Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! (38 page)

In Hollywood, even driving home from the airport can present frustrating challenges. Street closures, parking rules, and traffic laws are dictated by studio production schedules, which are determined by the availability of makeup trailers, which in turn are dictated by the normal bodily functions of celebrities. As a result, the 405 freeway can be tied up simply because (for example) Patrick Stewart has a difficult zit, Heather Graham needs to floss, or Mandy Patinkin isn’t getting enough fiber. If Lindsay Lohan eats that shrimp, no one’s getting home for hours.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, people think there’s happiness here. Some folks move here from thousands of miles away. I certainly did.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, is not Hollywood. And Trebekistan is everywhere you turn.

After years living here I still had never quite seen the city. The guidebook I’d used on my very first visit had remained the extent of my knowledge: only Melrose, only Beverly Hills, only Venice, the Strip, and always, always the ocean.

I looked for the history and the art now, cultivating the past as a habit. My apartment, just off Melrose, became a beanfield not far from an oil well. In the far distance, Chumash Indians built homes out of willow and whalebone.

Los Angeles is actually an incredible world. Within twenty minutes you can visit enclaves from Russia, Korea, China, Iran, Ethiopia, or almost anywhere else. In every new neighborhood, you’ll find no shortage of people eager and flattered and glad to share their own ways.

Had I really not noticed? Had this always been here? Has the backyard always been filled with hundreds of civilizations?

I hadn’t. And yes, it had been.

Max and I drove down to Sony again before long.

A year after our tournament, Dan had a whim to watch the next Tournament championship in person. He called Kim and me, and we drove in as a group, watching from the studio bleachers with the rest of the crowd.

I played along silently, again over my head. It had been months since I’d studied. Categories flew by. I was stunned by the speed and unsure of my footing. For a moment I was Charly from
Flowers for Algernon,
the mentally challenged young man whose miracle treatment wore off. I was a half-step behind, lots of almosts and not-quites, Cliff Robertson trapped on the film-version downslope. The knowledge was there, but the practice was not.

Now that I knew just how much was required, the podiums looked more distant and unlikely than ever before.

Three excellent players battled their final, standing where we’d recently stood.
Was that really us? Did we really do that?
I wondered. I tried to picture it, slipping the timeline, closing my eyes, conjuring up a real but distant image, bringing Trebekistan into the
Jeopardy!
set. But I couldn’t quite do it.

I wasn’t sure it had all actually happened.

There were eventually plenty of reminders.

Two major U.S. airlines actually played the last episode with Dan, Kim, and me as in-flight entertainment.

Later, on cable TV, the Game Show Network began rebroadcasting the entire season in which we played. I do not know why, but they continued repeating this one season for four solid years.

Soon, some of the Small Midwestern Colleges at which I’d performed invited me back to give lectures on memory and test-taking skills.

This was an incredible prize, a chance to relive my wins while helping students do much better in school. Maybe my own college years, which had long seemed so wasted, were what compelled me to study in newfangled ways. My mistakes and bad choices had finally paid off, in a sense, now that I was helping other kids do what they loved even better.

Speaking at colleges about memory made my own memories feel much better. Granted, I didn’t spend a lot of time talking about losing at the very end.

I tried other quiz shows eventually, picking up cash on the side.

There was an Internet thing run by a company called GoldPocket, in which people played in real time all over the world. There were thousands of contestants at once, with eventually just one final winner.

But few of these people had spent months filling notebooks with cartoons of great artists and writers.

So that was an extra thousand bucks on a Thursday.

There was a cable game show on the USA Network called
Smush.
The host was Ken Ober, who had done MTV’s
Remote Control,
which I’d also watched long ago in the Snow Belt. The hostess of
Smush
was a Playmate named Lisa who said “Whoo” a lot when the camera was on.

But “Whoo” is not “Oooh.” I was worshipping false idols.

On
Jeopardy!
there’s a category called
BEFORE AND AFTER,
which is two clues in one, smushed together. So:

“GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY” SINGER WHO RESIGNED THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY

would be
Who is Little Richard Nixon?
These are no more difficult than an ordinary clue and can often be easier, since if you know either response, you have two-thirds of the answer and half of what’s left.

Smush
was played the same way, only pushing the words themselves closer together. So the answer to:

BARBARIC TRIBE RULED BY ALARIC PLUS SHAKESPEARE’S MURDEROUS MOOR

would be
Visigothello,
although the questions were never remotely that highbrow. (
Jeopardy!
has tried something similar recently, in a category called
OVERLAPS
. The only difference:
Jeopardy!
would not consider Visigothello much of a challenge.)

While providing simple answers like “Momen-to-talrecall” and “CN Tower of Bab-yl-on Five,” I’m visibly embarrassed on the tape, much more than I realized. After losing to Dan, this felt like being made to sit in a high chair.

Fortunately, the clues got longer as the game progressed. I finally won in the end with the six-bagger “Born in East-L.A. Sto-Rita More-Nova Sco-shalom-ega.” (Say it aloud and you’ll hear a song, a movie, an actress, a province, a Hebrew word, and a Greek letter.) For a moment I had escaped the kids’ table.

For the final lightning round, hostess Lisa the Playmate wrote a key word in lipstick on a mirror, from which I’d construct five other words.

The key word was “Booby.”

The Playmate posed inches away. This was supposed to provide humor or tension or possibly amusement for the ghost of Fellini. I just hoped no one at
Jeopardy!
watched. It felt almost shameful to reach for such low-hanging fruit. I had forty-five seconds and finished in thirty, accepted the prop money for coming up with “Malibu-by” and “Boobeeper” and “Boo-beef” and the like with some visible embarrassment, and skulked away out the nearest door.

That was eight thousand bucks on a Monday.

There was
Greed
on the Fox network, taped at Television City. When I was a boy, this was where Carol Burnett was from. I wore the same sport jacket I’d worn for my first
Jeopardy!
game. This seemed respectful.

Chuck Woolery hosted, and the game play was not
quite
as simple as
Smush.
I swear these were really the rules:

Six contestants (or sometimes five) would answer questions whose answers sometimes depended on what year the data came from. After each answer, another contestant would have the chance to change the answer; later on in the game, after each answer Chuck would offer this person money to chicken out. If they didn’t chicken out, and the answer was right, then two contestants (including the one with the option to change the answer) would face off for one separate question, with the winner getting the loser’s share of the pot. Then the remaining contestants would play another round, unless everyone decided to quit, which was not a group decision. If the game continued, then another question would be asked, but this time with even more possible answers, although one of the options could be eliminated, but only once. In which case Chuck would offer another chance to chicken out, and so on, until Chuck Woolery himself would start hollering at the producers, WILL SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHERE WE ARE AGAIN? EVEN
I
DON’T KNOW WHAT THE RULES ARE!
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M EVEN SAYING UP HERE!

This was even more fun than it sounds.

Part of the rules involved players fighting each other for shares of the growing pot—if that wasn’t manifestly clear—but anyone who had multiple shares became an immediate and constant target. It was obvious from studying the rules that the most likely way to win was to avoid being challenged, thus sneaking through the rounds until the pot was large enough that it was time to quit.

If that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, don’t worry. Judging by ratings, a quantum mechanics seminar would have been simpler and gotten a bigger audience. Bottom line: I needed people not to challenge me.

So I spent virtually every minute in the green room working the phrase “five-time
Jeopardy!
champion” into ordinary conversation. As in: “Yes, I’ve been on other game shows, I’m a five-time
Jeopardy!
champion,” and “Gosh, this is a good sandwich, and I am a five-time
Jeopardy!
champion,” and “Excuse me, can you tell me where to find the bathroom? I need to wipe the backside of a five-time
Jeopardy!
champion.”

Needless to say, nobody challenged me. In fact, they barely even spoke to me.

The taping took under two hours. I answered all of three questions on a team that collectively won a million dollars.

That was $200,000 on a Saturday.

The money, it turned out, was actually an annuity, payable in tiny bits spread out over a decade. The immediate cash value was thus substantially less. Once the taxes were paid, I’d won only a third of the money they flashed on the screen. Still, it was more cash in one day than I’d won in whole weeks of
Jeopardy!
For three total questions. If
Jeopardy!
was a relationship,
Greed
was a tawdry affair: quick, flashy, loud, and kind of confusing.

Some time after
Greed
was canceled, I ran into Chuck Woolery in an LAX terminal. We were both walking toward baggage claim. I introduced myself, and he remembered our game, and he didn’t mind passing time with a stranger. He was exactly the same as he is on the air: just-folks, easy smile, no pretense at all.

“
Man,
that was a complicated show,” he volunteered with a laugh.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
has never asked me to appear on their show. I don’t know why this is. I’ve passed their test several times. Perhaps I’m not playful or friendly or animated enough. In any case, the Hot Seat seems safe from the cool of my keister.

But I’ve been on the show, or my voice has, at least. My friend Howard chose me as his Phone-a-Friend Lifeline. I was more nervous about this than I’d ever been for my own games, because I had a friend’s life in my hands.

So one day I was home by the phone when it rang. This was a producer, telling me Howard was playing. Soon it rang again. This was Meredith Vieira.

Howard was playing for $250,000. With one answer, I could help pay off his mortgage, get braces for his kids, and send him and his wife on a new honeymoon…

Or not.

My chest started to clench. I could just barely breathe. Howard began reading his question:

Which of the following writers stabbed his wife Adele with a penknife in 1960?

Norman Mailer!
I blurted.

Howard hadn’t even given the choices.

The studio audience laughed and applauded. I didn’t know at the time, and it was edited from the show, but Howard had mentioned that I was a
Jeopardy!
champ. So my instant response was like the punchline to a great joke.

I was not showing off. I just didn’t want to risk not getting it out of my mouth. I knew that I knew, and I wanted to breathe again.

That was $250,000 on a Wednesday.

Thanks to this lengthening list of quiz show successes, I’ve been invited for years to the annual Game Show Congress, a convention where fans mingle in hotel ballrooms with players, producers, and hosts. It’s like any smallish convention of TV fanatics. There are keynotes and souvenirs and the trading of bootlegs. People split off into small rooms to discuss exotic passions. Everyone knows just a little too much.