Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! (19 page)

I could explain these, but I think you’ll have more fun bouncing them around, working out why each image is there, and possibly questioning my sanity. (There’s a secret decoder ring below if you’re curious.
^*
) Those of you who actually
can
eventually decode these should either try out for the show or seek professional help.

Probably both.

Getting ready also meant bowing humbly to the gods of state-dependent retrieval.

The local office supply store had no shortage of cheap pedestal halogen lamps. Five of them were soon scattered across my living room, transforming the ceiling into a blinding source of studio-intensity reflected light.

My air conditioner, set on “purée,” chilled the living room to a studio-like sixty-five degrees. Videotapes of
Jeopardy!
played silently on the TV, associating all new information with the show’s colors and scenery. The TV was shifted as far to one side of the room as possible, the better to simulate the actual distance of the game, and the waist-high top of a small bookcase became my makeshift home podium.

And, of course, as much as possible, I studied while standing up.

Annika, who had two master’s degrees and spent her days providing basic education in difficult environments, was not enthused.

Every evening, I would excitedly tell her of the new things I was surprised to find sticking in my head. “Eighty-eight constellations! Twelve birthstones! Four elements named for Greek deities!” I would babble. “Goa was Portuguese! Matisse was a Fauvist! Little Orphan Annie had a dog named Sandy!” If I ever asked Annika how her day was, I don’t recall it specifically.

Looking back, I must have sounded like the world’s most sophisticated Tourette’s patient: “Sphenoid Bones! Pygmy Shrews! Die Fledermaus! Monkey monkey monkey monkey!”

Annika usually went to the next room to read.

The new knowledge, even shorn of all context, was exhilarating.

Shakespeare, for example, had always somehow been outside my expectations. I knew the plays were
great
and all, sure; everyone said so. But I also assumed they also would be above my station in life. I never saw a single moment of a Shakespeare play until I was two years out of college.

It’s not that my parents had anything against the guy; it’s just that he rarely visited the Snow Belt. The closest thing we ever had to highbrow literature was my father’s love for the surreal, silly works of Ogden Nash and Lewis Carroll.

To put food on the table, Dad spent too many hours lifting things bigger than he was to have much time for reading, but this seemed almost a verbal advantage. For him, words existed as collections of sounds and images, passports to realities skewed from our own.

While he was alive, it is possible that not a single month of my life went by—ever, during the thirty-two years, one month, eight days, six hours, and forty-five minutes that we shared this planet—that Dad didn’t recite the first words of the poem “Jabberwocky” to me, just for the joy of the apparently meaningless syllables. “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves,” he would begin, and a rare delight would begin to sneak across his face, appreciating each moment of transcendent goofiness, watching my eyes to see if I shared his delight.

I believe, although I cannot prove, that he had high hopes.

One evening, when there was only a day or so left of our time together, I recited the poem back to him for the very last time.

He was sort of asleep at the time, but I wanted to believe I could see him smiling.

In high school, we barely brushed against Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, or any of the other so-unserious writers who delight everyone they touch. This was, after all, a very expensive and important school. Instead, I was force-fed a few of Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits, although the English always needed translation, the broad comedy and wrenching drama were lost, and none of the magnificently dirty jokes were ever explained. (Incidentally,
Romeo and Juliet,
fully appreciated, might be banned in some U.S. states.) This was the
Concordance
again, and little more. So we’d read all the lines aloud, resign ourselves to a ponderous struggle, and soon give up the plot completely.

But in the blinding glow of my stage-lit living room, I started sucking down Cliffs Notes and Chuck’s notes about scepter’d isles, pricking thumbs, and miscellaneous Ides of March. This went much more quickly than I once could have imagined. I was kicking Shakespeare’s
ass.

The more I read, the more I could hear a distant voice, repeating every line playfully, savoring every rhythm and pun, enjoying these sticky new stories. As I crammed in each new quote, locale, character, and basic plot point, I also promised to go back someday and study more.

The voice in my head was pleasant to hear.

I’d never realized: Dad would have
loved
Shakespeare.

Sometimes Annika would emerge, squint through the halogen glare, and ask, with some sincerity, if and how I was managing to remember all this stuff. I would invariably respond by proudly describing a new mnemonic construction in full and glorious detail.

Perhaps I would describe an important Supreme Court ruling in terms of a dancer with bananas on her head being handcuffed by a cactus. Or maybe I would discuss art history by describing ballet dancers on laughing gas, a man who has just lost one ear gargling the word “Arrrrrrrrl,” or Doris Day being blown to thousands of colorful bits.

(In case you’re curious:
Miranda v. Arizona.
Also, the frequent subject matter of Degas; the French town of Arles, where Van Gogh was famously visited by Gauguin; and the pointillist technique of Seurat, whose last name sounds like the lyric in “Que Sera, Sera.”)

To Annika, I might as well have been describing subatomic physics in terms of billiard balls, tangles of string, and possibly dead cats. I am certain I sounded—and am starting to sound to some of you, reading this—like a complete loon.

So Annika would look around the living room-turned-soundstage, roll her eyes slightly, and sigh.

I was sure she’d understand once I became a five-time champ.

CHAPTER
10

THE LONGEST DAY

Also, I Am Attacked by Ravenous Badgers

G
ame day. Already becoming a familiar experience.

All I wanted to do was try to relax and pace myself. It wouldn’t do to breeze in, win one game in a surge of mental energy, and then flame out before lunchtime. This wasn’t a sprint, the way my single end-of-day win had been weeks before.
Jeopardy!
was going to be an endurance sport.

I had three changes of clothing with me, as contestants are always asked to bring. All three of my sport jackets had Kleenex stashed in the right pocket.

No way I was climbing back into that makeup chair unprepared.

From the moment I walked into the green room, I could feel the dozen other contestants furtively scrutinizing me, just as I had so recently measured Matt, the returning champion of my own first game. I should have expected this, but it was a surprise nonetheless.

On camera,
Jeopardy!
had been a test of knowledge, judgment, timing, and coolness under pressure. Backstage, however, I realized there was another, more primitive, unspoken game already under way.

I don’t remember the exact details, but I made some small comment about professional sports. Two of the men eagerly displayed how much they knew in response, announcing their prowess to the room. One of the women pooh-poohed the exchange, claiming that
Jeopardy!
rarely asks about sports. This was attempted display number three.

A little later I got up to fetch a diet soda, and another player began talking about how bad the chemicals are for you. Another swore he never touched the stuff, claiming such drinks always had an effect on his concentration. And therefore, he seemed to be saying,
my
concentration would falter, if I cared to notice his comments.

Bizarre. Were these people all that focused on beating me? Obviously,
yes
—not me personally, of course, but winning is why we were all there.

Still, I wondered if maybe I was cracking slightly, if my pre-game jitters had caused an unusually high spike of self-absorption. These people all seemed too friendly and bright and good-humored to be engaged in this sort of gamesmanship.

At least consciously.

So I made some open joke about
Jeopardy!
being bloodsport—roughly that once we got onstage this would be like the James Caan movie
Rollerball,
with motorcycles and spiked gloves on our buzzer hands. The
Jeopardy!
theme would even be replaced with Bach’s creepy Toccata in D Minor (the
Rollerball
theme, high on the meager list of classical pieces I could recognize). Immediately, the conversation moved to one-upping tales of listening to, attending, and playing famous Bach pieces. And all of these comments seemed spoken carefully loud enough for me to hear.

Oh, my. Yes. The game
was
afoot.

This wasn’t Sony, this was the Sahara, and only the fittest would survive. Twelve sets of ears pricked up when I spoke, seeking out weakness. Twelve pairs of eyes scanned my every move.

As I scanned them all back, I began to feel confident: their body language and vocal tones were all about seeking status and reassurance. There was no sign of an Ivy League Serial Killer to fear, no Berkeley assassin, no cold-blooded genius of general knowledge. I only saw stress, as intense as my own had been while waiting to play my first game.

What had worried me most about Matt was how calm he appeared to be. I had feared his experience as much as his head. I had feared my own nerves even more. Appearing relaxed, therefore, was a tool I could use.

I sank back in my chair and made a point of laughing at everyone else’s jokes, letting them see me smile. And I said little else. How I wish you could have seen the effect: in this green room octagon, a single jiujitsu maneuver was throwing the others off their feet.

Soon, I actually
became
more relaxed. I just grinned and begged them to go on, delighting in whatever they said. So they said more. Probing and displaying, hunting and regaling, tiring themselves out with nervous energy. I listened intently, nodding in agreement, begging for more detail, giving back nothing but calm and a smile.

Resting. Ready for a long day ahead. Smiling was almost easy now.

I was already winning.

Seconds before we all marched out for the first game, I turned to my opponents—a law student from New York and a librarian from Iowa—and in a reassuring voice, instructed them not to be nervous.

I’m a little ashamed of this now. I’m not a big fan of mind games. Notice that this was a triple cruelty: reminding them both of my own previous experience
while
focusing their attention on their own nerves—and looking like a nice guy in the process.

I was shocked at myself, honestly. This may have been the single most manipulative flourish of my entire life. I regret it now. Someday I will be attacked in the street by a gang of well-educated people in suits and dresses. They will slap me to the pavement, steal my wallet, and clean out my bank account, all while reciting the monarchs of Spain in chronological order. And perhaps I will deserve it.

But in that moment, it seemed obvious at the time, the game had already begun.

And I wanted more.

Alex came out. No costume. Just his usual serious business suit. Halloween was over. In broadcast time, this show was a Monday.

It was time to go to work.

The luck I assumed would run out sometime soon showed no sign of abating at all. The first round included the following category: