Reston Man Loses In Jeopardy, Wins in Beards

One of our own was on Jeopardy! last night. Our favorite correspondent, The Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston, watched the teevee so you don't have to:

Runaway!

We are not referring to one of Jackie Jeter's minions at Metro falling asleep at the controls and rocketing down the Silver Line at 11 MPH from Willie Reston into Tysons, America's Next Great City. Rather, we speak of the fate that befell Reston resident Norm Burnosky on Monday evening's Jeopardy.

Facing off with fellow challenger "Susan" against champion "Lani", corporate tax analyst Norm is clearly channeling the original 60's hippie vibe of Reston with his long beard and blinding pinkish-red shirt. As the Jeopardy round proceeds, Norm's strategy soon become clear: hunt down the Daily Double more mercilessly than the DRB conducting a search and destroy mission for red mulch. It works; Norm finds it in the "Islands" category and accurately reads the map graphic to come up with the correct answer of the Azores. He doubles his score to $3,200 but then goes dark for the remainder of the round. At the commercial break, his $3,200 puts him in third place.

The silver-tongued son of the frozen north Alex Trebek notes that the Double Jeopardy categories are a play on the names of contemporary hit TV shows. Norm starts off unevenly; he gets a question from the "House of Cards" category correct for $2,000 but then misidentifies a photo of Hosni Mubarak as Nasser. Champion Lani begins to pull away from her challengers, but Norm then goes on a belated run getting three questions in a row correct to end the round in second place with $6,800. However, Lani has more than double that amount, so Final Jeopardy might as well be called It's Academic.

The Final Jeopardy category is Animals, and it's a doozy: in Greek mythology it's a half-serpent and mother of the Sphinx; in zoology, it's a mammal that lays eggs. Don't know much about zoology, to paraphrase the old song, so for a while we are tempted to think the correct answer is "Beast of Berwickshire", the critter that a while back was terrorizing our doppelganger in Scotland. Susan provides the correct answer of echidna, whatever that is (the spiny anteater, as a quick search of The Google reveals), while Norm comes up with "Medusa", bets it all, and ends up with zero dollars and a third place finish.

Still, props to Norm for a spirited game, even if he now needs to find another source for his upcoming 2017 tribute of $698 to our mauve overlords at RA World Headquarters. Our belated advice to Norm: next time, ditch the non-DRB approved colors for a slightly more earth-toned shirt, and you may get lucky.