We watched Jeopardy tonight, and KenJen won again — that’s 31 days in a row now. He was also interviewed on tonight’s Entertainment Extra. He’s an official celebrity!

Question for the Jeop fans out there — do you know how far in advance they tape these shows? I’m wondering if they are still taping shows featuring Ken, or if he’s finished now. That is, does Alex Trebek know how and when Ken will eventually meet his downfall — or is he still going strong?

Tonight and last night another player was very close to getting half of what Ken had — but in both cases, he got final Jeopardy right while his main rival did not. So really, he was never in any danger. Crazy!

The Captain is being very cute this morning. Usually he gets about an hour of playtime with his dad in the morning, but today Sir Monkeypants had to leave early for a course, so it’s just the two of us. The Captain isn’t too impressed with my attempts to eat breakfast and clean the kitchen, so he keeps stealing things like tea towels and juice cups and running away with a cackling laugh, so I’ll chase him.

I think he needs some extra support this morning because we bought him a new toy truck on the weekend. He was getting bored with his existing toys so we bought him this dump truck with a shape sorter and blocks in the back. He likes the blocks fine, but when you press the driver down, it makes horn and engine noises and rolls forward about six feet, and poor Captain Jelly Belly is just terrified of it. Whenever he accidentally sets it off, he runs over to be held and you have to rock him for about 10 minutes before he calms down. Even now when he goes into the playroom he gives the new truck a wide, wide berth. I guess we’ll have to put it away for a while.

Now, it’s off for playtime!

Over the last few days I’ve pulled maybe 100 grey hairs out of my head. It’s becoming an obsession — I can’t stop. Remember back in high school when you laughed at old people and swore you’d never do something so silly as have plastic surgery, or wear control top panty hose, or dye your hair to cover your grey? How you’d age gracefully and elegantly and without resistance? Yeah, I don’t remember saying that either.

So the time has come to reach for the dye bottle, I think, but sadly, I have to wait until George Foreman Jatania II is born, due to some crazy old wives’ tale that says that you shouldn’t dye your hair while pregnant, and although I’m sure that’s totally bogus, you don’t want to mess around with that kind of thing. I guess I’ll be stuck pulling for a couple more months, but I’m already scoping out the right product and colour. I’m leaning towards Nice ‘N’ Easy in Natural Light Brown.

Any tips for brands/application/colour, gals?

Both yesterday’s and today’s stages were typically dull, flat stages. No breakaways survived, the peloton crossed as a whole, and sprinters won the two days. No major changes in the leader board. Tomorrow is a rest day, Tuesday is flat again, and Wednesday we’ll finally see some action as they hit the mountains.

No big news from yesterday’s Tour action. A breakaway that lasted most of the stage was finally caught in the last kilometer. Unfortunately, the caught man (Fucha) slowed up when he was caught, which caused a huge crash, and most of the peloton (all the big stars) had to trickle around the crash over the next five minutes. It’s not a big deal, though, because Tour rules state that any mishaps that happen within the last kilometre don’t count — everyone gets the same time. Tom Boonan (from Belgium) won the stage in a sprint finish.

Lance had a small fall early in the stage but is totally fine. Today’s stage is another flat stage so we’re not expecting anything major.

Sir Monkeypants is off at ultimate, so I don’t think he’ll mind if I update y’all…

Another flat stage today, but with some interesting twists. First of all, it was definitely a day of crashes — at least six major crashes, by my count. Most of the big names escaped uninjured, but Bradley McGee (a well-known Australian sprinter) had to withdraw, and both Beltran and Rubiera of U.S. Postal sustained injuries that required medical attention on the road, although they did both finish the stage.

Due to the many crashes, several teams set a slow pace in the peloton to wait for their fallen riders, and so an early breakaway of five men managed to get more than 15 minutes ahead of the pack. The five were not highly ranked, and also not good climbers, so the big stars (who all stayed with the main pack) were content to let them go. As the five got within 10K of the finish, there was some interesting jostling and many ditch attempts, but in the end all five came to the finish as a group. Stuart O’Grady, another well-known Australian sprinter who has crashed three times so far already this tour (bad luck), won the stage. The yellow jersey passed to Thomas Voeckler, the French national champion, and man, do they love it in France when a Frenchman is in the lead. The five breakaway finishers are now all ahead of Lance in the overall standings — he’s about 9 1/2 minutes back of Voeckler — but all five are expected to die once they hit the mountains, so probably won’t remain as long-standing threats.

I have Beltran on my online dream team so that does not bode well for me. Sir Monkeypants will probably continue to kick my ass, even though Michael Boogard also had a spill today.

There’s a book that came out in France a couple of weeks ago by English sports journalist David Walsh. In it, he accuses Lance Armstrong of taking the drug EPO, which boosts your red blood cell count and helps you compete better. It’s a banned drug but it’s hard to test for, because athletes only take it during training cycles, not while actually racing. They do test for elevated crit levels, and if found, that’s enough circumstantial evidence to accuse someone of EPO.

Lance has been tested tons and tons of times because every winner of every stage in the Tour, as well as every other cycling race, gets tested. He’s passed every one. I’d like to believe he’s dope-free. I hate accusations like this because they always make you wonder what’s real in the world of sports. Some of Walsh’s “evidence” comes from an ex-member of Lance’s team who says that EPO was used on the team (not mentioning Lance specifically by name), and this same guy says that up to 90% of cyclists use some form of drugs. That makes me sad.

Yesterday on the CBC they had an interview with the editor of Canadian Cyclist, and he said that last year, the biking authorities did over 5000 drug tests, and about 1% came up positive. So he’s pretty sure that claims of rampant drug use in the cycling world are bogus, and also, that Lance is probably clean. Whew.

Speaking of Canadian Cyclist, it’s probably too late for most of you, but they are having a cool contest. You can pick your Tour “dream team” — any 9 cyclists you’d like to have on your team — and then see how you do in the pool from now until the end of the Tour. You have to enter before Stage 3 is over (that’s today’s stage) so you only have until about 11:30am to do so. They are at CanadianCyclist.com.

Sir Monkeypants and I have both entered. I picked Lance, George Hincapie, Jan Ullrich, Ivan Mayo, Roberto Heras, Michael Roberts, Tyler Hamilton, Beltran (on Lance’s team), and Robbie McEwan. Go boys go!

Yesterday I was at the mall with Captain Jelly Belly. We were on the elevator when a woman and (I’m guessing) her mother got on. They were talking about a friend of hers who wanted to get married, but whose boyfriend was broke, so she had to hound him to save up enough money to buy her a ring, and then she paid for the wedding and a house downpayment herself.

They were saying that they thought that in general, it’s hard for men to save money, compared to women. I didn’t think that was true at all. I don’t like it when people make sweeping men/women generalisations.

But they got off the elevator before we could get into it.

Tonight is the debut of The Amazing Race, season 5. I think it’s my favourite reality show — I once wrote a whole column on why the show rocks, and why everyone should watch it. Even those that don’t like reality (I’m looking at you, ) might find it worthwhile.

I like it because you can take a virtual tour of the world, and see lots of cool stuff, without having to deal with annoying things like foreign food and light switches that work the opposite way. It’s definitely a vicarious adventure. Plus, there is plenty of personal drama that arises from the fact that each team of two people has a personal relationship — married, father/daughter, sisters, etc. I don’t find that the show exploits personal conflicts or incites people to turn on each other, but the stress of travelling often brings out any underlying tensions and it’s fascinating. My favourite teams, though, are always those that work together well — that find a way to help each other through the stress, and answer each other’s weaknesses with strengths of their own.

Check it out if you can, it’s on at 9:30 tonight for 1.5 hours.

Last night at 4am I woke up and for some reason, started thinking about the film Romancing The Stone (I think I was thinking of DVDs I’d like to own someday). A lot of people think of Romancing as a silly little throwaway film, but I just adore it. It’s fun and spunky and it’s the kind of film that I can watch over and over again.

It’s interesting that I like it so much, given that it stars Michael Douglas (one third of Hollywood’s unholy trinity, along with Richard Gere and Alec Baldwin) and Danny Devito (whose annoying whine of a voice is only surpassed in gratingness by Joe Pesci). So I came to the conclusion that it must be Kathleen Turner to makes the movie (along with character actress Holland Taylor, who kicks some serious ass during the three minutes she’s onscreen).

Kathleen turned 50 last week, which isn’t really that old — that makes her the same age as Rene Russo, and a few years younger than Susan Sarandon. So why am I not seeing more of Kathleen at the box office? I think she’s a talented actress who can definitely pull off the sexy-mom roles, but instead I’m reduced to seeing her playing a man (Chandler’s drag queen father) on Friends.

Sigh…I miss you, Kathleen. Hollywood is a tough, tough place.