Fun and games: Whitney High's Mollie Haycock had her stint on "Jeopardy" last week and, well, she didn't win. "I wound up with $600 on the show, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything," she said. Tops among the fun: Hanging with the other 14 teen contestants and becoming instant friends. When they started singing in the audience during a break in taping, Alex Trebek told them they were having too much fun. Haycock liked the experience so well, she's thinking of abandoning her old career interest – a coroner's medical examiner – for one in entertainment. (CSI?) One of her opponents was a buzz saw with a buzzer and had an amazing $50,000 after the second round. Haycock knew the answers, except for "the obscure poetry," she said, but couldn't ring in time. And every one missed the final. "None of us knew what a diacritical mark was." Now, she can't go back on the show until Trebek retires. Of course, he's in his late 60s, and she's just 17. "There's still time," she said. …
Doing shots: Penryn photographer Mike Posehn takes panoramic photos just about wherever he goes. In our office is a shot he took in the Loomis Hardware Emporium, but he takes photos in bars, in formal gardens, on Mount Tallac above Tahoe. Wherever. So when he went with his daughter into the funky 500 Club in San Francisco and saw the pink tile, black paint and heavy graffiti in the bathroom, he thought it made a great visual. He went out to check if it was OK, telling the young woman tending bar that he was a photographer and would like to … "She quickly shot back that she no longer poses for nude photos, she had stopped doing that last year," Posehn recounted. "I said, 'No, no, I just want to photograph the men's room,' and without batting an eye, she said, 'Go ahead,' like people ask to do that every day." Maybe they do in S.F. You can see the results – with a 360-degree view, vertical and horizontal – in the gallery at Posehn's GraniteBaySoftware.com. …
Houston's, we have problem: The little signs near the Penryn exits on I-80 in both directions still say "Cattle Baron's," but the restaurant is now known as Houston's Steaks. And L'Omelet. And Big House Bar. Owner Konstantinos Mathiopoulos said the old restaurant was not doing as well as he wanted, so he took it over about a month ago and made some changes. Roadside sign changes are still to come. "It takes a little time with Caltrans," Mathiopoulos said. …
Hello to good buys: Used doesn't mean chintzy. The home-improvement supplies at the new ReStore in Roseville include deals on some fancy stuff: a pantry door with a frosted-glass grape pattern, granite counters, a six-burner Viking cooktop, a 6-foot chandelier and hand-painted bathroom sinks. The ReStore is a project of Foothills Habitat for Humanity. They take donated quality building supplies that might otherwise go to a landfill and sell them to benefit projects promoting homeownership among folks with low incomes. Some of those may be customers of the ReStore, too – people unable to sink a lot of money into fixing up a home. "This could be the only place they could get something," said Tertia Hawkins, director of the Habitat group. Some material comes from remodels – the cooktop came from a Los Lagos place that is going even more upscale. Other materials come from developers who end up with unneeded extras. There are even basics like light bulbs, flooring and doorknobs. For more info, check out foothillshabitat.org.
Call The Bee's Carlos Alcalá at (916) 773-6847. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/alcala.
