Alex Trebek suffers 'minor heart attack'

Trebek is a quintessential NERD and a know it all who appears smarter than everyone on the program, except he has all the answers! This guy,in real life, would put the dead to sleep! He certainly qualifies to be in politics: full of BS and an empty suit who thinks well of himself! LOSER!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much, omar. Now the rest of my life may at last begin.

FUCK YOU "ALEX" "TREBEK"

:/

I still like this guy!

Wait, I just noticed Trebek rhymes with Quebec. Nothing will ever be the same again.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/08/mondays-intriguing-people-35/

I was just joshing - I think he's probably an ok person. Pat Sajak, on the other hand, seriously, fuck that guy

Alex is so subtly snide, I love it.

Maybe I'm just reading too much into his voiceovers for the PS2 Jeopardy! game. "Oooooh...I'm sorry." You're not sorry, Alex, you snide old fox.

I love you can tell he's getting fed up with the ineptitude of the contestants. After 3 wrong answers in a row: "....no...."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU2w72KAkQQ

I heard he was a total lush!

Know what the Jeopardy! archive should contain, are lists of his question (technically, answer) responses in the affirmative. Any old Jeopardy! viewer can notice that Trebek won't merely regurgitate "correct" after every correct answer. But only the truly astute among us have observed that his alternatives to "correct" are as varied as they are plentiful. "Yep," "uh huh," "that's the one," etc. Obviously there is a finite supply, of which these are but a few, but because Trebek produces such a robust vocabulary of these utterances designed to signify the contestant has answered correctly, it appears, to the casual observer, that they are rarely repeated. It is unlikely, for example, that you would ever hear a "that's right" followed immediately by another, or for that matter, consecutive "you got its." So, unless it can proven that Trebek is naturally a statistical anomaly with the ability to maintain a remarkable adherence to some statistical measure of random distribution, I assume his writers are rightfully credited with this phenomenon. And if indeed the writers are responsible, they should be archiving this shit. It's incredible.

http://www.facialhairchronicles.com/storage/trebek1.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1284061488659

Not quite as great as the 'drunk' video but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNMGpFu0udg

"that's the one"

I LOVE when he says that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9f1zM7I8Z8

Back and kicking ass (but also tearing tendons).

not sure quite why, but something about him has always bugged me sooo much, like to the point where i find it hard to watch the show

It's his utter inability to feign the slightest interest in the interviewing-the-contestants segment. Every single show there's a supremely awkward moment.

del, you and i are hella different dels, dog.

Still Trebekin'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/alex-trebek-thinking-deep-after-28-seasons-of-jeopardy/2012/04/29/gIQAgi1MqT_story.html?hpid=z4

Trebek is 71. The past three decades have passed by in a blur, he says. He wanted to be many different things when he was growing up — actor, doctor, prime minister — but somehow ended up doing what he’s doing: presiding over five tapings every Tuesday and Wednesday, arriving at work at noonish and returning by 6 or 6:30 p.m. to his mansion in Studio City, his wife of 22 years and his 91-year-old mother. He spends the rest of the week traveling (he’s been to every continent except Australia), devouring television (“The Borgias” and “Law & Order” marathons) and books (he recently bristled at the iffy merits of Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln”). He mentions, as he has in previous interviews, that he likes to fix his property’s aging sprinkler system. L.A.’s gurgly water pressure — which varies from 105 to 155 pounds per square inch, he says — strains the system’s old rubber diaphragms. Trebek talks about the sprinklers like Lennie talks about the rabbits or Norman Thayer talks about the loons on Golden Pond.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzZUXHtTr6c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvU_uJkOHH0

This was a great tournament -- Leonard's huge comeback was great.

It was great, but Leonard botched the math - if Nilai gets Eisenhower, he wins, right? That's a 14,000 swing and gets him to 40,400, 400 pust Leonard. The bet 0 and write "I just won 70k" move would've looked really foolish if he had lost.

That one match that ended without a winner was pretty funny.

But he didn't, so...

xp

he did singlehandedly make the teen tournament entertaining, which I usually dislike watching (I schedule my workouts around Jeopardy, damnit). I love the contestants that aren't afraid to get a few wrong.

the fact that he could have still lost makes it all the more badass

Was totally rooting for Leonard. The everyone-at-zero game was weird enough, but for Leonard to not only bet $18k on a Daily Double, but to also be all "Hi, I just won" on Final was brilliant.

The guy next to him was kind of hilarious, frantically flailing around with his buzzer and shouting all his responses.

I love the contestants that aren't afraid to get a few wrong.

My impression is that smart Jeopardy gameplay involves not guessing if you're not 100% sure of the answer. Barrett, the Young Republican guy in the final, had his momentum stalled several times in the final with wrong guesses, especially the Bible category in day 1.

xp -- that was Barrett, I couldn't stand that unctuous toadying shit.

in a vacuum, shouldn't it be correct to guess if you're 51% sure of the answer?

nope

it's just poor strategy; if you don't know the answer, you can't be penalized if you don't guess, whereas if you guess and get it wrong you are definitely penalized

basically it's SAT test strategy mapped onto a game show

It's a math equation - say you're 60% sure of the answer and the question is worth $1000.

Getting it right (1000 x .60) vs. getting it wrong (-1000 x .40) ~ an EV of +$200 for guessing

Plus, buzzing in gives you a few additional seconds to get the answer...

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyoxgsfrLb1qdmmiqo1_400.gif

I'm always buzzing in for alec trebek ;)

I love Leonard!! Barrett was THE WORST. UGH.

that gif

It's a math equation - say you're 60% sure of the answer and the question is worth $1000.

Getting it right (1000 x .60) vs. getting it wrong (-1000 x .40) ~ an EV of +$200 for guessing

Plus, buzzing in gives you a few additional seconds to get the answer...

hmmmmm...this makes sense to me IF jeopardy was, as you said, played in a vaccuum - with no other players competing. because when you incorrectly answer in jeopardy, you're not just losing $1000 (or whatever), but it's very likely that another player will buzz in and correctly answer and GAIN $1000, meaning that there was a $2000 net loss.

i'm glad i saw this thread, because when i was making that gif (many months ago), it got me thinking about making a series of vibrating chest hair gifs. they take a long time to make but they're so satisfying

chalk that up under the heading "posts I never thought I would read"

don't even get me started on the other kinds of hairs

all strangely satisfying

hmmmmm...this makes sense to me IF jeopardy was, as you said, played in a vaccuum - with no other players competing. because when you incorrectly answer in jeopardy, you're not just losing $1000 (or whatever), but it's very likely that another player will buzz in and correctly answer and GAIN $1000, meaning that there was a $2000 net loss.

well what I meant was, you have to keep the other players' scores in mind. like if you're at $20000 and 2nd place has $8000, you should guess a lot less, and vice versa if you're way behind. but what you're saying doesn't really figure in, because if you just don't answer and another contestant gets the answer, you're still looking at a $1000 net loss by that math.

Barret was actually a robot project of Tagg Romney's.

funnily enough I was just reading this

I dont know if he was actually exhibiting it more than usual or if I was imagining it, but it really seemed like he was having an especially good time hosting since they came back on the air. He always seemed to really love Jeopardy as a game, getting excited when it was close, getting invested in the tension of who's up and down, genuinely curious about how it would end and who would win. Obviously its the job of any pro host to convey that to viewers but Trebek seemed genuine. Always thought he seemed like he'd have been a devoted Jeopardy watcher even if he'd never been the host.

I've watched every episode since they came back on. Alex was (not always but occasionally) uncharacteristically halting and a bit slow to move the game forward... i'm pretty sure I saw him occasionally leaning backward into something behind the podium that was helping him stand. As a game show host, i found him occasionally snide and regularly minimizing to the players but that was the character I guess. Over the course of my life I may have watched him on television more than anyone except Letterman.

but to your point, he did seem very happy to be there and the contestants seemed, more often than usual, excited out of their minds to be on the show. you got the sense people knew.

with him and Letterman you can tell that they're both quick, intelligent people who at various moments in their lives - some of them on-screen - can't help but allow a bit of pent-up befuddlement that they've become rich and famous being something akin to a carnival barkers to poke through

i would've paid a dollar to see them change jobs for a week

A glimpse into his Franco-Ontarian side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcWYJHdeN8Q

still love this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZnKJkgmvhI

classic

that led me here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzZUXHtTr6c

Lotta great memories:

https://www.vulture.com/article/alex-trebek-memorial-jeopardy-contestants.html

Including this tidbit which, what the:

When we’d all chat at the end of a taping, he’d draw us all into the conversation, and share his thoughts on some part of the game. On one memorable occasion, he shared a story about how he was interviewing Muhammad Ali at Louis Farrakhan’s house of Islam the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated when he was starting out in media.

https://www.google.com/search?q=alex+trebek

:)