Momotombo SF - Getting down with Leo and the band

 I've known Leo and Virginia Rosales for many years due to the large number of trail races we've done together. Leo is fast and must have a large closet filled with age group awards. 

I also knew that Leo was involved in a band called Momotombo SF, and that the band was a collection of many talented musicians, largely from the Malo and Santana bands, as well as others. (One sort of funny thing - I was pretty sure that I had never heard any songs from Malo. Boy was I wrong. Suavecito was a very popular song that is so good to listen to.)

On Saturday afternoon, Mrs Notthat and I went to see Momotombo SF play at the free Rock the Dock concert series that happens in Redwood City CA - it's a fun, outdoor, and casual venue that we have seen a number of bands play.

We arrived a bit early and were surprised to see so many people already there - we brought a couple of folding chairs and set them up on the grass near the building the stage faces, and that area was fuller than it normally gets. This was especially surprising because, while it was sunny, there was an aggressively cold breeze blowing off the bay. 

I knew Leo did percussion, so I expected him to be shy, and hanging out on the back of the stage. I was wrong on so many levels.

That's Leo front and center.

It turns out that Leo is the frontman for the band, and did most of the talking in between songs. 

I expected a large dose of Latin rock, and I got that. But it was a lot more than that - you could tell the band was really into grooving and improvising - I kept thinking that this must be similar to what you might hear at a Grateful Dead concert; a group of excellent musicians giving each other the room to take the music well beyond what you would hear in a studio.

As you can see in the video, there was a large group dancing at the front of the stage, plus others scattered around dancing. It was hard to sit still. Our deal was that, with the cold wind, we could leave at intermission if we weren't feeling it, but that turned out to not be an issue for us (and I saw very few others leave early). Once it was all over, I went up to say "hi" to Leo and Virginia.

There were a lot of people that wanted to talk to Leo after the concert - I knew he was exhausted, but he stuck around and happily talked to all of them.

Virginia (on the left, with the flowers on her hat) taking care of the t-shirt sales table.

And that's about it. I loved that Leo shouted out Virginia several times during the concert. I loved seeing the two of them in a completely different venue than at a trail race (it's funny how different people look when you are so used to seeing them under wildly different circumstances).

The band has a number of concerts lined up over the summer - those of you used to seeing Leo and Virginia dodging poison oak and rocks and puddles should take advantage of any chance you have to watch them do their thing.

That's it - move along…

Attending a Jeopardy taping, Masters style!

Note: I'm skipping over a lot of the basic bits about attending a Jeopardy taping, since that was all covered in an earlier post you can read here.

Ever since we attended our first Jeopardy taping last year, we have been on a mailing list that announces upcoming opportunities to attend another one. What we had attended previously was a standard show - the contestants were totally unknown by us. We both felt that it would be fun to see a taping of a special show; maybe a Celebrity Jeopardy episode or a Tournament of Champions episode. Normally though, they don't tell you what sort of show will be taping.

Last week we got an email announcing ticket availability for the taping of the Masters tournament - we were surprised they were that specific!

The timing wasn't ideal - there were things going on that week that meant this would have to be a quick trip, plus we were heading to Yosemite the following week (not a problem for Mrs Notthat, but for Mr Notthat, that's a lot of traveling and excitement in a short period of time). After talking about it, we signed up for the Wednesday morning shift (a bit unusual - there were three shifts on Wednesday, which works out well mathematically since there are six contestants that open with a round-robin style first round). We were actually going to see the very first two games of the tournament, and would get to see all six players*. 

This was going to be so cool.

Big differences from last time

By far the biggest change was that there were no longer any COVID issues. (Last year we had to prove we were vaccinated and wear a mask at all times in the studio.) 

Another change was that we had to sign an NDA where we promised not to disclose anything about the games we watched. (The games we watched will broadcast on May 1, so we don't have to wait nearly as long as we did last time to see them.) It's possible I'll say things in this post that they would rather I didn't say, but I think I'm pretty safe. (I will be watching for black helicopters though.)

Pre-taping bits

Last time, we arrived about an hour early, and sat around until our scheduled arrival time before anything started happening. (I remember not even being sure we were in the right place - there wasn't anyone around to ask.)

This time, we arrived about 25 minutes early (our scheduled time was 9:45). There were a LOT of people already there and many had already been checked in and received their wristbands! (My guess is that this was only because we were the first shift - later shifts likely didn't work that efficiently.) 

There were people that showed up after us, and I suspect some of them did not get in to the taping (they overbook, just like the airlines). The moral is to get there at least 30 minutes early.

The line to check in.

We filled out the NDA, showed our tickets, and got our blue wristband. (Orange wristbands meant you were someone pretty special, probably a contestant's immediate family or something like that. Purple wristbands meant you were also pretty special. Orange and purple people got in to the studio first. Blue wristbands were ushered in last and placed where ever there were were seats to be filled.

It feels like if your nickname is The Lightning Bolt, standing in a line shouldn't be a thing.

Mrs Notthat is really good at recognizing people. She gasped a bit when she realized that standing in front of us, with a purple wristband, was none other that Brandon "The Lightning Bolt" Blackwell, who we knew from the show The Chase. He also won the Jeopardy Teen tournament back in 2008, and had been in the Jeopardy Invitational Tournament that just finished (he did not win it). It was cool to see him there, just like a normal person. But with a purple wristband.

The metal detector line and a photo op of sorts. Plus, a bonus celebrity!

The next step was to stand in the line to go through a metal detector. I like to take pictures of people taking pictures, so I grabbed the above shot. The amazing thing is that woman in the brown jacket you see looking off to the left, just ahead of the guy in the white shirt. She is none other than Alison Betts - at the time of me writing this, she is a five-game winner in the normal tournament that is currently being broadcast. It was great to see her there, but it was also a bit odd since mortals have no idea how long she is going to keep going (her episodes were taped at least a month ago - it's possible she is pulling a Ken and is still going, or she lost at some point).  Once we were in the studio, we recognized a few other previous contestants. That was pretty cool!

Waiting to get to hike to the studio, looking at the Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune store.

After we got through the metal detector, we were sent over to a visitor area that was connected to a store with lots of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune stuff. Last time we were here, I remember being surprised that there wasn't a merch store - I now realize that there was one, it was just closed due to COVID restrictions. 

We stood around there for a while before we were organized into color groups; the orange people headed out first, then the purple, and finally us blues. (Tip: We had no idea what was going to happen as we were milling around there. Knowing what I know now, as a blue person, I would hang out near the far wall, like you were going to the toilet, as close to the toilet doors as possible. Those ended up being the first blue people to get seated - earlier seating gets you a better seat, but man, all the seats were pretty good.)

The masses heading to the studio. The orange and purple people are WAY out front. We were nearly at the very end of the blue line.

Once we reached the studio, we ended up standing around for quite a bit. Mrs Notthat chose to soak up some sun.

It's a bit of a walk to the studio. We had a fair amount of time to stand around outside the studio once we got there, so I asked one of the people herders what they did if it was raining - they don't want to have to deal with dripping-wet people or umbrellas. It turns out they use a shuttle bus to drive people to the studio, and it is a LOT more work for them. Fortunately, that does not happen very often.

Finally going in to the studio.

We were told MANY times that you can't take pictures in the studio, and they really wanted people to turn their phones off. When I took the above picture, it triggered a new round of "no more pictures" warnings. 

Once you are in the studio, there are a number of people keeping an eye on all of us - I suspect you could probably take a picture or two if you are particularly sneaky, but there was no way I was going to take that chance - I'm sure you would be told to leave.

The actual taping

So that's about it - there's really not much I can say. 

The actual taping goes pretty fast. There are times you desperately want to yell out the answer/question, but holy cow would that cause trouble. Since this was a Masters Tournament, there were more odd shots and such that had to be done, so it took longer to get through the two shows than we had expected. (Ken also had to redo a number of lines that had not quite gone perfectly the first time. Also, there were shots of family members in the stands, which took a surprising amount of time to capture.)

One funny thing - Jimmy McGuire, former member of the Clue Crew who is now a kind of MC for the taping, was busy doing his thing, keeping the audience pumped and coordinating between the host, contestants, and the crew. At one point, I heard him refer to Mr. Jennings as "Kenny." I have no idea why this struck me as super odd (it's possible there is a member of the crew that he calls Kenny just to differentiate between him and Mr. Jennings, but I'm pretty sure he was referring to Mr. Jennings). Ken has always just been Ken - calling him Kenny or Kenneth just had never occurred to me before.

After the taping

One thing that happened while we had so much time standing around, was that Mrs Notthat found out that there was a studio tour in the afternoon at 1:30. We figured that we would be done with the taping in plenty of time to get some lunch then go on the tour. (My biggest worry about the tour was that it would make our escape from LA a lot more challenging since it would put us closer to rush hour. My biggest worry was reasonably justified.)

Our tour passes.

As it turned out, we got back to the parking garage from the taping just in time to check in for the tour and head out on it. (I was really glad we had eaten a big breakfast.)

The tour was fine - lots of interesting bits and such - but I had trouble not thinking about the traffic steadily getting worse and worse. 

Outside of the John Williams Music Building, which contains the Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage. I loved that big red treble clef!

Then a surprising fun thing - as a souvenir, they took a picture of each of us in front of a green screen and super-imposed us over a Jeopardy backdrop later. The coincidence of the Jeopardy bit and us having just sat through a Jeopardy taping was pretty impressive.

The photographer took a second shot saying that if we had won Jeopardy, we wouldn't look so surprised, but I can assure you that if we won Jeopardy, we would be very surprised. I was glad they printed this one.

Another kind of funny thing - while on the tour, our guide was informed that there would likely be some openings for the 4 PM Jeopardy shift** - Mrs Notthat really wanted to do that, and it would have been fun to see, but it meant getting a really late start for heading up north and going another couple of hours without food or water. I don't do that well without food and water for that long of a time. Also, our goal was to get at least a couple hours towards home - we really needed to get back by mid-afternoon the next day, and this would make that much harder to do. So we passed on that 4 PM shift.

And that's about it. After the tour, we took surface streets to get on the Pacific Coast Highway (highway 1) to get out of town. It would have worked out pretty well except there was a massive slowdown at one point due to a lane being closed by a landslide that looks to have been there for a while.

It was a quick trip, but a successful one. We will have to do this again in the future.

That's it - move along…

* The Masters contestants are:

• Matt Amodio
• James Holzhauer
• Mattea Roach
• Yogesh Raut
• Victoria Groce
• Amy Schneider

** They normally don't want you to attend multiple tapings on the same day, but we were told that in this case, it would be fine since we weren't going to be taking a spot from someone else. Probably. 

PS: If you are interested in attending a Jeopardy taping, click here to get details and dates that are available. (There are lots of shows taping in May.)