And sitting here watching the Winter Olympics I had a major flash of deja-vu, and thought I’d take a moment and write about it. You see, it’s time to start panning for our annual Arbor Day party.<\/p>\n
Eight years ago, almost exactly, we got cable TV installed so we could watch the Winter Olympics. I’m not sure why I have such a jones for the Winter Olympics; I took a couple of years off to see if I could get good enough at something (cycling track sprints) to go (the answer was no – actually, HELL no). We got it taken out the week after it ended – and we’ll probably do that again now.<\/p>\n
This was the Nagano Olympics.<\/p>\n
You may recall the TV coverage of that Olympiad. It – kindly – sucked.<\/p>\n
So our family sat around the TV and did what normal Americans do. We watched Jeopardy. And I got engaged in the all-American enterprise of abusing the contestants.<\/p>\n
“How the %$@@! can you not know the answer to that question!<\/i>“<\/p>\n
“What are you doing on national television! You’re an idiot!<\/i>“<\/p>\n
My sons, who worship and respect me in all things, gently suggested that if I was so smart, perhaps I ought to try out and go on the show.<\/p>\n
I explained to them that no real people go on game shows; I believed that everyone involved was an unemployed actor.<\/p>\n
Six weeks later, I was driving to the Sony lot in Culver City to take my test. I’ll skip over the details of how I wound up there, except to note that my sons have always been good at forging my signature, and that the father of multiple sons is always walking a fine line, risking losing his status as the alpha primate in the household.<\/p>\n
I’d crammed an encyclopedia of television, and one of sports, and walked in confident I’d pass the test and take home bragging rights to my sons.<\/p>\n
I did pass, and I not only bragged but abused the boys. My chores? Theirs now. After all, I’d passed the Jeopardy test.<\/p>\n
My confidence lasted two months.<\/p>\n
My office phone rang. “Hi, Marc! This is Greg from Jeopardy! We’d like you to come down on Thursday and tape with us. Does that work for you?<\/i>“<\/p>\n
Abada-abada-abada – I told him I’d have to see if I could clear my calendar and get back to him.<\/p>\n
When I can’t make up my mind, I tend to do impromptu focus groups. So I called several friends.<\/p>\n
After the third one suggested that he’d come to the office and drag my sorry butt to the studio, I called Greg and got my instructions.<\/p>\n
I drove onto the lot with my four changes of clothes, parked, and walked to the studio, where I checked in.<\/p>\n
They had a covey of unemployed comedians (actually, if they were working, they weren’t unemployed, I guess) who acted as our handlers. They were funny, engaging, helpful, and full of lore.<\/p>\n
“Don’t eat the pink donut! If someone eats the pink donut, the show will have technical problems.<\/i>“<\/p>\n
I ate the pink donut.<\/p>\n
So we went out on the set, and played some practice games.<\/p>\n
What you can’t see on TV is the bank of lights recessed around the question screens; a producer hits a button when Alex is done asking the question, and then and only then can the button you have in your hand buzz you in. There’s a certain amount of anticipation – kind of like a drag racer – and the lights are activated by someone listening to Alex like you are. So you can’t key off the lights…<\/p>\n
If you buzz too soon, your buzzer locks out for about half a second. Every time you hit the buzzer, it locks for a moment (less than half a second, I think); so the key here is to hit it once, and then with the right rhythm.<\/p>\n
We got our pictures taken with Alex; here’s mine – note the somewhat sour look on his face; I’d just given him rabbit ears in our first picture. I’d expected a dry – oh, no one’s ever done that<\/u> before – and got a bolt of pure rage. He was furious<\/u> with me.<\/p>\n
![\"Jeopardy.JPG\"](\"http:\/\/www.windsofchange.net\/archives\/Jeopardy.JPG\")
<\/p>\n
I’ll note that I got the call the day after I got the first – and only – buzz cut of my adult life.<\/p>\n
So I assumed – between the pink donut and pissing the host off – that I was going to be in the pool of people who didn’t get on – they film five shows a day; there is one returning winner, and so they need ten new contestants a day, and they bring fourteen.<\/p>\n
I didn’t mind not getting on – it meant I got props for going, and didn’t actually have to go on – and just rolled with it.<\/p>\n
There was a young guy – one of the straightest people I’ve ever met (he made Kevin Drum look like Mike Ness) – who went into the first game, and blew everyone out. He was great!<\/p>\n
I kind of became his handler. He was so stressed when he came off that he’d sweated through his shirt and his jacket; I’d help him get new clothes out, get a drink, and remind him to breathe.<\/p>\n
Game two, he blew everyone out again.<\/p>\n
Game three, the audio system failed, so we had lunch early. The handlers glared at me. They got it fixed, and he blew everyone out.<\/p>\n
Game four, they called him, and then, surprisingly, they turned to me…<\/p>\n
…and I was on Jeopardy!<\/p>\n
The game itself was a kind of a blur; it’s funny that today I still clearly remember hanging out in the green room and eating the pink donut, and that I only have four memories of the game itself.<\/p>\n
I was ahead early, and there was a moment when I went “whew! this isn’t so hard!” On the tape, you can see me visibly exhale and relax.<\/p>\n
When we did our stories – the little self-revelatory anecdotes – mine ran wayyy too long. I frantically tried to wrap it up while Trebek glared at me some more.<\/p>\n
The third contestant with us was a nice woman from Oregon who answered maybe three questions the whole show. When she buzzed in the first time, I rember looking at her in amazement. the tape shows me looking at her with a “where did you<\/u> come from?” look.<\/p>\n
And at the very end, when I realized that I didn’t know the answer to Final Jeopardy, I started to write a smartass answer until I realized that they’d been very clear – if we did anything political, or obscene, or obviously stupid, our taping would be ended and we’d be gone. I frantically rewrote my answer to something lame but plausible.<\/p>\n
The question?<\/p>\n
“What holiday is celebrated on March 7 in California, April 23 in Nebraska, and March 26 in Spain?”<\/p>\n
I’ve hated Arbor Day ever since then…<\/p>\n
The winner wasn’t me – and he went on to win all five games that day.<\/p>\n
It was huge fun. I won a cool trip to the Caribbean and got to take the boys for a week, and I’ve got this picture of me and Alex Trebeck.<\/p>\n
My advice for Kevin? Practice buzzing with a ball-point pen. And eat the pink donut.
\n–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Armed Liberal remembers losing it all on Jeopardy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}