"Right now" being Sunday evening, about 5:30 Los Angeles time.

Just got a call from a friend watching TV. GSN, the former Game Show Network, is airing a special called "The Insider’s Guide to Winning Game Show Millions." Which is something I’ve never done. But I chatted with some producers for about 20 minutes last summer. After a few bits aired in December, I figured that was it. Guess not.

Flipped it on… and hey, I’m getting my butt kicked again on national TV. Excellent. They just replayed my last final flame-out on Jeopardy!. Again. Man, that was not my best moment.

Please excuse me now while I shave my head and go into rehab.

PS — according to GSN’s schedule, the show will be repeated tonight, Sunday, at 11 pm EST, and Tuesday at 9 pm EST. So there, if you’re curious.

PS — A correction: the graphic under my name is incorrect. They asked for my total quiz winnings, and now they’re using that as my Jeopardy! total. I doubt anyone cares, but my Jeopardy! haul is only about a third of the total. Maybe using the bigger number made it look like I had any business on a special with that title.

PPS — another correction: I said something like "one third of the clues I answered came from Chuck Forrest’s book." As I wrote in Trebekistan, about a third of all the clues I answered correctly came from studying, and the main thing I studied early on was Chuck’s book. But that’s not the same thing. I compressed the two in the interview, which was verbally sloppy.

I’ve recently learned that "Pu Du" is also the name given to serene music often played by practitioners of Falun Gong.  The title translates as "saving people," which I think wild pudus would be OK with.

Since small bands of Chinese musicians are cute, but not that cute, here’s a pudu from previous weeks, whom you can picture humming a happy, aimless little tune.

Humming serenely is something pudus do a lot anyway, when they’re whistling, scat-singing, or occasionally breaking out into the occasional tap dance.

Si visita aqui a menudo, sabe probablemente que mi español sucks, pero estoy aprendiendo lentamente.

Miro muchos de la TV desde México de practicar, y he comenzado últimamente a mirar una programa de la mañana desde San Luis Potosi se llama Te Levanta, una programa de Mexicanal.  Para migo, es más difícil que las noticias y otras programas; las presentadoras en la show hablan rápidamente y como la gente regular.  Es un desafío agradable. 

Ayer, envié una nota rápida, y a mi sorpresa, hoy dijeron hola  — durante la show. Es una manera para me despierte muy agradable. Agradezco mucho, Te Levanta.  Deseo mucho éxito para ustedes.

We now return you to my regularly-scheduled butchering of English, below.

Bay Area readers: I’ve just been asked to do a signing of Prisoner of Trebekistan at this year’s WonderCon up at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  As I am slowly becoming a comics geek in midlife, this is a thrill.

My workload is still pretty thick right now, so it’ll be a very brief visit once we get the details worked out.  More info shortly.

A new academic study based on 10 years of financial data has found that media companies which invest in their newsrooms, producing a superior product, are much more profitable than companies that slash and burn, hoping to cut costs.

So Tribune, McClatchy, and the other media companies who have been buying newspapers and then cutting staff aren’t just betraying the public — they’re betraying their own interests as well.