Returning now to the Gratitude SummerFest:

I spent most of this last Saturday hanging out at the Game Show Congress and a party thrown by the former Game Show Network, both of which meant spending some quality time with the one and only Ken Jennings, winningest contestant in the history of Jeopardy!, author of Brainiac, and damn fine blogger.

We even did a joint signing of our books; I’m proud to say that despite our competitive instincts, we did not race to see who could sign fastest.

We did, however, compete to see who could have the reddest eye-flash.

Neither one of us can muster a laser thing quite yet. But we’re working on it.

If you’ve read Prisoner of Trebekistan, you know that there’s sort of an informal fraternity among many former contestants. Since our books came out within about a week of each other, Ken and I have struck up an increasingly friendly correspondence, and I’ve come to learn that one of the oddest things about Ken’s Jeopardy! experience must have been his lack of opportunity to get to know any of his opponents the way that tournament competitors frequently do. Instead, it was apparently day after day of "welcome everyone, here’s the 58-day champ about to terminate your hopes and dreams and take all the money, say hi" and then it was over.

Not a lot of emails exchanged with new friends, I imagine.

But here’s the thing about Ken: he’s taller than me, younger than me, richer than me, he already has a loving and happy family started, he’s very possibly also nicer, smarter, and funnier than I am, and the guy even has better hair. And yet I actually still like him somehow. Apparently one of us is some kind of freaking saint. (And even that probably isn’t me. Well, hell.)

Anyhow, despite it all, in person, the Creature from the Great Salt Lake has the ability to make me laugh until milk comes out of my nose, even when I’m not drinking milk. (I should probably see a doctor about that.) So I’ll put up with his general excellence, the way friends always put up with each other’s worst qualities. And the rest of the frat seems to have welcomed Ken just as eagerly. This is good to see all around.

Still, we did have a chance to play a game strongly resembling Jeopardy! and yet enough not like Jeopardy! to avoid any drive-by gunfire from Sony attorneys. For a few moments, I had thoughts of at least being able to claim I beat Ken at Schmeopardy! or whatever it is.

Unfortunately, Schmeopardy! is not a two-person game. The man on the right is Ed Toutant, whom Trebekistan readers will recognize as the fellow who beats me in Game Show Congress exhibitions every single year, usually by a ridiculously narrow margin seemingly contrived to torture my soul. (Before winning almost $2 million on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, Ed worked for IBM. Possibly as a supercomputer.)

What you’re looking at, then, is a showdown between players with a total of over $5 million in quiz show winnings. Pretty cool, huh? Of course, that sentence would still be true whether or not I’m standing at the table.

Eventually, Ed thrashed both Ken and me on the buzzer. (This surprised me, actually; the one time I’d ever played Ed in a Schmeopardy! format, I’d actually won fairly handily. So the big guy is just getting better. Eek.) Our final scores, in the end, were roughly proportional to our heights.

So much for the grand battle of the Jeopardy! memoirists. Still, Ken and I did manage to surprise each other during the game, as I outscored the Mormon in The Old Testament, but Ken replied with an outlandishly hip "what is crunk?" So you never know.

For next year’s competition, the organizers have announced that Ed will be divided into four equal teams. I will probably still lose by one dollar to his left leg.

After my annual defeat by Ed, we all headed down to the Beverly Hilton, which Trebekistan readers will instantly recognize as the hotel (a) once owned by the Merv himself, and (b) where I spent a nigh-delirious night trying to remember all the vice presidents while suffering through a raging fever. (It’s an intertwined world, this Trebekistan.) On arrival, we were all shuffled off to a fabulous Hollywood party inside, complete with a terrific live band, gymnasts cavorting inside giant inflatable balls, and various attractive young people reluctant to make eye contact with the likes of you. Plus, booze.

We contestants pretty much hung out in the back near the poker tables and watched it all with a mixture of cool-kid amused distance and utter geekdom. A splendid time, all in all.

Ultimately, gratitude is owed here: to Bill Schantz, king of the Schmeopardy! simulator; to Ed, for keeping my ego in check for another year; to Ken, for being so cool that he even insisted on splitting the gas and parking money for the drive to the convention; to Paul Bailey, organizer of the Game Show Congress; to a half-dozen other former contestants I got to hang out, laugh, and catch up with; and to megaproducer Michael Davies, responsible for the existence of Grand Slam, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, and a party where a curvaceous girl in tights spun twenty feet in the air from a giant towel for no reason in particular. Hollywood, man.

My hearty thanks to all.

UPDATE: On Wednesday evening, I was on Main St. in Santa Monica, and I am 99% certain that I saw the exact same young lady riding by on a bicycle. My god, what a small town L.A. is sometimes. I didn’t realize where I’d seen her before until she was half a block past me.

Gymnast miss, should you ever read this: if you want people to recognize you more quickly, please ride your bicycle upside down, twenty feet in the air, with a live band accompanying you. This will be a big help.

Not sure of any details yet exactly, but next weekend includes both (a) the Game Show Congress, which I usually enjoy as a wonderfully geeky event akin to a Renaissance Faire with less fashion sense but a better knowledge of history, and (b) a promotional thing for the new GSN (formerly the Game Show Network) program Grand Slam, which I’m not a part of, but have several friends competing in, all of whom I will cheer for.

The Utah Computah himself should be around for at least some of this, and there’s some chatter about a joint book signing or even maybe a quizzy thing happening. Not sure what yet, to be honest. I’m out of town all week and booked up to the neck, so you might also want to watch Ken’s blog or the GSC site for further info. I’ll update here if I get a chance, of course.

Btw, if you liked Prisoner of Trebekistan and haven’t picked up Brainiac yet, do. It’s what Trebekistan might be if written by a guy who actually, um, knew stuff and won a lot more.

Finally, I should add that the UK version of Grand Slam rocks, and I assume the US version will as well when it debuts. Take all the big winners from other quiz shows and pit them in a tournament of single-elimination, one-on-one games requiring math, wordplay, general knowledge, and general balls under pressure. Here’s a clip of the UK version to see what Ken and Bradzilla and some other friends of Trebekistan have just put themselves through for your upcoming basic cable amusement:

Man, that looks like a blast.

Raw Story writes up the new McClatchy poll.

It’s not like she’s still gaining name recognition, as are most of the other candidates. The public have had 15 years to make up their mind. And Hillary’s "favorable" number is only 39 percent.

Um… anyone who lived in the US in the last 15 years should already know this. It’s not exactly a revelation. I explained why on the day she announced. Which in my mind was little more than pointing out, I dunno, the sky is blue. Just the way things are.

How disliked is Clinton (fairly or not)? Every single other major candidate has net-positive name recognition. Giuliani is +28. Thompson is +24. Bloomberg is +22. Obama is +20. Edwards is +18. McCain is +16. Even the Dog Torturer is +8.

Hillary is at -3.

Granted, Clinton’s $27 million in fundraising this quarter will buy her a lot of headway in distracting the media from the her quantifiable unpopularity. The tent won’t fold. But it is what it is.

The Yankees aren’t so good this year even with Clemens, Pixar is pretty good with the animation, Hillary probably can’t win, and puppies are cute.

Do you wish reporters would just stop with the Paris Hilton? You’re not the only one.

This MSNBC reporter deserves a medal, not the frat-boy mocking of her soulless, whorish colleagues.

Related: check out what else could have been reported on TV and radio news the day that Anna Nicole Smith died.

Game shows, in my life, are a bit like the mob was to Al Pacino in Godfather III — I can try to get out, but they keep dragging me back in.  Although in this case, I couldn’t be happier about it.

My buddy J. Keith van Straaten, stand-up comic and former host of Comedy Central’s Beat the Geeks, occasionally mounts a live stage version of What’s My Line? that I’d highly recommend anyway as one of L.A.’s hidden treasures.  It’s completely sincere — nothing ironic, nothing in quotes, just the actual game played with live music, real guests with strange occupations, and genuine mystery celebrities, exactly as if you’re attending a taping of a show that never went off the air.  I’ve been a few times, just to hang out, and it’s a blast.

This week, they must be short of celebrity panelists, because J. Keith has asked me to sit in.  So if any readers in the L.A. area are curious to see what I look like while asking "can I assume it involves an animal or a vegetable?" in a dark suit, drop by Acme in this Sunday at 8 pm.

The show’s entertainment value should be bigger than a breadbox.