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This message forum is an ongoing discussion about anything and just about everything ... within reason.  One thing our class was good at was having opinions.  Almost 70 years of life experience certainly qualifies us as experts on most everything!   Ask a question ... give an opinion ... share some insights ... it's our web site, it's our forum.  That said, it's probably not a good idea to get into arguments about politics, religion, and the like.  While we're experts on everything, we also have a wide range of values and beliefs. This site belongs to all of us ... the whole range ... and we are not here to isolate, alienate, or subjugate anybody.  Of course insults, humiliation, sophomoric barraggadocio, and demented humor is expected behavior among some of us less mature people.
 

Lauren Dieterich

Here in Arizona, all we have to worry about are rattle snakes, scorpions, coyotes and 3 months straight of 120 plus degree days. I saw another picture of a 'gater with a golf ball on it's head. I read that when that happens, you get to play the hole over.

Garry Sellers

I guess I'm just not an Anderson Cooper fan.  He's doing ok but I even liked Aaron better.  Did I read the credits right?  I think I saw that it listed Ken Jennings as the producer ... not the executive producer who I think is still Mike Richards. What are we going to do if they pick the wrong permanent host/hostess?  Guess we would have to start a JH/HM protest ... Jeopardy Host /Hostess Matters (a.k.a. Get A Life)!

Jim Cejka

Garry,

Ken Jennings is a “consulting” producer, whatever that is. 

Aaron’s been the only guest host so far, and probably for the future, that hasn’t had their own TV show or regular TV appearances (well, speaking appearances). 

Just FYI – hosting Jeopardy is a truly hard marathon. Roger’s “two weeks” were filmed in 2 days, 5 shows a day, with one day of how-to-host coaching/preparation. The host has to pretty much carry the show, and get the timing right, plus ad lib, read and judge the answers, segue two games, final Jeopardy, commercials, and wrap-up, all with minimal rehearsal or editing. Then he has to look cool, calm, fresh, and collected, change clothes, etc. for each show as if it were a new “day.” Those 2-day shoots wrapped up after 8pm each day. For all that, I think he did an outstanding job for a non-pro TV guy. 

As he does, Rogers apparently prepped like it was the Super Bowl, watching hours and hours of old Jeopardy tapes. Even Richards said Aaron remembered and brought up things he and the staff had forgotten. 

So, we can hope. I think we all want to see someone low-key like Alex, and Rogers fits that role. Besides, every other sports headline has him leaving the Packers, getting traded, disgruntled, et., etc. Rather see him do Jeopardy than play for someplace else, like the 49ers. 

Nancy Davison (Boerger)

Hi Jim,

How did you become such an expert in All Things Jeopardy? If you are that informed about something so mundane, I can only imagine what an expert you must have been as a medical professional. I think that when I've "fallen and can't get up", you're the person I'll call.

Lauren Dieterich

I've been watching/listening to Jeopardy since Trebek started hosting. I've read that Jennings is not likely to be the permanent host of Jeopardy. He's involved in a lot of behind the scenes regarding Jeopardy and  hasn't made many friends. LaVar Burton has just been added as a guest host, by a write-in vote. He appears to be the one who will be Rogers biggest competitor as host. Rogers has mentioned that the entire season of Jeopardy is taped in 46 days. I'd hazard a guess that most of the guest hosts know that they're not in the running as permanent host. But, time will tell, as to who will be the new host.

Terri Levenhagen (Hoornstra)

I found fhis article on a Google search about Aaron Rodgers' stint guest hosting. I see ratings went up  and he wants the job. I vote for him - although LeVar Burton is coming up. He could bring his whole now-grownup audience from Reading Rainbow over to Jeopardy. Not to mention the Trekkies!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/aaron-rodgers-turn-as-jeopardy-host-leads-to-ratings-spike-for-show/amp/

Jim Cejka

Nancy, thanks for the compliment, but I should warn you - when I get down, even on purpose, I can hardly get up either, so I don't know if I'd be much help. (Jeopardy, mundane?)

Jeopardy ratings may have gone up with Rogers because he followed the Whatzit of Oz. They might have gone up if Attila the Hun emceed after that. Or, check how many more people watched with Rogers, and check the population of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. The numbers might match. 

Nice coincidence that the entire year's worth of shows is filmed in those 46 days - which just happen to be the football off-season for Rogers.

As for LaVar Burton, I think he'd be excellent, as long as he doesn't have to wear those eye things. Supposedly, these guest hosts aren't really "auditioning" for the permanent spot, so in the end, we could all be suprised by who gets the job. 

Jim Cejka

OK Jeopardy fans - anyone watch tonight's (Saturday 4/24) Jeopardy rerun? It was fun watching Alex, who always could pronounce all those foreign words, come out with really interesting pronounciations of Waupaca and Waushara on a question about Wisconsin. 

Jim Cejka

RIP Michael Collins - the 3rd man, but not on the moon, Apollo 11.

How far we've come since then. Up and down in space shuttles, orbiting space stations, thousands of satellites floating around the Earth, probes beyond our galaxy. And, now we're flying a helicopter on Mars, and pushing plans to go back to go back to the Moon in a couple of years. Think how that will be with today's technology!

Lauren Dieterich

I made printed circuit boards for 33 years. There is a saying in the pcb industry that if aeronautics grew at the same rate as electronics; we would have walked on the moon the day after the Wright brothers flew.

William Nelson

Lauren,

Where were you working when you were making printed circuit boards?

I worked at the PEC manufacturing factory on 31st Street just north of Capitol Drive from '62 - '66 and '68 - '70. Started as a draftsman and left as the Sample Shop Manager. The hiatus was due to Selective Service. That part of the industry was on it's way out. I enjoyed the first stint more than the second. Still stay in touch with my last boss there.

Lauren Dieterich

Bill,  I worked at Photronics, Inc. We were on 126th and Silver Srping, when I started there. Then moved to a purpose built building on 87th and Bradley Rd.  I was third shift supervisor when I left. At one time, every military aircraft in the US had circuit boards that I worked on. The space program, too. Then 3 guys from India bought the cmpany. It was a real fight to keep them from dropping our military certs. It took us 3 years to get them.

William Nelson

Lauren,

I do remember Photronics. I thought about hitting them up for a job when I was tiring of the hassle of the Sample Shop. We were setup to make a few pieces for the customer's engineers to try out. I had the best 18 ladies in the company, but there was no way they could keep up when we had a huge order dumped on us by management that was physically impossible to fulfill on time. Upper management didn't want to hear our concerns. That's when I decided I needed to use my GI Bill and a state scholarship to go to MSOE. Also had to support a couple of kids at the time, so settled for an Associate's in Communications. Glad I did it. Wish the ladies in the department didn't have to go through all that. I understand they shut the department down about a year after I left. 

Jim Cejka

Jim Cejka

Garry Sellers

Memorial Day ... The Indy 500 (which used to actually be raced ON Memorial Day).  "The Greatest Spectical in Racing!" ... until television ruined it for me forever.  It was the only national car race I ever followed, almost always sitting in my backyard with the radio near my ear, not to be interupted unless one of the kids lost an arm or a car crashed through our front window.  Sid Collins, the voice of the 500.  AJ Foyt, the Unser brothers, Mario Andretti, Tony Bettenhausen (killed testing a new engine design), Roger Ward, Parnelli Jones, Eddie Sachs (who died in a '64 crash while I was listening in the Philippines), Jim Rathman, Rick Mears, Gordon Johncock and on and on.  Collins lead a team of reporters stationed around the track, each reporting progress from their narrow perspective.  While TV insists on following only the leader and one or two other cars, the radio reporters would follow the duels between drivers fighting to move up to 10th for a few laps or they would follow one driver as he weaved his way from the back and into contention.  They reported oil leaking from a contender or blue smoke trailing another competitor. They had stopwatches to measure closing distances.  They made it exciting, almost heart-stopping. 

And then those same cars, same drivers would be at the Milwaukee Mile track at State Fair Grounds the next Sunday!

Now TV cameras follow a couple of cars, around and around and around.  They have great stop-action replays of crashes which they play over and over and over ... and then show replays of previous years' crashes.  Or video of an irrate driver throwing his helmet at a car that had caused him to crash.

IT'S ALL SO BORING!!!!!  The only good thing is that I hear this year there is a race team consisting almost entirely of women ... driving, on the pit crew, mechanics.  I hope they kick butt!

But now, I don't even bother to look at the race results because I won't know any of the drivers anyway, including the woman driver.

Terri Levenhagen (Hoornstra)

One of the best ways (for me) to observe Memorial Day is to watch the National Memorial Day concert on PBS. It features outstanding musical performers (Gladys Knight and the Four Tops still rock!) but more than that, there are real stories of Veterans' experiences read movingly by an actor with the photos accompanying the narration. After the reading the actor goes up and greets the veteran in the audience. These stories don't glorify war. They tell the soldiers' real experiences, not holding back the trauma. If there's anything that can honor  veterans, this is it! Last night, they honored Viet Nam nurses and the Rangers, the first all-black unit airborne paratroopers in WWII. They. had to scale back this year because of COVID, but I found it very moving nevertheless.  It is still available on the PBS app. 

Jim Cejka

So, Garry, cars going round, and round, and round, and round, . . . for a couple of hours is BORING! I agree. The technology today has taken a lot of the “driver” out of the equation, and so much statistical blah-blah is as palatable as finger nails on an old blackboard. For several years, I “moonlighted” as a cop with the State Fair P.D., and worked those week-later races at the Milwaukee Mile. I never was into cars and stuff, but working the race, especially in the pits, was awesome. Those drivers you mentioned and their crews were really neat people, but you can’t appreciate the sound of those cars from TV. In person, the whine of those racers really told what fine-tuned machines those things were. Incredibly impressive. 

Excitement wise though, what about the latest GOLF tourneys! I mean, not those ones like the PGA or Schwab for the youngsters, I mean the PGA Tour Champions outings for the “senior” golfers, the ones we can empathize with. 

Excitement wise #2, have you noticed a guy named CEJKA has won two of those Tour Champions tournaments in the last three weeks? Now we’re talking about something worth watching.

William Nelson

Jim,

Is the golfer named Cejka any kin to you? Would he admit it if asked?

When I was a kid, I listened to the Indy 500 on the radio, too. On Memorial Day, we were normally at our cottage, which didn't have TV. I was jealous of my friend, Dan Farchione, (Class of June, 1961) who went to every Indy 500 while we were in high school and stayed in the infield for the race. His uncle was into midget racing, big time, and he was the one that got the family together every year at Indy. I hadn't thought about his uncle's family for quite a while, but recently, Dan's cousin, who I think is that uncle's son, was in the news in another sport. You might have seen a news report up there. He caught a record bluegill in Lake Havasu, AZ. A 6.2# bluegill is a BIG panfish! He was there, participating in a bass tournament, when he caught it. Bet the talk of the big bass changed for a while when they saw that one.

My ETS from the Army was May 20, 1968. I'd already made up my mind that I was going to take a couple of weeks off after I got home and include a trip to see the Indy 500 myself. At the time, I was a pen pal with the sister of one of my buddies at Ft. Monmouth, NJ. After 9-months of training there, we were sent in opposite directions. He went to Germany and took his wife along, while I was sent to Ft. Bragg, NC for "future reassignment to a restricted overseas area." She and her cousin wrote to several guys in all branches of the service and it amazed me how they'd send one or two letters, and sometimes goodies, too, without fail, every week. The only lull was during my cruise to Danang. I bought a roll of adding machine paper and wrote a daily letter to her on it and sent it to her when we got to RVN.

I asked her if she'd like to go to the 500 with me, and she agreed. As it turned out, I was processed a couple of weeks early and another buddy and I got out on May 8th. We enjoyed the race from the cheap seats in the second turn, but we really had a good view. Marty Robbins drove the pace car. It was the year of the STP turbines but, as I remember, none finished the race. Bobby Unser won that year in the same type of Offy that had won the previous dozen or more years. The only downer was getting stuck in the infield. Right up until the day of the race, there was doubt if they could run it, because it had rained every day for over a week and more was predicted. We wound up in the infield parking lot, because we were caught in traffic and that's where we ended up. During the race, the majority of parked cars, including mine, sank into the mud and were mired. A big bunch of guys banded together to push each other out and toward the exit. We finally made it out a couple of hours after the race ended and headed back to her home in Mt. Prospect, IL. That was our one and only "date." I always regarded her as an adopted sister. Last time we saw her and her family was at her wedding. She married a pen pal from the  Air Force.

Jim Cejka

Bill,

When I was growing up, we figured that a name like that had to be super unusual, we only knew of a few Cejkas and they were all relatives. Then grandma met another Cejka, basic downtown Milwaukeese guy, but we couldn't figure where he belonged in the family. Once, in the Navy, I was taking names at sick-call and the guy says "Cejka", and, like all "Cejkas" automatically spelled it. I thought, ok, he's pulling my leg. Nope, again, we couldn't find a connection, but had a good laugh. Years later I met a professor from U. W-Madison, who studied the Czech countries and lead people on "family finding" tours over there. He said the name is actually Bohemian (which hasn't existed since 1918) and the name is about as rare as Johnson is over here. Now that there is Google, that seems to bear that out. Oh well, so much for being unique, although I do have very unusual finger prints. (I know, everybody's prints are unusual, but mine are unusually unusual.)

As for Alex, I doubt, without trying 23 & me, a connection. My dad had six brothers and sisters, and when they were alive, they all pronounced it different. We finally settled on the way Alex pronounces it, so, luckily, between him and the announcers, maybe more people will start to say it right (or at least what we think is right).

Garry Sellers

Yeah, I know what it's like to have your name mispronounced, Jim.  (BTW, how the heck do you say Cejka?) I feel your pain ... NOT!

And speaking of pain, our favorite subject, Jeopardy guest hosts.  It's unanimous, everybody rates Dr Oz last out of 9 so far.  TV ratings have Anderson Cooper next to last and Katie Couric is close.  It's no surprise that USA Today rates Mike Richards as the best with, surprisingly to me, Buzzy Cohen second.  Buzzy is a bit over the top for my taste.  I'd have gone with their third choice, Ken Jennings as second.  USA puts Bill Whitaker as next to last but I don't agree.  And most data puts Aaron Rodgers in the middle or upper middle.  Poor Aaron, he doesn't get what he wants at home or on Jeopardy.  Mayim Bialik is getting favorable support but I think she's too stiff and uncomfortable. Besides Richards and Jennings, I think the best is yet to come. 

This from the person who thinks he's an expert because I know one out of 25 answers and even then get buzzed out!  But I'm the all-time champion on Wheel!!!

Jim Cejka

Gary,

I hate to differ with you (not really, sometimes it's fun and stimulating), but I think Mayim Bialik is the best so far. I was all set to go down with the ship for Aaron Rogers, but I'm much more enthused about Bialik. And, she's gotten better as the week went on. All the host have been stiff to start with, but most have gotten better as the week (day, for them) went on. She comes across as really intelligent, relaxed, witty, and can followup on answers and banter with the guest better than others. To me, she comes across as "real," and gives me a sense of comfort, similar to Alex, but with a bit of fresh air. I'd be more than happy, and "comfortable," if they just continued with her. I think she'd be great and would be able to keep us old Jeopardy regulars tuned in. 

Lauren Dieterich

I have a double whanny regarding my name. My parents gave me the girls spelling of my first name. I have an older brother; and, I didn't co-operate. But, no one thought to give the boys spelling. I tell people that I'm named after 2 movie stars. And, I'm related to one of them. Lauren Becall and Marlene Dietrich is a very distant cousin. When my great, great grandfather came here from Germany in 1859, he added the second E, that is silent, to tell us apart from the other Dietrich's. He also dropped the von and Baron, which is a hereditary title.There is too much behind my name to deliberately mispronounce to get the spelling right. I have a cousin, long since departed, actually, he and my Dad are first cousins who was a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice. He had our family history traced. He could have set a dollar amount; or, go as far as they could. He said don't worry about the money. They ended up in 454, in a small kingdom in the Black Forest area of Germany. This is direct ancestry through my Dad. If we were still in Germany, my older brother would have the title. When I spell my name it is: Die  ter ich.  Regarding Jeopardy, I was pulling for Rogers, until he started his BS with the Packers. For now, I'll go with Mayim. But, I wish that she'd comb her hair. I reserve judgement until I see those who are left. Especially Burton

Bonnie Buck (Walter)

I don't watch Jeopardy, but I heard Mayim Bialik speech at a luncheon and she is amazing!

Who would think my easy (I thought) names could be mixed up.  Some people called me Bony (ugh) when I was much younger or Bach for Buck and Walters instead of Walter.  The worst is over the phone people think I say Barney.  Guess that is my Wisconsin accent and old age voice.

John Ruhland

I guess we've arrived at the age where the first thing we look at in the Sunday Milwaukee Journal is the obituaries. Good grief! In Sunday's Journal (May 30th) was the death notice for Errol Sharak. No 'write up' about him or the date of his passing. Mass was held at Holy Apostles Catholic Church in New Berlin on June 5, but no more info beyond that. I knew him in my early teens and I think Bill Nelson inquired about him once.