The Clerk on Crutches Who Pauses Before His Building to Watch the Mechanic Lose Three Dollars at Blackjack

There's Big-C, former colleague, current friend and DCUer, admitting on Jeopardy last night that he was a bed-wetter. I hope to hear how he came to the decision (or was urged to the decision) to discuss his bed-wetting versus other awkward interview subjects a week from tonight at United's home opener. He came in second, losing by $3. He fell below zero early in Double Jeopardy and rallied to take the lead, got the last question in the round which was a Daily Double, he fucked up, bet more than would have assured him the lead going into Final Jeopardy, missed the Daily Double, and when both he and the returning champion answered a ridiculously easy Final Jeopardy question, three bucks short. Still, more than $20K before taxes.

UPDATE! Big-C writes: The most frequent question I've been asked -- not surprisingly -- has to do with my conversation with Mr. Trebek. When I was called to be on the show, I was sent a lengthy questionnaire/release form, and I gave them 9 or 10 general 'topics of conversation' or specific stories...if you're a repeat champion they've got to have lots of material for Alex to use. When I got to the studio for my taping, they had whittled those stories down to three -- my first date with Anna, a parasailing mishap in Mexico, and "The Bedwetter". A writer sat down with me to talk over the story lines, and he quickly discarded the first date story ("bor-ing!"). The parasailing story had some potential, but he thought the bedwetting story had some potential for laughs...as long as I was OK with talking about it to 9 million people. I'm a team player AND a fan of off-color, self deprecating anecdotes, and the rest is Jeopardy history. (BTW, I no longer wet the bed, in case you were wondering...the Wee-Alert 2000 worked like a charm!)
     
 



       

• The last link in this chain, with it's title, triggered a Sun Kil Moon cascade. It's a good thing.
• Oracle.
• Neo-liberalism and the arrogance of ignorance.
• The dangerous logic of the Bradley Manning case.
• It stuns me that smart people still see Obama as innocent.
• I want to ask again: Does anyone not think is wasn't an accident Obama arranged Presidential friend-of-the-court brief in half-assed (half-assed, yo) support of gay marriage so that that headline would appear on the same day as Day of Sequester?
• Obama and GOP's shared vision.
• More stuff you already know.
• Sean Wilentz has always been an asshole.
• War, theater, performance.
• Persistence.
• Dietles! Used to shoot pool there before smoking was banned in MOCO, once smoking was banned the pool people stopped going to Dietles.
• Another attempt at rescue.
• Yes L, as promised, against the futility of posting on Saturdays and Sundays. I blame Big-C's bed-wetting, my inability to not hector people with screams of Motherfucking Obama.
• My invisible sea.
• Searching Poetry and Poets, there is only one poem with the word jeopardy in their databases, and that an excerpt from a Christopher Smart poem.
• I post this excerpt from the same poem at least once a year here for obvious reasons.
• Red licorice.
• Ten things about Notes from Underground. It's been fifteen years since I last read Dostoyevsky (Devils), grabbed a copy of Notes, a 2009 translation by someone named Boris Jakim (the library's copy of the Peyear/Volokhonsky highlighted and underlined to shit) in latest attempt to break reading slump.
• Cities of ashes.

LAKE COMO 

Nicholas Christopher

The searchlight of a February moon

at the end of the street

bare trees black railing

an eastern star set like a pearl atop a steeple

that shadows the doorway

where the one-armed card shark squats

shuffling his deck on a milk crate

waiting for the No. 6 bus to discharge

the off-duty cop the seamstress

the drunken mechanic and the clerk on crutches

who pauses before his building to watch

the mechanic lose three dollars at blackjack

and then stiffly ascends the five flights

to his two rooms on a shaftway

hanging his coat on a hook

and sitting down at the table

on which this morning he placed

a soup bowl and spoon

a tin of crackers and the crossword

puzzle he had been laboring over

beneath the gaze of his late wife

her color photograph propped up in a small frame

a young woman in a boxy dress and felt cap

waving shyly by the edge of a lake

where over her shoulder beneath a clear sky

a sailboat rides the wind

passengers on the polished deck

gazing at the glowing mountain peaks

the cypresses lining the shore

and the pink palazzi with ancient gardens

these men and women in white

who seem to live upon the water

gliding among themselves oblivious to strife

and all else that wears a body down

some sipping from crystal goblets

others just drinking in the light