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Pastimes : Ken Jennings, "Jeopardy!" Extraordinaire -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ~digs who wrote (12)	7/15/2004 8:39:03 PM
From: ~digs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 56

surfergirl : A blog about TV and popular culture. slate.msn.com As we experiment with where this new TV blog should go (besides away. It's not just going to go away, okay?), Surfergirl is instituting a new occasional feature called KenJen Watch, in which we accompany turning points in the exploits of Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy! phenom whose seemingly endless tenure on the show is approaching Groundhog Day proportions. Yesterday, during his 30th straight day of play, KenJen finally broke the million-dollar mark, winning $32,000 in a single day for a grand total of $1,004,960. It's becoming actually worrisome. At what point are special measures going to have to be taken? In the past week, Ken's been written up in the New York Times and appeared on both Regis and Kelly (where, when asked what he planned to do with the money, the strait-laced Mormon replied, "Roll around naked in it") and the David Letterman show, where he read off a list of "Top Ten Ways to Irritate Alex Trebek." Not included among those ways was the method KenJen's actually been using to get Trebek's goat lately: refusing to bet enough to beat the show's one-day betting record of $52,000. He finally tied it the other day, and Alex begged him to bust out and wager one more dollar to make it $52,001, but KenJen was having none of it. Things are getting strange on the Jeopardy! set. As Jennings' winning streak drags on, little rituals between Ken and Alex are emerging; the two riff and joke with the punch-drunk loopiness of two undergraduates pulling an all-nighter. Perhaps out of sheer boredom, Ken has taken to signing his name in creative ways on the blue screen below his podium: in big pillowy letters, surrounded by zigzags, or carved into the shape of a skyline. Then there's the "chat" section of the show, in which contestants bring in an anecdote to share with Trebek (who some viewers find chilly and smug, but who's always struck me as a master of old-school courtesy and restraint.) Last night, a contestant named Max, an attorney from Las Vegas, talked about the time he ran with the bulls in Pamplona (evidence of a brutal self-destructive streak, sure, but probably not as bad as facing Ken Jennings on Jeopardy!). Another recent contestant told an inappropriately long story about her overweight pet cat. But when it comes KenJen's turn to chat, Alex is now interviewing him, asking meta-Jeopardy! questions like: "If you're a teetotaler, how come you know so much about booze?" Ken's response: His wife has been quizzing him with cocktail-themed flashcards. "You owe her a big debt of gratitude," says Alex, and cool as a cucumber, Ken counters with, "I'll buy her a drink." Big laughs from the studio audience (which, to be fair, is pretty easily pleased—they liked the fat-cat story, too.) Alex tries to tie up the chat segment, saying, "I guess your wife's no teetotaler," and just as he's turning back to the board to resume play, this tiny Ken voice pipes up offscreen: "Actually, she is." Defending his lady's Mormon purity even unto the breach! I wish I could agree with the New York Times' Alessandra Stanley that Ken is "the most annoying man in game show history" (because it's always fun to heckle the TV screen), but I can't help it: The guy is adorable.