Interview with Jeopardy Champ Celeste DiNucci

As most of you know by now, Philadelphian Celeste DiNucci pulled off a spectacular run at the recent Jeopardy Tournament of Champions and came away with a $250,000 victory. An occasional quizzo player, I asked her about her experience on the show, how quizzo compares to Jeopardy, and about the rock star-like rager I assumed she had after her win.

JGT: First of all, congratulations, Celeste. Tell me, how intense is it to be up there with Alex, the bright lights, the cameras etc.?

Celeste: Well, not nearly so comfortable as sitting around a table in the Black Sheep or O’Neals, but it also seems to go by much more quickly.

JGT: How would you compare Jeopardy to quizzo, in terms of difficulty?

Celeste: Two totally different games, actually. Quizzo seems to be about scouring the corners of your brain for all of those inexplicably irrelevant yet interesting facts, whereas for Jeopardy, there’s more of a core of information that makes up the Jeopardy universe. You know that you’ll be asked about Shakespeare, you know that you’ll be asked about science, you know that you’ll be asked about some aspect of American history. And often you can sort of piece information from different areas together to come up with the right response.

JGT: Do you think that quizzo would be a good or bad study aide to someone who wanted to be on Jeopardy?

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Scores this Week

O’NEALS

Young, the Old, and the Restless 93
Close Enough For Government Work 85
Not Giving Thanks 82
Cornbread Mafia 77
Werewolf Bar Mitzvah 76

BARDS

Sofa Kingdom 99
Hurtin’ Bombs 95
Tom Turkey 95
Alec Trebek Runs Full Speed With a Boner 87
Narcotyzing Dysfunktion 86

LOCUST RENDEZVOUS

The Jams 104
River of Rocks 94
Can I Has a Cheeseburger? LOL 91
1022 79
Tom and Kathleen 75

BLACK SHEEP

Satan’s Minions 92
Philly Softcore 91
F Ghandi, Squanto’s My Favorite Indian 91
Mayor’s Minions 86
The Kiddie Table 85

Ryugyong Hotel Gets Screwed Over by Esquire!

Esquire Magazine recently did a “7 Wonders of the Totalitarian World“, and guess what got nary a mention? The most amazing hotel on Earth. Esquire, I don’t know who did your “fact checking”, but anyone who thinks some crappy ass statue of some dude from the Congo is more impressive than a 105 story hotel without windows is out of their mind. Are you serious? This is an outrage to those of us who appreciate totalitarian wonders. I expect a front page apology in your next episode, or I will be canceling my subscription.

Is this front page anti-semitic?

There are some people who are outraged that this appeared on the cover of Philadelphia Weekly last week. The money line: “Where did your art director receive her training?” wrote Solomon Moses in an angry letter he sent to PW and then forwarded to the Exponent. “At the Heinrich Himmler Academy of Design?”

Turkey-Tacular Tonight!

The D-Bag bars will be filled with D-bags tonight, so I am certainly hoping that the nerd bars are filled with nerds! We had a great turnout last night, hope for more of the same tonight. The wild car round is a doozy! Nobody broke 100 last night, and only 4 teams broke 90.
LOCUST RENDEZVOUS
6:15 p.m.
BLACK SHEEP
8:00 p.m.

See ya tonight!

Philadelphia wins Stanley Cup!

Oh whoops, never mind. That’s just my old roommate (and native Philadelphean) Duff with the Stanley Cup. This is the closest a Philadelphean has been to the Cup in over 30 years. Duff works for EA Sports in Vancouver now, and the Cup made an appearance at his office. Had he stolen it and brought it back to Philly, he would have been worshipped as a God here for the remainder of his life.

MyQuizzo.com, ship up or shape out

When they first came out, it was a great thing. The good people at Myquizzo.com were gonna give everyone in Philly a source to go to to know when and where to find a quizzo that night. Even better, they were gonna do reviews of the various quizzos and bios of the various quizmasters. It was a great set up. And then, nothing. Under news, they have made one entry in the past year and a half. The site is covered with ads for porn and various annoying pop-ups. The Dive, which hasn’t hosted quizzo in over a year, is still listed, while the Rendezvous and the Black Sheep are not. Come on, guys. Either do it right or shut it down. You’re the first thing that comes up on google when you type in quizzo, and your half-ass site is giving the game a bad name.

Around the Horn

Quizmaster Chris reports that some corporate quizzo entity is trying to make it’s way into Philly. That doesn’t bother me so much as the fact that, as Chris points out, this corporate entities website doesn’t mention Philly in it’s history of pub trivia in the US, but does mention New York. Which, um, has virtually no quizzo. That’s like talking about the United Nations and mentioning Philly but not New York. Except this is worse, because people care about quizzo, and nobody cares about the United Nations.
Why can’t we limit guns in this city? Because idiots in rural PA need them to shoot rare animals. I so hope that bears raid one of these redneck towns and eat all the villagers. That would be awesome.
Cataldi’s column this week was much better. He actually veered off his McNabb/Reid dead horse diatribes and wrote about how cheap Phillies ownership is. Since this is something that drives me clinically insane, I’m glad someone is writing about it. This ownership is, instead of trying to build a champion around it’s three superstars, trying to take advantage of them to get people in the park while keeping payroll low.

MVP! MVP!

Philly Sports Shorts

Point spread for the Eagles-Patriots game? 23 points. That is simply unbelievable. I am quite sure it is the first time a 5-5 team has ever been a 23 point underdog. And keep in mind that Super Bowl III is considered the biggest upset in NFL history, and the Jets were only an 18 point underdog. Even still, would you take the Eagles and the points? Honestly?
The Phillies tried to score Mike Lowell over the weekend, and even offered a better deal than the Red Sox, but he stayed in Boston. Jerk.
Good news for Lancaster native and Barnstormer fan Chill Rob A. Von “5 for 1” Hayes has just been signed as their manager.
Announcement in about half an hour to let us know if J-Roll won MVP.