We'll Take Earth Tones for $100: Reston Man Wins Big on Jeopardy

And we thought this was a slow news week! Our favorite correspondent, the Peasant from Less Sought After South Reston, weighs in with an exciting scoop, straight from his living room:

In a continuing quest to fill his brain with all sorts of esoteric and at times useless knowledge (beyond that gleaned from reading certain "official" websites run by professional journalists and/or homeowners associations), The Peasant sprawled out this evening to watch "Jeopardy". Imagine the surprise to find that one of the two new contestants on tonight's show was a Mr. Dan Jensen who comes from none other than Reston, Virginia. His occupation is restaurant manager; one could only hope against hope that he oversees the all-you-can-eat breadsticks and pasta at The Macaroni Grill.

In the first round, our native son proves to have pretty broad knowledge and a lightning fast finger on the answering device (although not fast enough, ironically, to ring in with the answer about the design on the Virginia state quarter). He does nevertheless earn $1,500 on that round's daily double with the correct answer of "The Reign of Terror". No, the question wasn't about those RA Covenants dudes with clipboards terrorizing hapless homeowners who own oversized compost bins, but rather that "off with their heads" chapter in the recent RA Board of Directors election -- strike that -- revolutionary France. Our man Dan ends the first round in the lead with $9,300.

Different story in the second round, as reigning champ Steve comes on strong in both the art and physics categories; we are guessing that Dan snoozed through art appreciation class at South Lakes and that his Mr. Plutonium Cold Fusion in a DeLorean project did not win first prize at the Fairfax County Science Fair. Steve takes the lead, but then in a John Edwards series of moments self-destructs with several big-buck wrong answers. The second round ends in a cliffhanger with Dan at $11,300, $700 more than fellow contestant Maureen and $900 more than Steve.

It all comes down to Final Jeopardy in the category "worldwide media". For a nanosecond we harbor the hope that the correct answer to the upcoming question will be "Restonian World Headquarters", but no, that sneaky Alex Trebek asks about some mainstream/lamestream "news agency whose name means peninsula as in the Arabian Peninsula". Everybody get the obvious correct answer of al-Jazeera, but our man Dan bets big with a wager of $9,701, giving him the championship, a one-day total of $21,001, and the chance to play again. Lucky guy -- that's enough money to pay at least another 35 years of RA annual assessments, or a week's worth of expected Dulles Toll Road fares in the year 2018.

And finally, while Dan is obviously a bright guy, we believe a significant part of his success tonight is due to the fact that he was wearing his lucky shirt that was, of course...mauve.

We wish Dan the best of luck as he moves on to the next round... tonight? We haven't watched Jeopardy in a while, opting instead for more sophisticated fare, but maybe it's tonight. We only hope he chooses a russet brown shirt for Day 2.

You can watch a brief "hometown howdy" from Jensen here, or at least you could if you had an Internet connection faster than a 300 baud modem.