Ken Jennings - What a Sore Winner!

[gotpasswords]

Not content to win $2.5 million from Jeopardy, Ken Kennings has a website and blog where he has quite a few unkind things to say about the show and Alex Trebek.

His site’s at www.ken-jennings.com but he’s apparently not willing to use any of that $2.5 million to buy good hosting. The site’s delivering a “This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota” error today.

From anAP story about Mr. Jennings:

@Ken's blog

We regret the insinuation that Mr. Alex Trebek is a robot, and has been since 2004. Mr. Trebek’s robotic frame does still contain some organic parts, many harvested from patriotic Canadian schoolchildren, so this technically makes him a cyborg,' not a robot.’

You’re like the Dorian Gray of syndication," he says. "You seem to think `change’ means replacing a blue polyethylene backdrop with a slightly different shade of blue polyethylene backdrop every presidential election or so.

When Ken’s website is working, SDMB veterans will quickly realize he swiped the navigation concept from the SDMB. Even if we’ve not used the big brain for a few years, it’s ours!

[Eve]

I read that, too, on the AP Newswire (apparently, it falls under the heading of “news”). It’s just sad when geeks try to be funny.

“Step away from the joke. Do NOT attempt to be funny, and no one will get hurt.”

[Troy_McClure_SF]

Google does have a partial cache.

[Troy_McClure_SF]

And actually, it looks like the other pages on the real site are still up.

[Marley23]

When I hear “sore winner,” I think it means he was rude to the losing contestants. Plenty of people who watch Jeopardy complain about Trebek, so I guess it’s no surprise that Ken might not love him either. Perhaps Ken is costing himself a shot at future tournament appearances, however.

[Miller]

@Marley23

When I hear “sore winner,” I think it means he was rude to the losing contestants. Plenty of people who watch Jeopardy complain about Trebek, so I guess it’s no surprise that Ken might not love him either. Perhaps Ken is costing himself a shot at future tournament appearances, however.

Nah. The ratings draw of bringing back the Super-Champ will outweigh any personal pique felt by Trebek. Does he even have that much control over the show?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Miller

Does he even have that much control over the show?

What are nude pictures of Merv Griffin with three Filipino boys in his safety deposit box?

[RickJay]

Jennings was kidding. The entire blog entry was obviously a joke; I mean, he’s speaking to a television program. The idiot who wrote the AP story needs to have an ironymeter installed.

In other news, Jonathan Swift didn’t really want to eat Irish babies.

[Interrobang]

Jennings has replied to Starr’s story:

@Ken Jennings

I’ve met Michael Starr a couple times, and he always seemed like a nice enough guy. Which leaves me wondering: does he know how asinine this non-story is? Despite working for the Post, I’m sure his reading comprehension is just fine. He knows there’s no way I was genuinely calling for angry bees and ventriloquist’s dummies to be added to the Jeopardy! format. It’s a humor piece, and one which gets its laughs from the outrageous non sequiturs it proposes, not the ripeness of its target for criticism. For the record: I’ve loved Jeopardy! since I was a kid, as anyone who talks to me for about five minutes knows. Making goofy jokes about TV shows isn’t “bashing.” I believe it’s the whole reason Al Gore invented the Internet.

[Leaper]

My favorite part of his Jeopardy related blog jokes is how to, uh, deal with the Clue Crew.

[mobo85]

@Leaper

My favorite part of his Jeopardy related blog jokes is how to, uh, deal with the Clue Crew.

I just read this now that the link isn’t Farked anymore, and I thought that was the funniest part, too. The whole thing about the Clue Crew was just very funny.

@Ken Jennings

You want to hip up the show, and Trebek’s not getting any younger, so why not have five attractive young people reading some of the clues instead? I’ll tell you why not: because they look like they beamed in from some 1970s PBS show. The van from Big Blue Marble got frozen in a glacier and suddenly here are these five wholesome, now-getting-creepily-old “youngsters” in 2006, driving around in a van solving mysteries and yammering on about Fort Sumter or the canals of freaking Venice.

[threemae]

I read parts of his blog and FAQ and found the site to be quite funny. Take it all with a bit more humor and you won’t come away with such a bitter taste.

[mobo85]

Ken was just joking, I think. He was having a little fun. And it made me laugh. After all, a man who says this obviously doesn’t have hard feelings about the show:

@Ken Jennings

The first thing you notice [about Alex Trebek] is that the seriousness-to-the-point-of-pomposity thing that he does on air is mostly a put-on. In person, he’s a lot looser, prone to little jokes, accents, snippets of song and even soft-shoe. Like Alex or dislike him, you have to admit that he has one of the toughest jobs in show business—reading 61 clues flawlessly while running a fast-paced game show is an amazingly difficult task—yet he’s made it look easy, every weekday for the last two decades. So ease up on the Trebek-hatin’, y’all.

[Baffle]

It was hilarious, of course. That should have been patently obvious. Starr: you are a :wally

[cerberus]

You want fun, replace the Clue Crew with porn stars.

[mobo85]

Ken Jennings is funny! I loved this one:

@Ken Jennings

[Jack] Warden’s death means that Jack Klugman wins the 12 Angry Men tontine! (Assuming, of course, there was a 12 Angry Men tontine.) Way to go, Juror #5!

[Trunk]

@mobo85

Ken Jennings is funny! I loved this one:

That is pretty funny.

I don’t feel like doing the research, but I have to assume that Jennings is right about it.

is this a good place to admit that I like the one with Tony Danza just as much as the original?

[Reloy3]

I thought it was extremely funny. Now I want Alex to sign off with “legalize it”.

[MovieMogul]

@Trunk

is this a good place to admit that I like the one with Tony Danza just as much as the original?

A Jeopardy! thread? Probably not.

A Paris Hilton thread? A much better bet.

[psiekier]

@cerberus

You want fun, replace the Clue Crew with porn stars.

They have the lovely Sarah; that’s good enough for me!