It's Jeopardy!

On Tuesday (today is Thursday), we took a bus tour to the Farmers' Market in Los Angeles for lunch. It was o.k., but the Farmers' Market is more of an institution than what I was expecting. There are fruits and veggies, but many butcher shops (or meat shops) surprised me. Then it was off to Culver City where the Sony Studios are. The Black List and a couple of other shows I recognized are produced there.

Jeopardy shares the studio with Wheel of Fortune and if you are a contestant on one, you can't be a contestant on the other for something like ten years. Jeopardy only tapes two days per week, so we saw two different shows being taped. They had already had another taping in the a.m. before we got there for a 2 p.m. start. We left at 4 p.m. just in time to dive head first into LA afternoon traffic. It took us 3 hours to get back (only 2 hours to get there even with the traffic totally stopped at one point due to a car fire).

Alex Trebec is really a stand up guy! When they had a break (where commercials would be inserted locally), he would take questions from the audience.

We weren't supposed to take any pictures inside the studio, but I sneaked a couple that you can see below. They had a practice before the taping and some guy was feeding REALLY easy questions to the 3 contestants. They were checking the microphones and lighting. Then they brought the other 3 up from the second show to practice.

You can see the board on the left is just the way you see it on TV. On the very far right is the monitor (there's one on the far left too) so the audience can see what people see on TV.

Again, this is during the practice when no taping was going on. You can see a dividing wall in the audience on the left. We were in the second half of the studio audience. To the right of us in the audience were the contestants and their families and friends. We were told not to speak to any of these people because if we spoke to a contestant s/he would be immediately disqualified. There was a fellow who cued us when to applaud or when to be silent.

There was a break between the two tapings and they let us go either to the rest room or to take a photo. I chose the photo op.

The last picture (below) is from our drive into LA. I took this from the bus trying to show the traffic. It was heavier than it looks!

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The next day, on Wednesday, we went to see The Favourite at the movies. Don't. Well, no, you should make up your own mind. But originally, I thought of titling a review of it as "Fuc*king, Puking, and Bad Makeup." The music at times was so awful that I wanted to run from the theatre. They used a fish eye lens multiple times for no reason. Everywhere you looked someone was either fornicating or puking or both. When we finally got home, Mom looked up the history of Queen Anne, King James' daughter. And the movie had it right except for one bit of poetic license. I think all of the pallor of death makeup that the noblemen wore (and some of the women) must have had lead in it because they were all stark raving mad.

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From the Did She Hum While Building? Department:

Our neighbors, Eric and Paul, have a new tenant on their patio. Mama Hummingbird started her nest by picking up George the Dog's black fur after Eric swept it out of the house. We were wondering about the blue -- Eric thought she may have hired a gay decorator -- but the mystery was solved. She used pieces of a chewed up dog toy that Sammy (the pup across the way) had left out on his patio!

Photo Courtesy of Eric Adams

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Today we had a lovely time shopping and then we had lunch at Aqua, which is at The River.  A river? you say. In the desert? Yup, you can see it below. Last winter, they froze the sucker so people could ice skate. Really. I don't know if they will do that again or not this year. 

Right now it's raining like crazy. In the desert? you say. Yes. Sigh. We have had more rain here than they have had in two years! We have a flash flood warning going on. I have a feeling that it will be a flower-filled March!

Mom asked if those are storks or cranes. I only know it's a stork if they have a blanket with a baby in the bill. But I'm guessing those are cranes.

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I am so sorry that the East (and many other parts of the country) are going through a deep freeze. I'm just so grateful to be here! As my friend, Ang Pompano, said: there are only 47 days until spring! Cheers!