Geno Wins Mothers Day 2023 With A Gift For His Jeopardy Loving Grandmother
Sure you can send mom flowers for Mother’s Day. She’ll love them. But 3 years ago, I hit a home run (bad pun intended) for Mothers Day for my then 91 year old grandmother.
I lost my mother a little over 10 years ago so it really makes me extra thankful to still have my grandmother in my life. Especially on Mothers Day. My grandmother is incredible. She just retired a few years ago. She still rides a stationary bike. She just this past year stopped driving. The way she keeps moving and living life is incredibly inspiring for a lazy guy like her grandson. So I wanted to do something a out-of-the-box for Mothers Day. I ended up on the website called Cameo.
If you’re not familiar with Cameo, it’s a lot of musicians, athletes and celebrities who record video greetings for birthdays, promotions, etc. With my grandmother being an enormous Boston Red Sox fan, I did a search for “Red Sox” and saw one of the choices was Jerry Remy (former Red Sox player, at the time a Red Sox TV commentator). I couldn’t bust out the credit card fast enough. I popped into the script a few things about her and Jerry created this masterpiece.
The part about how she conks out and falls asleep halfway through the game every night is 100% true! I added the Fenway Park and music to spice it up a bit. Cameo videos are usually just simple videos recorded with a cell phone.
Unfortunately I couldn’t be in Maine to be there to see her watch the video, but my family told me she started talking back to Jerry, thinking it was a live conversation! My grandmother at the time had learned how to use FaceTime on her phone so she thought this was a FaceTime. It was fantastic. Sadly, Jerry passed away not long after this video was made.
So now, I had to one up it!
The past few years I got lazy and went with traditional gifts. I kept thinking back how much she loved that video message and how she showed it off to everyone. Then it hit me, it’s time to do a Jeopardy themed one!
I did a Cameo search for Jeopardy. I hoped to find the host Ken Jennings. I knew it’d be expensive, but turns out he wasn’t on the Cameo roster. But I did find a few of the more famous contestants from over the years, including Matt Amodio who won well over $1 million on Jeopardy. For a mere $50, he played along with the script I wrote and NAILED it. I asked him to pretend he was on the show and ringing in. I had him say her name 3 times in the form of a question. “Who is Iris?” “Also who is Iris?” And “Again, who is Iris?” I created some Jeopardy clues using that familiar blue background from the show and I’m going to have him answer all of them with her name… and I’m going to have all my uncles and aunt record wrong answers.
Check it out! You might recognize another familiar face. Q105 alum and former announcer for The Price Is Right Rich Fields played the host for me. He even busted out his suit, a lapel mic and used a green screen to really make this thing awesome!
One of my uncles didn’t participate. I think you’ll figure out which one.
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