about 8th grade, I realized my math abilities weren't actually that great, and got my butt kicked in advanced math classes in college) 

It all paid off for me today in Jeopardy, when they brought back an old favorite (OK, one of MY old favorites: "Do the math," the category where contestants tried to do mental math on the fly. All 3 struggled, with 14-day Chris Pannullo, who in the same game answered tough brain-busters like "improved explosive devices = IED" or the Roman goddess of vengeance was named "Nemesis," nonetheless tried and failed to come up with the 2 toughest clues, what is the value of y when y=x+1 crosses the y axis, and 12% of 75 is.........Admittedly these were not the easiest clues ever, but anyone worth mental math salt should have been able to get it within 5 seconds. The other 2 contestants didn't even ring in to try. On many occasions I've heard the same sentiments expressed by lawyers: "I became a lawyer so I didn't have to do math" or by people of the general populace, "I'm terrible at math." Seems like one of those skills like tying shoelaces or unplugging a toilet that you just have to learn as a kid, and it rewards you over and over in life. And like many things in life, it requires many repetitions, mental exercises, and just effort to actually learn it, a sentiment that has deteriorated due to computers and phone technology evolving so much that we have a calculator in our pocket anywhere to go. 

If I ever become a teacher, I've wondered what subject I would prefer to teach: Foreign language? Social studies (I am a lawyer and loved history), but often I would circle back to math. At least I would know what the right answers are (as opposed to history, where people argue about the real facts all the time), and I was once good at the subject......except, was I a little too good? I feel like I might have a natural gift at doing mental math in my head, something not all students are equipped with, and I might struggle at teaching students on a basic level when I learned it pretty quickly on my own just because I "got it." Not everyone had a great teacher like my grandpa at home teaching me this stuff at a young age! 

Sweet Tooth (단것을 좋아하기, 甘党)

 "Sweet tooth" is one of many genius phrases in the English language, a neologism (newly coined word) that lets the listener know exactly what the speaker means in just 2 basic words, even giving a visual representation of it as well. Surprisingly, the phrase was coined in the Middle Ages, as even back then human beings must have discovered how great sweet things were. 

MJ's nurse friend recently gave us a a gift of cake and cupcakes and mentioned that she likes to bake and has a sweet tooth. Nothing inherently wrong about this and it was very nice of her to gift us food, but I cringe just at the idea of a sweet tooth, of the image of someone gorging on sweet candies on Halloween, of forgoing other food to have sweet items. It may be because I'm a reformed sugar-eater and realize what it does to our bodies, as well as the truth of diminished returns once you've had the first few bites of sweet stuff. Sugar really has one taste, with many incarnations, levels, and they no doubt all taste good. I find that too easy: just give kids some candy and they'll be happy; well yea sugar is reliably yummy for people, but it's also one of the foods that makes your body crave more, making you slave to it. There's no sophistication to sugar, no subtleness, it's just BOOM in-your-face sweetness; other dishes have much more nuance and layers of taste involved that only a developed palate can appreciate. 

Sugar is like a legal drug; it just hasn't been categorized as an addiction. Not to sound too hoity-toity, but I find non-sugar tastes to be much more superior than sweetness: bitterness, savory, salty, sour, spicy, even tasteless vegetables (and TOFU! see previous article) have a freshness to them that makes me feel good about myself and know that it's not going to make me feel sick if I eat too much of it, unlike unreasonable levels of candy that can just leave a pit in my stomach. I learned early on in my sports "career" not to have sugar right before doing any physical activities as it gives just a short burst of energy before crashing.....the negative effects of sugar are right up there with alcohol... just a hangover if you're lucky, or that "sugar rush" feeling that dissipates quickly. There's also the aftereffects of sugar to one's breath: that sour taste in your mouth after sugar that you feel like you need to wash out, I would just rather stick with the neutral foods that don't have the upside of the sweet foods that make you feel good for 30 seconds of mouth pleasure but then gradually feel worse, to the rock steady staple foods, like a McDonald's or Apple stock that just stay on a slow upward trajectory rather than the zigzagging motion of an Amazon or Tesla that could go up quickly but crash down (FINALLY I'm learning that stocks are like a diet- stick with the reliable and healthy companies). 

Also, the idea of a "sweet tooth" makes me cringe because the physical aspect of sweet stuff sticking to the gums and causing....tooth decay, bringing a whole new definition to that term. 

If I were to have a New Year's Resolution, that's what I'd do: lay off the sweet stuff. Rely only on fruits for sources of sugar. No artificial sugars. I know, very hard to do and a little unrealistic to avoid all sweet stuff altogether, and it makes off limits all the hyped-up food society has deemed to be the tastiest: doughnuts, candy, cake, ice cream, pies, cupcakes, and one of the biggest ones people cannot go without: chocolate. 

Earwax (耳垢, 귀지)

Reader, you might want to skip this one if you don't have a strong stomach. Definitely not around any meal times.  

One of the questions that comes up often on applications or group activities, icebreakers, etc. is the question, "What is a hidden talent that you have?" I have a hard time responding to this because there's really no good answer; I can talk about dodgeball maybe, but others can't relate to that so it won't mean anything, if I say how smart I am or something others will think I'm boasting, and I'm really not that talented (no cooking talent, no cool yoga move showing how flexible I am, not a good singer, etc.) I've always been tempted to give a cheeky response, which is that "I am great at growing earwax." It's true- more than one ear doctor has remarked that "I'm a wax factory," or "I got potatoes," or some admiration/condemnation of my ability to have earwax that accumulates so much it blocks my hearing. I went about 10 years this last stretch without going to a doctor by using store-bought solutions to clean it out, but it wasn't sufficient. When I finally went to a doctor, they dug in once, twice, then in an unprecedented maneuver, made me lie down outside the office for 10 minutes to let the solution dilute the earwax enough to let them in, that's how much of a backup there was. But when the infringing blockage finally came out? I felt so much better, like a weight was lifted and I could hear everything again. I've come to realize that that maybe a source of irritation for me, much like the earwax itself the stress of having this hearing issue builds up and then makes me cranky. It also contributes to my loud voice because I can't even hear myself speak, which makes others think I'm yelling. I guess what I'm saying is, to any other excessive earwax sufferers out there, go get checked out, don't be embarrassed. I was the same way about acne; I was so ashamed of myself I didn't address the problem early on; finally that went away. And honestly? Cleaning it out feels pretty good; no wonder people in Japan pay maid cafes to do it for them regularly. 

I've learned a lot about the Bible this past year after never having studied at all in my previous 34 years of life, quite a weird thing if you consider that I've lived most of those years in America and had plenty of Christian friends, and even in the Chinese American community there are groups with strong faith to Christianity. I sympathize with people who have strong faith to Christianity, they are stronger and more devoted than I am, that's for sure. I also watched the documentary "Religolous" by Bill Maher satirizing Christianity and most organized religions, and I can see it from his side. Coming from a third-person view of religion since I was never raised with it and never felt like religion was a big part of my life, the Bible does seem a little fairy-tale-ish, more of a story than a guidebook on how to lead one's life. In my mind the stories of Bible are like the stories of Shakespeare, some tragedies, some inspiring stories, some historical accounts of real life people, but importantly the Bible was written by people and have the people element to it, which means they also have human flaws in them. I don't dislike religion and in fact think a lot of people do need religion, as long as it's a healthy devotion and not an unhealthy fanaticism that's used to raise money for the wrong people, fight wars by the wrong people. The problem, again, with something as pure and well-intentioned as religion is people; people manipulating religion ruins the purity of it, and I wish we could all believe in some true morals and higher truths than the distorted version that human-interpreted religion has been packaged to us. 

Tofu, the Superfood

 Recently MJ made a seaweed soup, or a miyeokguk in Korean, typically eaten by Koreans on their birthday but also women who are nursing injuries, apparently. The soup was delicious with mushrooms and green onions (or was it scallions? I am rarely able to tell the difference). But then on the SECOND meal as leftovers, we added tofu, a food that is quickly becoming the most consumed food I've ever had (it's definitely risen in the ranks in the last 2 years as a staple). (Fun fact: Illinois's No. 1 crop is not corn, it's the.....soybean). Tofu is such a versatile addition to so many dishes: salty dishes, spicy dishes, soups, fried foods... it doesn't really have much taste in itself, so it mixes well with others, and it has a smooth texture of meat, so much so that at Costco I just move right by the meat aisle and grab the big box of tofus as my protein. Also for soups such as miyeokguk, the tofu sucks in the salt and deliciousness of the soup and spreads out the richness. I never had an answer to the question "if you were a food, what would you be?" (I think most people say like ice cream or something because it's sweet, or a banana for Asian people because they're yellow on the outside, white on the inside?) I'd like to be a tofu because I'm not like a star by myself (even in conversations I need to feed off of other people's conversations to be funny or interesting, I don't tell good stories from scratch!) I mix well with others, and I can enhance a group and be the missing piece to a solid plate of food, without risk of ruining it. I am what I eat, a tofu! 

I've been cramming so many facts in my brain recently that I often find myself forgetting some things I've thought I'd mastered, and I'm worried that there's a toothpaste effect of new knowledge cramming out the new knowledge while the tube (brain in this analogy) doesn't get any bigger. But I'm pretty sure I haven't written about the last complete fiction book I read, "Animal Farm" by George Orwell (aka Eric Blair, one of these fancy guys who needed a code name). I read the whole thing on an overseas trip from Korea back to US (I feel like I was the only one reading a book on the plane, everyone else was either sleeping or watching Top Gun: Maverick, the No. 1 plane movie this year) but I just breezed through the 141-pager (not enough big juicy pages of text, really a quick read). Thoroughly enjoyable knowing now that it was a parody on the Soviet Union's leadership with Stalin, Trotsky, and Karl Marx/ Lenin in the joint role of Old Major, the pig that dies in the end. Orwell certainly has a way of packing a punch right away with the animal metaphors by choosing pigs for the leaders, but so many of the events within Animal Farm remind me of parallels of today's society, even in the free-market and capitalist U.S..... to me Animal Farm is not about the horrors of bad communism, it's about the horrors of bad leadership. The 7 tenants of animals that were set forth almost all get wiped out at the end including "four legs good, two legs bad," the leaders re-writing history and blaming previous administrations for things and turning heroes into villains, those in power constantly wanting more and more and taking from the rest of the people to enrich themselves. Orwell is so masterful at pinpointing the human condition and infusing it into these animals, especially the greed: human beings are all so greedy, myself included, from the drug-addicted people on the streets wanting more drugs to the white-collar executives always craving more money (case in point: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried), people in power wanting more power (Donald Trump seeking more attention and power by declaring his candidacy for the 2024 election). History just keeps re-writing itself over and over again, and it's ironic that people don't read the prophetic books decades ago by Orwell and Huxley but instead focus on all the other distractions in the world, therefore fulfilling the prophecy that those authors envisioned. Oh, and also, it's just a good book reads well, good dialogue, lessons in morality and humanity, heartbreaking ending (spoiler alert) where Boxer the horse dies (Disney's formula of a sad ending when an animal dies). 

Luddite (反对改进工作方法的人)

 I have discussed my Luddite inclinations before (destroying of machinery, opposing new technologies), and I still harbor doubts of whether technology is a net good for society (medicinal and engineering technology for sure, but Tiktok technology? Likely not good. It's surprising and a little discouraging for the future of society when I hear stats like 2 out of every 3 members of GenZ are on TikTok.....and when you're on TikTok, you watch a LOT of videos. I can't help but think that social media and TikTok are like what cigarettes were in the early 1900s without studies into its negative health effects, and I cringe at the emptiness of libraries while TikTok's cloud-based platforms are fully jammed. 

Speaking of libraries, I feel for libraries and the book industry in general (as well as newspapers and that nostalgic feeling of running my fingers across the text of a newspaper and the crisp page turn of opening up a newspaper) and try to subscribe to as many publications/ periodicals as feasible without doing financial damage. Libraries are trying to dissipate all the information it can into the world, but now it's butting heads against the book publishers of the world because libraries are doing too good a job, especially with E-books, where they lend them out to patrons who can get the book for free without paying for it, and essentially follow that plan without ever having to pay for a book. The obvious problem with that is the publishers don't get paid for these books, and that trickles up to the writer/author writing the book, they don't get paid neither, and pretty soon no one wants to write a book (although Kim Kardashian, Stanley Tucci, and all celebrities still get pretty good traction from their memoirs and other media, another example that it pays to be famous). I can personally attest that I am discouraged from buying books (1. because I live a frugal life but also) because I can get all the books I need from the library, and then some; there's no way I'll ever finish everything I want to read, and the library just keeps popping up with brand new books, published 2022, that they stack at the entrance and other eye-catching areas. There's really no need ever to BUY a book unless I want my own personal copy; it'd better be a pretty special book then. Even a brand new bestseller, savvy library patrons get multiple library cards and join enough waitlists that they can probably get the book pretty soon after its release. Where's the money in the book industry? 

I've also heard that China's algorithms for Tiktok are much difficult than that of the U.S......China's algorithms reward science and technology education, whereas the U.S. rewards.....junk is the best I can describe it. There's definitely something to be said for TikTok as the ultimate brainwashing device, and there's a non-zero chance TikTok will be banned in the US eventually, giving Meta stock (Facebook) a huge boost that they so desperately need after failing in its initial foray into the Metaverse. But if it's not TikTok, it'll likely be another social media forum that replaces it... once the kids are hooked on the technology, there's no going back! I once did a charity drive with a chicken sandwich chain in downtown LA whose grand opening was let's say, not well received due to its stance on gay marriage, but during that charity drive we donated books to children with the ability to leave a note in the books to future readers: mine was "Books are better than Ipads." I still believe it to be true, as the empty reading rooms I go to in the library demonstrate. 

If I had won that $2.09 billion Powerball lottery this past Tuesday, I would have dedicated some to the book industry! That lucky person from Altadena, CA, if you're reading this (the chances of you reading this are likely slimmer than the chances you had of winning the lottery), the book industry needs your help! Or just buy out TikTok (or a significant portion of it and divert the younger generation back to books, the way they it was in the 1990's, the best era for human life in history!)

Waiting Room (等候室, 待合室, 대기실)

 I recently learned that one of Florida's many nicknames (Sunshine state, The Orange State, the Everglade State, etc.) is "God's Waiting Room," a fitting reference to all the retirement villages and retirement-age population in Florida. Of all the places in the world, the hospital waiting room has to be one of the more representative/symbolic.....you're just waiting there on news of a loved one who is being attended to, and it feels like life is hanging in the balance. 

I've never had surgeries or needed any extended visits to a hospital (I guess since I was born), the only things being to see dermatologists, orthodontists, dentists, and ear doctors (for earwax issues!) so I've been lucky enough not to need anyone to be in the waiting room waiting for me, but I've been in the waiting room awaiting news for a loved one plenty of times, including today. It's different for a non-life-threatening issue, but still it's a bit of a nerve-racking experience, seeing one's loved one wheeled out on a hospital bed to an unknown destination (presumably the operating room for surgery but I've never been inside an actual one!) and feeling helpless to help. I tried to keep my mind busy with plenty of books and my laptop to do work, but it's hard not to have worries related to why you're there, thinking of worst-case scenarios, and nowadays anxiously looking at one's phone to see if there are any updates through text about how the surgery is going. 

The waiting room itself is usually pretty crowded, full of other patients whose loved ones are in a similar position, everyone a little on edge as no one can be totally comfortable, and everyone would much rather be at home enjoying themselves than enduring a visit to a hospital, not to mention a unit that blocks off visitors from access to the main unit where the hospital beds are. Most people are there with their family members, but a few unlucky ones have come by themselves to get called to the back, like drawing the unlucky genetic straw or being afflicted with some unfortunate malady that has called them forth, a reverse lottery win (a $2.09 billion Power Ball lottery was just taken down by someone in the SoCal area, lucky guy/gal!). It must be pretty daunting to face the prospect of surgery or some other medical issue alone, and emotional support is pretty important, so in that sense the waiting room reflects a system of love and support, but on a more practical level the people there to give the patient a ride home after their visit. 

One of the most tenuous moments was when my Mom went in for tumor-removing surgery last year, and to prepare for the worst the family had gathered around and discussed wills, funds, in the event of the unexpected. That's when it becomes very real, and the waiting room becomes a pressure cooker of really hoping nothing bad happens, but feeling helpless because it's all out of one's hands. We can live our lives to the fullest all other times, but when we're in the waiting room the realization of how fragile we are and how tenuous life is comes crashing down like a ton of bricks. 

So it's not just Florida, we humans are all in a proverbial God's waiting room of sorts- just waiting for that time when God (or whoever it is responsible for us all) doesn't allow us to put it off anymore. Until then, here's hoping for more successful (but less frequent) hospital and waiting room trips. 

Poetry (诗歌, 詩, 시)

 Poetry, the red-headed step child of literature, glossed over by myself in high school and I'm sure plenty of others out there. It's just not a medium that connects with Americans, and that was before the advent of iPhones and TikTok to further distract us. 

But why though? Poetry is short (generally, although some poems can be quite lengthy) and packs its messages into a concise and condensed package....in this day and age where attention spans are razor thin, that should be a good thing. The issue is...I just never understood poetry! I got the most basic levels of rhyme and meter, but what makes good poetry? Why are some poems better than others? I was always in it for the storytelling, and in a Harry Potter world I defaulted to the "Harry, Ron, and Hermione walked into Gringotts" type of storytelling than the dense bush of poetry. China actually has a vast expanse of poetry with famous poets like Li Bai and Du Fu, and my grandpa did me a great service to make me memorize some of the most famous poems back when I was like 7 years old (the best time to memorize things because they stick with you forever), so I have this one poem by Li Bai that's become my default, so rhythmically pleasing in Chinese to say but filled with messages. 

Poems are also like famous songs in that they're lyrics....people love songs! Which aren't that much different than poems, except for the whole music part. Perhaps I'll join a poetry slam at some point to witness poetry in motion. Perhaps I'll discover some mystic secret about poems that can reveal why they have such a strong place in the history of writing. Until then, I just don't understand poetry yet. Maybe it's like fine wine (don't really like the test of alcohol personally), but maybe as I grow even older (I feel like I'm at a pretty ripe age already) I'll understand, kind of like understanding melancholy and bitterness along with the sweetness of life. 

Segue to tonight's Final Jeopardy question, about a famous poet who was born in Maine. Difficult question, but one that should have been narrowed down to at least a few New England poets (known as the fireside poets) based on the year of 1813, and then go with the best guess of them around that time period, the incomparable WILLIAM WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. The guy should be the first poet every American thinks of (Europe has some famous ones like Lord Byron, Tennyson, and Coleridge, not to mention Sappho going in the way-back machine), but we Americans are more culturally conversant with Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and on a much more recent and "fun" level, Dr. Seuss (I do not like green eggs and poetry, Sam I am). But it's encouraging that poetry still survives, despite not being celebrated too often, but pulled out famously at presidential inaugurations (Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb" at Biden's inauguration comes to mind, as well as Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" at Clinton's inauguration). Glad to see a world without poetry is "The Road Not Taken." 

朝 辞 白 帝 彩 云 间
千 里 江 陵 一 日 还。                                                                                         

两 岸 猿 声 啼 不 尽

轻 舟 已 过 万 重 山

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (卧虎藏龙)

 Tonight I attended the screening of the movie "Get Out" (fitting for Halloween weekend) but with a twist: the music was played by a symphony orchestra, one of those unique experiences where the live orchestra (and in this case, live singers) sang during the musical parts of the movie. I was pretty into the movie and barely noticed the orchestra was there, but that's probably a compliment on the orchestra's ability to blend in without any hiccups! I hadn't seen Get Out in its entirety before, but in a live audience you realize how much of an important role the "Rod" TSA guy is in the movie as comedic relief.....and the actor is not Hannibal Burress! Someone named Lil Rel Howrey. Hilarious. I do think the social messages in Get Out have a bit of risk in inflamming racial tensions, whether intentionally or not, but.......I was able to just enjoy the movie. A very very good movie taken just as a movie. 

Jordan Peele is one of these crouching tigers, hidden dragons of Hollywood: a hidden talent on MadTV and comedy sketch shows that really broke out into the mainstream with Get Out. That is, for anyone who wasn't aware, what the title phrase of the 2001 movie with lots of Chinese people doing martial arts: in the "Jianghu" times of ancient China, there are people with hidden talents who can come along with great powers, and just when you think you're the best, someone comes along and shows they are better than you (and in many cases, kill you, like in the movie). So don't underestimate anyone. 

My problem in most competitions is actually the opposite: I kind of overestimate others and get intimated, psyching myself out and losing the mental battle before the battle even begins. This is likely because in every competition in my life, I've known going in that I'm NOT the best. Every violin recital, every spelling bee, every chess tournament, every tennis tournament, every dodgeball tournament, I've gone in with the conscious knowledge that there's undoubtedly somone better than me, and I shrink back and feel inferior. I also have this weird tendency to attribute strong abilities in people just by looking at their faces, like "oh man that guy looks smart" or "wow they're tall and athletic, they're going to crush me." Sometimes those fears are confirmed, but sometimes they're not; it's an irrational concern. I wish, really wish, that one day I could walk into a competition knowing for sure that I was the best in the room, the best in the competition, the best in the world at something. But sometimes I've got to remind myself: "Maybe I'm the crouching tiger here. I've prepared, I've done what I can," and even if it's not true, it can only help my confidence and clear my mind of all the doubts and get myself to think positively. And maybe I AM selling myself short: In 2017 I do think for a small window of time (maybe like a couple hours) I was one of the best dodgeballers in the world value-wise, a true hidden dragon. 

This past weekend on jeopardy showed that there are some serious hidden dragons in the Jeopardy world: Rowan Ward really came on strong in the second week of the Second Chance Tournament, earning her shot at the upcoming Tournament of Champions starting this week (could not be more excited about a tournament, and likely more engaged in this than any sports match I've watched because I'm invovled in it and can compare my own skills to the competitors') Rowan cruised through her first game Matt Amodio-style by ripping through the bottom (hardest) clues first, ironic because she was beaten by Matt Amodio in her first chance, betting big on DD's despite having a big lead, and holding it on her way to a lock game before Final Jeopardy. That's intimidation, and if I were her competitors I'd have been intimated, like, "oh I thought I had studied for a whole year and was ready for this, but there's someone else more ready and more prepared than I am. What now?" That would be a huge psychological blow to recover from, but it's important to remember that all Jeopardy champions have weaknesses, even the best (Rowan got a relatively easy literature question wrong about Ralph in the Lord of the Flies, I've seen Matt get something like "Kickstarter" wrong), and there's ALWAYS someone who's smarter than you or better than you at trivia. I know that in this lifetime I will never be the best at trivia, but you know what? You don't have to be. You just have to be better on one day, one game, one question. Or in my case, FJ: Rowan's closest competitor Jack came roaring back in the second day of the 2-day total point affair, and it all came down to the FJ question in Artists, one of my stronger categories thanks to our whirlwhind around-the-world Art Museum tour. The clue came up and I was sure immediately: Rene Magritte, a special artist for both MJ and I, but a triple stumper for the 3 contestant. One of the better feelings I've had watching Jeopardy, a satisfying end to a great tournament. 

Death by a Thousand Cuts ( 凌迟)

 A pretty gruesome title, but death by a thousand cuts was actually a form of torture employed just a few hundred years ago, from the 900's to as recently as the 1900's, reserved for traitors or some other crime deeded extremely heinous in China. It's nowadays also a Taylor Swift song (what isn't?) and describes love and heartbreak over an extended period of time. Of the two, I'd prefer the latter. 

Death by a thousand cuts is also what it feels like to be a consumer/homeowner/normal human being in today's society. Everything costs money, of course, but the expenses really pile on due to certain parts of life, like buying a house: I just received back to back emails soliciting for a home warranty (do I really need it? It's different than homeowner's insurance), for a city special tax (on top of the other taxes that they are paying), and later this week I must pay the condominium fee, the storage supply fee, and oh, of course, how could I forget the mortgage, the main course of the thousand cut smorgasbord of poo-poo platters. It just feels like you the business world of graft, corruption, expenses, fees, whatnot won't give you a big bill that you get hit with all in one lump sum, but instead over the course of time extract as much money as possible from you like taking monthly (involuntary) blood donations. It's all designed that way of course: people might balk at the high price if they put all the expenses up front, so the subscription model breaks down the money into small payments whose dollar value seems much less than the big scary number earlier, but it's actually more insidious. 

Car repairs; don't go to the dealer; they try to bleed you. Independent auto shops: some will try to bleed you too. When buying my next car, it's good to remember that price of buying the car is just the beginning of the price of owning that car: haven't even thought about gas, car insurnance, repairs yet. 

The biggest thousand-cut generator, of course, is having children. From the day they are conceived (even before they are born, and sometimes even before conception wth pre-natal treatments) they require expenses, from medical costs of giving birth to diapers to baby food to childcare to education costs to.......it's mindbloggling how many of those costs are. The reddit forums of people against having babies (the childfree subreddit) are very adamant that these are unnecessary costs, it's better to save all your money doing something you love and having all your time to yourself instead of always having to attend to the kid and for the first few years always having a faint smell of feces in the air, the planet doesn't need any more kids any way, and that parents who regret having kids is becoming an epidemic (kind of like pet owners who adopted a pet during the pandemic, now there's a surge of pets being given back and getting abandoned). It does really sound compelling.......until you talk to the other spectrum of people who have kids who couldn't have imagined not having kids and love every second of it (my friend who I talked to today being an example, who I would have thought was a little selfish and stingy about his time, but who says he loves being a parent every day), and parents who love their kids "200 percent" and who profess that having a kid changed their lives. So who's right? It's kind of hard to tell, and both sides are compelling. Am I desirous of a death of a thousand cuts? No. But I'm just as afraid of not risking something bigger than myself for fear of suffering the death of a thousand cuts and missing out on something that's bigger than just me (of course the childfree subredditors would say this is just an illusion and that you become a slave for life to this kids in exchange for that 2 minutes a day of a smile that the kid gives you, but hey that's just like their opinion, right? - Big Lebowski) 

Falcon (鹘, ファルコン, 매)

 I like all kinds of animals (did you know that elephants have the longest term of pregnancy of all mammals, at 2 years? That seems like a long time to be pregnant and carrying another life within your body, I think MJ would not appreciate that), and falcons definitely are high up there on the list. I once volunteered as the audience member at the L.A. Zoo to be the lucky guy to hold up 5 dollars for the falcon on display to come grab it from my hand and return to it to the falconer (the falcon trainer). I looked cool for the kids at my summer camp for awhile, so I appreciated both falcon and falconer in that endeavor (don't remember if it was a peregrine, kestrel, or merlin falcon, should have paid more attention). 

But this post is about a very famous historical figure in trivia circles but also possibly explorer and adventure circles, Robert "Falcon" Scott, who set out to be the first to reach the South Pole in 1911 as part of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, but was beaten by Roald Amundsen who got there weeks before Scott did and planted the Norway flag there to prove it, as if to signal a huge "I win" to his rival Scott. Falcon was already low on provisions and energy by the time he reached the South Pole, but to make it worse his crew encountered a blizzard on the way back to his ship the Terra Nova, and he didn't make it, freezing to death with the rest of his crew. What a shame, and makes me wonder how devastating it must have been to be Mr. Scott: your life's ambition, the thing you've been working for your whole life, is foiled by your rival, but then the effort also cost you your life. If I'd known better, I would have just let Amundsen get the glory and stay the heck away, maybe try something else! I wonder if Scott either a) knew he would die pursuing the ultimate goal or 2.) knew Amudsen would get there first, would he have tried anyway, just to say he did it? Maybe.......he's now one of the most famous explorers ever, and one of the most popular Jeopardy trivia answers next to Queen Victoria, Henrietta Lacks, and Charlemagne. 

Whenever I watch Jeopardy and great players piling up long streaks like current superchamp Chris Pannulo, I wonder worry that I will wind up being Robert Falcon Scott.......going through all the preparation and work and spending all that extra time learning about arcane and trivial (by definition) facts, only to have others the goal before I do. Reaching the South Pole would be something unattainable, like breaking Ken Jennings's 74- game winning streak, the gold standard in trivia, which is impossible for a guy like me who never did Scholastic Bowl, never read through the encyclopedia as a kid, and never got into trivia until 2 years ago, but like a 10 or 20-game winning streak has been done and requires just a bit (actually a lot) of luck. But when people Chris Pannulo have great games (buzzing in on 51 out of 60 clues, for example) my blood kind of boils; he's Amundsen to my Robert Falcon Scott; he got there first and there's nothing I can do but watch. 

You know what's worse than being Robert Falcon Scott, though? The crew members who followed Falcon through thick and thin, unflinchingly on the worst place on earth, or at least the coldest: Antactica, only to die with him and not even get his glory in the historybooks. That really sucks. 

Oil Change (换油, オイル交換, 엔진 오일 교환)

 It's time for a synthetic oil change! A sentence that I've never been excited for, like going to the dentist. Much like visiting the dentist's office, it's not so much the service of the oil change or teeth cleansing that I'm worried about, it's what can happen in addition to just the basic service, the extra repairs that the mechanics find that "needs urgent repair" and I wind up leaving the repair shop with a much larger bill than I anticipated (or budgeted for), and a gnawing sense that I might not even have needed that repair. 

In the case of dentists, it's an easy fix: I stopped going to the dentist! That one time where a dentist asked me for cash to repair lesions in my teeth at an exorbitant rate really traumatized me because I've never trusted any dentists ever again, and pledged to keep my teeth clean on my own. Not the greatest long-term strategy, but so far it encourages me to floss more and self-repair; although maybe one day those wisdom teeth need to come out. 

No such luck with car repairs: although I have seen people doing oil changes themselves, it seems like a hassle, requires patience, and the right oil. After dropping my car off, I endure what I imagine must be similar to the feeling after dropping one's kids off at school, a sense of anxiety and dread of something terrible about to happen...and usually at repair shops the bad news arrives in the form of my "friendly" service person informing me of all the necessary repairs and the cost. Oh, the cost......a small portion of the cost is for the actual parts, but the labor cost is how they get you........just like lawyers need to get paid by the hour, the mechanics need to get paid by the hour too, and just like attorneys throwing out fancy legal terms to scare customers into agreeing on services, mechanics giving me terms like "coolant fluid flush," "brake fluid flush," "spark plugs renewal, valve cover gasket leak," and "corrosion on the batteries." They all sound awful, don't they? And that's not even counting the 4-year-old set of tires that had been worried about due to driving in some rough city roads. "Oh no, that's actually fine. We just need to rotate the tires next time you come in." Shrug; shows how much I know about cars. 

MJ and I have agreed on our next car being at least a hybrid vehicle, and possible an electric vehicle (if we are lucky enough to get selected from the waitlist). Sure repairs will still be required, but at least we'd be repairing a car we believe in. Not to disparage my 2013 Honda Accord at all, it's actually done a heck of a job (not counting all those repairs we had to do), but it hasn't ever broken down in the middle of the road due to engine failure; only once due to me driving on excessively hot roads and probably literally burning rubber. 

Cars are a true weakness for me, so I've brushed up a little on them recently: the definitive history of cars, from the pioneer vehicles to the Ford Model T to the modern electric cars. I often try to look at different cars on the freeway and associate their shape and appearance with their make and model, but the history of cars didn't start with Hondas, Toyotas, Chevrolets, Nissans. The Mercedes-Benz, for example, figured almost as prominently in the early history of cars as the Ford Model T, as well as Cadillac, Rolls-Royce, and even some French brands like Renault and Citroen. Maybe in a different life I could appreciate cars for their elegance and beauty and some super fast cars' ability to get to 200mph. In this life, though, all I see in cars are big lumps of steel transport who sips on ever-more expensive fuel and is full of parts, each of which can cost quite a lot at an auto shop to repair. I wish I was friends with auto mechanics. 

Vapid (乏味的, 気まぐれ, 맛없는)

 My posts have taken a negative turn towards complaints and grievances recently, and that's probably due to the fact that I wake up every day knowing that I gave up almost all of the gains I've ever made in the stock market in the last 10 calendar months, or possibly because MJ and I have yet to achieve our goal this year, a year that's quickly becoming quite frustrating...Also I echo the thoughts of one of MJ's managers, "I don't like when people make complaints that they don't have a solution for." I'm guilty of the same thing. 

The word "vapid" means, according to the dictionary, offering nothing that is stimulating or challenging....which is what Celebrity Jeopardy epitomized last night for me: a show that featured celebrities (nothing against Candace Wu, Ike Barinholz, and Jalen Rose personally, they just embody the typical celebrity nowadays) who are only famous as entertainers, answering clues that have been dumbed down for a national TV audience (not just the syndicated show, this one was on a major TV network, which still means something even in our current era of streaming networks) to have mostly clues about celebrities, actors, movies, and mostly the entertainment business. Our general society has an appetite for those sorts of things, unlike anything that really matters like science, improving the world.....our society just is in a constant hedonistic state (a hedonic treadmill if you will), like eating junk food constantly without any real nutritional values (in this case, stimulating or challenging content). And that's me included! I engage in all the fun stuff without wanting to worry about the hard stuff......life has just become a constant search for the next thrill, the next thing, without challenging myself. I cringe whenever a TV show category and/or a movie category comes on knowing most shows are just mindless entertainment and will pass by and end in a few years and not be remembered nor have any impact on society, but I nevertheless engage because we relate to those things, they're the fun stuff, they're the candies/ ice cream of life. We crave them. 

What brought this on? I was listening to the "Go Fact Yourself" podcast (an interesting but catchy name) with Brandon Blackwell and Amy Schneider, 2 trivia legends, and Brandon's self-selected specialty category was the Period Table of Elements, an excellent scientific category that I envy him for memorizing every element (there are 118 elements, and they're already seeking to create No. 119 and No. 120!) The podcast brought on a special guest who had literally written the book on the Table of Elements, a professor of UCLA......and I'd never heard of him. Our society just doesn't know many scientists anymore, nor do we reward their findings with fame/ recognition. For example, name a famous scientist in our modern era. Maybe Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Maybe Bill Gates, Tim Berners-Lee, who's still alive today? Anthony Fauci (more of a celebrity who benefited from the pandemic). I don't really know any of the Nobel Prize winners for physics, chemistry, etc. Science seemed to be much cooler in the 20th century and before, with revolutionary inventions and legendary scientists the Curies, Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Edison, etc. Now we just know characters from the Big Bang Theory. Maybe it's because scientific innovations have slowed down? Mankind has everything it needs, the rest is just convenience, coming up with faster internet and faster smartphones? Maybe, but it definitely has something to do with the celebrity culture of worshipping people great in sports, music, entertainemtnt, etc. In an ideal world, more people would read the autobiography of Richard Feynman (Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!) than "Bossypants" by Tina Fey, or more people would show up to a science convention or space camp than an NFL football game.......but no. Our society is content with the vapidness of our culture, and the money follows the eyeballs/ selection of the general public. Now I kind of get why my parents were disappointed at me for not choosing science as a profession since they were both chemists/ research scientists. 

The Catcher in the Rye

 Catcher in the Rye is the best choice for All-American novel. I say this because in the age of low attention spans and low interest in books, JD Salinger wrote a book that actually makes you want to read it, no offense to any of the other candidates out there, most of which are so long-riding and look so daunting that people can't and won't set aside time to actually read it. Moby Dick, by all accounts, requires a handbook of all the different Bible allegories that are within its dense chapters, not to mention all the intricate industry-specific knowledge about whaling that Melville accumulated in his time on a whaling boat; East of Eden has that one basic retelling of the story of Abel and Cane, but its winding tale through the Monterrey region makes it just a tad inaccessible. Because there's so many things I haven't read that I want to get to, I don't like spending more than a weekend (maybe like 6 hours max) stuck in a book. For someone like MJ who takes months to read a single book, it's damn near impossible (for some reason she bought the thousand-page "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace, which has like 30 different plot points and even more characters to keep track of.......no way the general population gets through that nowadays. Other than that it's a great book. 

The Catcher in the Rye actually reads similary to this blog (I'm not trying to compare myself to Salinger). It's the rambling thoughts of a young man who's dropping out of college and thinks everyone he meets is phony, and details taking the train to New York City and spending time there. That's like a third of all the entries in this blog! It has dialogue, important to keep people like me awake, and it's set more or less in the modern era (before cell phones, so the storytelling is pretty relatable and Holden's thoughts are very relatable: the pressures of going to college, seeing through people who don't act genuinely, and the young man's desire to have sex. It even has recommendations of other classic books to read like The Great Gatsby, the Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa! 

Speaking of Great American writers, It's October, so it's Edgar Allen Poe month, with all his morbid writing and scary stories.....I went to a Poe festival over the weekend where there was dramatization of his short story "Berenice." Very unsettling story not unlike all his other stories of being buried alive, coffins, tell-tale hearts, illnesses.... there was also a couple there dressed up as Edgar Allen Poe and Virginia Clemm, his wife.... all black, heavy black makeup, it was like a Sex Pistols/ Green Day concert. As much as the stories give me the creeps, I appreciate that there are still festivals celebrating legendary authors... it's getting to be a dying breed, I feel like my interests are all aligned with the previous generation of orchestra concertgoers, book readers, and Jeopardy! viewers, which is why I usually end up as places with small crowds and minimal lines, which suits me just fine but also confiness the number of people I met and what I can discuss at dinner parties. I do feel a bit like Holden Caufield, a little isolated from society and dubious of how it works. 

Conflate (混同する, 합체)

The word conflate is interesting in that it has 2 different definitions, but the one I think of is to confuse 2 different things for each other. For example, I often conflate 2 different things that have nothing to do with each other into one thing in my mind, so when a clue asks for "This wife of Andrew Lloyd Webber was a soprano who also sang with Andrea Bocelli," I confounded (another word that I conflate with "conflate" that means almost the same thing, mixing up 2 different things) Sarah Brightman (the soprano) with Sarah Bernhardt, the French stage actress. Or strudel, the layered Geramn pastry dish with sweet filing, with streusel, the German crumbly topping of flour, butter, sugar. The novel "Metamorphosis" by Kafka and the poem "Metamorphoses" by Ovid. "The Stranger" by Camus is often confused with "The Alchemist" by the Brazilian author Coehlo in my mind for some reason, as well as other names/words/concepts that I just didn't learn fully and didn't learn correctly the first time, thus I have to go back and reconfigure the wires in my brain to separate them apart. Moldova the country with Moldavia the region in Romania. Gigi Hadid the model with Zaha Hadid the architect. Thomas Cromwell the advisor to Henry VIII and Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England many years later. Moussaka, the Greek lasagna dish, with souvlaki, a gyro-like Greek meat dish. The star Sirius, brightest star in the night sky, with Canus Major, the constellation that it's located in, because they're both dog related. Rin Tin Tin the dog with Tin Tin, the cartoon character. Josh Gibson the Negro League baseball player with Bob Gibson the Cardinals pitcher and Harlem Globetrotter! So many things! Why can't all these names be obviously distinct from each other???? As the great pop singer of my youth Avirl Lavigne once said, "Why the hell you gotta go and make things so complicated?" 

Small details like the above likely won't matter in the big picture of life, but some bigger conflations will, like confounding money with happiness, or confounding "going out on the town" with having a good time. In my twenties I often felt like I needed to do something, anything on Friday nights to justify the Friday night because that's what everyone else was doing and I assumed everyone else was having a good time without me, but I've learned that going out and having beers, going to bars can actually get boring for me and I can't wait to get home, and that often those ideas of a good time on Friday night are just the entertainment/ restaurant business advertising themselves and artificially creating demand. Aka, making me feel like I need something that I don't need. 

Here's a bigger question though: Am I conflating having kids with happiness? From all the pictures on social media and the general consensus within the larger group of society, I've been lead to believe that having a child/children is one of the greatest joys in life, and I still believe that it is. However, I also thought weddings were a given and a celebration, which it can be, but 5 years after having our wedding, I feel like it was a little overhyped by the wedding indusry.....it's a fun party where I knew everybody at the party and I got to be the star of it, but I could have hosted any other party (Game of Thrones party, dodgeball reunion party) and had almost as good of a time, with a fraction of the cost. Especially nowadays with "eloping" being all the rage and people actually encouraging couples to skip on the wedding (I often heard guests who felt bothered and troubled by being invited to weddings, like it was a nuisance to go or have to send an obligatory gift) I've reconsidered my stance on weddings. So will I reconsider my stance on having kids? It's hard to know until I do it, just like I'm sure I would be wondering what my wedding would be like had I never had one. Unlike a wedding, however, that lasts just one (magical) night, having children is permanent and one of the most irreversible decisions 2 people can make. I see all the cute baby pictures, the excitement that expecting parents are oozing with, the professional family photos that they have of 2 kids and a dog, and I definitely want that life, but am I conflating children with only those happy images and videos? A work employee, mother to a young child, once confided to me that she thought childbirth was one of the tricks society pushes on all members in order to sustain its members, to keep the species alive, that actually it's a lot of sacrifice and the consensus for parents doesn't include all the burdens one assumes.

They're all good points, and I would be wise to consider all those before Fools Rush in (Selma Hayek and Matthew Perry movie, I often conflated Matthew Perry with Matt LeBlanc). I'm still in favor of having children because I've always had a great relationship with kids, I like teaching kids, and always wanted to provide a life for someone else and add a loving member of the family, but I also know that it doesn't always end that way and that my relatively carefree life would become much more care-ridden and anxiety-filled. I know these things, but I still would like to go on and have a child anyway.  

Karate (空手道, 空手, 카라테)

 Just finished watching Cobra Kai Season 5, a very nostalgic TV series that caters to 1980s kids who grew up with Ralph Macchio and the Karate Kid. The series has evovled over the various seasons to be about less about karate and more about growing up in the San Fernando Valley as a high schooler (and also the used car industry in Encino and Reseda- for anyone like me who's ever wondered what it's like in those neighborhoods off the 101 driving from downtown L.A. Northbound to Santa Barbara- well, the Cobra Kai/ Karate Kid universe is a pretty good depiction). I've also wondered what I would have become had I not stopped going to a Chinese school-sponsored karate club back in middle school and stuck with it past just the random demonstrations we did at schools (I vaguely remember going into a classroom with tables and desks and having to perform a karate routine in front of other parents and students- really wish there was better video technology back then to get a sense of what I looked like doing karate moves). 

It's surprising to me why karate/ other martial arts don't get more traction for students in the U.S. Perhaps it's because there are so many other activities that dominate the scene, like football, basketball, and surprisingly, soccer- one of the more popular sports I hear kids play, as did I, I suspect because of the ability to let the kids run around and tire themselves out, making the parents' jobs easier. My sister got into Tae Kwan Do in college and claims she can beat me up nowadays despite never testing that thesis out, but her case gives me an explanation of why people avoid combat sports: potential injuries. She had to go to the hospital and get treated for $3000 worth of a hospital stay despite just getting a couple Tylenol or something. (Side note: the U.S. healthcare system is a pyramid scheme on top of a scam. MJ and I recently experienced a doctor pushing a surgery on us that we had doubts about whether we actually needed, or it was the hospital trying to market more medical procedures to up their bottom line so they could bill the insurance companies beaucoup dollars, subsequently making everyone's insurance premiums go up). Neither middle school nor high schools taught any karate or martial arts, the reason likely being illustrated in Cobra Kai: If the whole school knew karate, everybody would be fighting each other in the hallways. Combat sports will always have a hard time gaining traction with a school board especially in today's environment of prioritizing "safe spaces." Even if people like Daniel LeRusso (the original Karate Kid) promised that karate was just for self-defense. 

Knowing karate would be at least an ace in the sleeve in some situations: I've never gotten into a physical confrontation, but there's been a few times I've wondered on a night run whether the couple guys in front of me meant any harm, and that's when karate would be useful as a last resort. Likely it would just be another outlet for my competitive drive and to proceed in the system from the lowest belt (white belt) to black belt. If I've learned anything about myself, it's that I have low pain tolerance, so I might have trouble with people getting shots off on me, although I'd be a lot more afraid of being choked out or having my arm broken in jiujitsu rather than blunt force harm like karate, where as long as I protect my head area I should be OK to deal with striking damage and just bruises to various parts of the body. 

Cheating (作弊, 不正行為, 부정 행위)

 When I watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire with Regis Philbin back before 2000, I was just a kid and knew very few of the questions, but I was fascinated by the trivia format and Regis's way of talking to the contestants, as well as the fastest fingers competition, the catchy music: I loved it, even before I had seen Jeopardy, which of course has lasted longer and been more of a consistent force in American TV. But Millionaire definitely had its moments especially at its peak in 2009 when it aired in PrimeTime, and I could see why. It never occured to me, though, that the format of its live audience and 10 other contestants surrounding the stage could leave the format so ripe for cheating, but that's exactly what happened in the British version of the show in 2000, when Charles Ingram colluded with his wife and another contestant to win the million dollar grand prize. There's a Youtube documetary of the whole incident, and it leaves me without a shadow of a doubt that cheating occurred and that Ingram received help to win the million dollars, as it did the jury in the criminal case against Ingram, giving him 18 months in prison. As unclear and confusing as the evidence in the Adnan Syed murder cases is, the case against Ingram and wife and co-conspirator was just as clear, cut and dry. Ingram at multiple times said he was going to go for one of the answers, but after hearing a cough, changed his mind. 

I've never really seen cheating in person, only heard of stories of people cheating on exams by writing notes under the lid of their hats, having secret notes somewhere, writing it on their hands, having special glasses, etc., etc., but I've never busted someone red-handed: I'm usually paying attention to the test itself rather than other test-takers, so it was pretty interesting to watch a case of cheating on national TV play itself out with a system of coughing when the right answer came out. Millionaire used the multiple-choice format, with the right answer coming up in one of the 4 answers, so it allows potential cheaters to just signal the right answer, rather than have to feed the answer from nothing to the contestant playing, and especially with the long pauses during the questions allowing the contestant to think, it's almost shocking that others didn't try to cheat before him (I guess other than the fact that there are hundreds of cameras in the studio and sound devices, etc. that might catch you). 

The Ingram Case is actually a great case on human greed: Ingram "won" the million dollars using the cheating strategy, but because he attracted more scrutiny by going all the way that high (and more chances to get caught), whereas Millionaire would have likely let it go if he had stopped at $125,000, maybe even $250,000. Indeed, right after winning the million his wife seemed to have chided him for something, which turns out to be likely breaking their plan and going for more money than agreed upon. At some point Ingram, in that chair, likely saw that the plan was working, it seemed like a cinch, no one had said anything, so why not keep going? Speaking from some experience with a guilty conscience like playing "mafia" or other similar games involving lying and deception, when you've gotten away a few times with a lie, it fuels one's bravado and confidence that no one finds out, and then greed (I know that feeling from the stock market and not taking profits when the market is at an all-time high) not being satisifed with the money in hand.....always wanting to go for the 2 in the bush. Sad, what a little money/power/love can do to someone who's never had any of those things before. 

America apparently loves scandal, and there have been plenty of sports scandals like the Houston Astros sign stealing scheme (someone used technology to steal the opposing pitchers' signs and buzz it to the hitters so the hitters knew what pitches were coming), New England Patriots Deflategate (deflated some of the footballs to make them easier to hold on to), Spygate (used cameras to film opposing teams' practices), etc., but this is the first time I've heard of game shows. I was thinking if there could ever be cheating on Jeopardy!, and it definitely seems less doable: they are free-response questions that need to be spoken by the contestant within seconds of the clue coming up, so it's very unlikely anyone from the audience can help, and even having a buzzer or some sort of earpiece link with someone at home with Internet access to speak to you the answer would not allow an accomplice a chance to type it into Google and search for answers. The only thing I could see in the future is some advanced technology like a brain chip inserted into the contestant's brain to immediately google the clue like Watson did and come up with a most likely answer, or maybe a Google glass device like in "Iron Man" that processes the clue upon seeing it and spits out an answer in the glasses? That actually......seems doable one day. Oh and the other way would be if one of the writers that had access to the clues/answers sent them out to a contestant.....hmm, I'm sure there are safeguards there, right???? Watch out, Jeopardy showrunners!